“A woman can talk to another woman,” Taliban officials in Afghanistan said Saturday. Accordingly, they rejected the news of the introduction of such a ban by the Ministry of Virtue Promotion and Prevention of Corruption.
“A woman can talk to another woman, women need to communicate in society, women are needed,” Saiful Islam Khaibar, a spokesman for the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Misfortune, told AFP.
Recently, on the basis of the recorded speech of Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the minister, there was information about the ban on conversations in the media of Afghan immigrants.
The spokesman said such a ban would be “stupid” and “illogical” and assured that the minister's speech referred to exceptional cases, such as a group of women praying.
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The Taliban restrict women's rights
The United Nations estimates that after the return of the Taliban in 2021, Kabul will introduce “gender apartheid” by gradually pushing women out of public spaces. According to the Taliban, all these prohibitions come from Islamic religious law. Since the Taliban came to power, Afghan women have been denied access to high schools and universities, and have stopped formal education beyond the sixth grade.
Women cannot go to parks, gyms or beauty salons or leave the house without a male guardian. The law forbids singing and reciting poetry, forcing them to cover their bodies and remain silent outside the home. The Taliban, which advocates the strict separation of women from foreign men, has also blocked women's access to almost the entire labor market.
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A new decree issued at the end of August this year by the Ministry of Welfare and the Vice-Chancellor of the country stipulates that women are obliged to cover their faces and remain silent in public places.
Afghan authorities have also recently suspended the polio vaccination campaign. Opponents believe that this idea was to limit the participation of women in this practice.
>> “Shame on you!” Brief history of Afghan women's rights
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