KABUL: The Taliban regime has ordered beauty and hair salons in Afghanistan to shut down in the latest restrictions faced by women.
A Vice and Virtue Ministry spokesman said that businesses had one month to comply, beginning from the second of July when they’re first informed of the move, BBC reported on Wednesday.
Women and girls’ freedoms have continously decreased since the Taliban took over Kabul in 2021. They have banned women and girls from classrooms, parks, gyms, and even from working for the United Nations (UN).
The Afghan government has decreed that girls and women should be dressed in a way that covers the whole body except eyes, and must be accompanied by a male relative if they’re travelling more than 72km.
The restrictions have continued despite world condemnation and protests by girls and women as well as human rights activists.
Shutting beauty and hair salons was part of a wide range of measures taken by the Taliban government when they were last in power between 1996 and 2001. The salons were reopened in the years following 2001 United States-led invasion on Afghanistan.
Afghan women react
Reacting to the latest closure, an Afghan woman said that the Taliban government was taking away the human rights from women and girls.
“They’re violating girls and women’s rights. By this decision, they’re now depriving women of serving other women. When I heard the news, I was shocked”, she added.
The Afghan government has not explained what prompted the ban and what alternatives would be available to women once the beauty salons shut.