KABUL: Safety officers shot within the air and used firehoses Wednesday to disperse dozens of Afghan Ladies protesting in Kabul in opposition to an order by Taliban authorities to close down magnificence parlours, the newest curb to squeeze them out of public life.
Since seizing energy in August 2021, the Taliban authorities has barred women and girls from excessive colleges and universities, banned them from parks, funfairs and gymnasiums, and ordered them to cowl up in public.
The order issued final month forces the closure of 1000’s of magnificence parlours nationwide run by ladies — typically the one supply of earnings for households — and outlaws one of many few remaining alternatives for them to socialize away from house.
“Don’t take my bread and water,” learn an indication carried by one of many protesters on Butcher Avenue, which boasts a focus of the capital’s salons.
Public protests are uncommon in Afghanistan — and continuously dispersed by power — however AFP noticed round 50 ladies participating in Wednesday’s gathering, rapidly attracting the eye of safety personnel.
Protesters later shared movies and pictures with journalists that confirmed authorities utilizing a firehose to disperse them as pictures may very well be heard within the background.
“Today we arranged this protest to talk and negotiate,” stated a salon employee, whose title has not been printed by AFP for safety causes.
“But today, no one came to talk to us, to listen to us. They didn’t pay any attention to us and after a while they dispersed us by aerial firing and water cannon.”
In late June the ministry for the promotion of advantage and prevention of vice gave salons a month to shut down, saying the grace interval would permit them to make use of up inventory.
It stated it made the order as a result of extravagant sums spent on makeovers induced hardships for poor households, and that some remedies on the salons had been un-Islamic.
An excessive amount of make-up prevented ladies from correct ablutions for prayer, the ministry stated, whereas eyelash extensions and hair weaving had been additionally forbidden.
A replica of the order seen by AFP stated it was “based on verbal instruction from the supreme leader” Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Magnificence parlours mushroomed throughout Kabul and different Afghan cities within the 20 years that US-led forces occupied the nation.
They had been seen as a secure place to assemble and socialise away from males and offered important enterprise alternatives for girls.
A report back to the UN’s Human Rights Council final month by Richard Bennett, the particular rapporteur for Afghanistan, stated the plight of ladies and women within the nation “was among the worst in the world”.
“Grave, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against women and girls is at the heart of Taliban ideology and rule, which also gives rise to concerns that they may be responsible for gender apartheid,” Bennett stated.
Akhundzada, who not often seems in public and guidelines by decree from the Taliban’s birthplace in Kandahar, stated final month Afghan ladies had been being saved from “traditional oppressions” by the adoption of Islamic governance and their standing as “free and dignified human beings” restored.
He stated in a press release marking the Eid al-Adha vacation that steps had been taken to offer ladies with a “comfortable and prosperous life according to Islamic Sharia”.
Ladies have additionally principally been barred from working for the UN or NGOs, and 1000’s have been sacked from authorities jobs or are being paid to remain at house.