The Taliban are banning women from using gyms in Afghanistan, an official in Kabul said on Thursday, the latest decree by the religious group to trample women’s rights and freedoms since they took power more than a year ago. The Taliban seized the country last year, taking power in August 2021. They banned girls from middle and high school, despite initial promises to the contrary, barred women from most employment fields and ordered them to wear head-to-toe headscarves. nail clothes in public. A spokesman for the Ministry of Virtue and Countermeasures said the ban was introduced because people were ignoring gender segregation orders and women were not wearing the required headscarf or hijab. Also, women are not allowed to enter the parks. The ban on women using gyms and parks went into effect this week, according to Mohammad Akef Mohager, a spokesman for the Taliban-appointed Ministry of Virtue and Infidelity. The group has “tried its best” over the past 15 months to avoid closing parks and gyms to women, mandating separate days of the week for men and women or enforcing gender segregation, he said. “But unfortunately the orders were not obeyed and the rules were broken and we had to close down parks and gyms for women,” Mohager said. “In most cases, we have seen men and women together in parks and, unfortunately, the hijab was not being observed. So we had to come to another decision and for now we ordered all parks and gyms for women to be closed.” Taliban groups will begin monitoring the facilities to check if women are still using them, he said. A female personal trainer told The Associated Press that women and men did not exercise or train together before at the Kabul gym where she works. “The Taliban are lying,” he insisted, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “We trained separately. On Thursday, she said two men claiming to be from the Ministry of Virtue and Resistance entered her gym and made all the women leave. “The women wanted to protest the gyms (closing) but the Taliban came and arrested them,” he added. “Now we don’t know if they are alive or dead.” The Taliban-appointed spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, Khalid Zadran, said he had no immediate information about women protesting the gym closures or the arrests. The UN’s special representative in Afghanistan for women, Alison Davidian, condemned the ban. “This is yet another example of the Taliban’s continued and systematic erasure of women from public life,” he said. “We call on the Taliban to restore all rights and freedoms for women and girls.” Hardliners appear to dominate the Taliban-led government, which is struggling to govern and remains internationally isolated. An economic downturn has pushed millions more Afghans into poverty and hunger as the flow of foreign aid has slowed. Kabul-based women’s rights activist Sodaba Nazhand said the bans on gyms, parks, work and school will leave many women wondering what they have left in Afghanistan. “It’s not just a restriction for women, but also for children,” he said. “Children go to a park with their mothers, now children are also prevented from going to the park. It’s so sad and unfair.”
