KABUL —
Gyms and public baths are now also off limits to
Afghan women, the Taliban
confirmed Sunday, days after banning them from parks and funfairs.
اضافة اعلان
Women are
increasingly being squeezed out of public life since the Taliban’s return last
year despite the hardline Islamists promising a softer version of the harsh
rule that characterized their first stint in power that ended in 2001.
Most female
government workers have lost their jobs — or are being paid a pittance to stay
at home — while women are also barred from traveling without a male relative,
and must cover up with a burqa or hijab when out of the home.
Schools for
teenage girls have also been shuttered across most of the country since the
Taliban’s August 2021 return.
“Gyms are closed
for women because their trainers were male and some of them were combined
gyms,” Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the
Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, told AFP.
He said “hammams”
— traditional public bathing houses that have always been segregated by sex —
were now also off limits.
“Currently, every
house has a bathroom in it, so it won’t be any issue for the women,” he said.
Sana, 23, a
university student, gave a different explanation.
“The main reason
for closing the doors of parks, gyms, and hammams lies in the anti-women
ideology of the Taliban,” she told AFP.
“Afghanistan
today has turned into a dungeon for women. They want to send women to a black
hole.
“Today, with the
closure of these facilities, women are completely imprisoned in a home’s four
walls.”
One video clip
circulating on social media — which could not immediately be verified — showed
a group of women, backs to the camera, lamenting the gym ban.
“It’s a
women-only gym — the teachers and trainers are all women,” a voice says, breaking
with emotion.
“You can’t just
ban us from everything. Do we not have the right to anything at all?”
Activists have
said the increasing restrictions on women are an attempt to stop them from
gathering to organize opposition to the Taliban’s rule.
Small groups of
women have staged frequent flash protests in Kabul and other major cities,
risking the wrath of Taliban officials who have beaten and detained them.
The
United Nations this month voiced concern after the Taliban disrupted a press
conference in the capital, submitting female participants to body searches and
detaining the event organizer and several others.
“I have been to
parks and hammams many times, it always gave me joy,” said 19-year-old Fatima.
“I never thought my
presence in hammams or gyms could be an issue for anyone.”
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