Taliban Government bans Afghani women from parks and gyms

Afghanistan’s Taliban Government has prohibited women from access to public parks and gyms in its latest edict cracking down on women's rights and freedoms.

The religious group, which overran the country last year, has already banned girls from middle school and high school, despite initial promises to the contrary, restricted women from most fields of employment, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.

As reported by the ABC, Mohammed Akef Mohajer, a spokesman from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Virtue and Vice said the ban was being introduced because people were ignoring gender segregation orders and that women were not wearing the required headscarf, or hijab.

Introduced this week, Mohajer said the Taliban had "tried its best" for 15 months to avoid closing parks and gyms for women, ordering separate days of the week for male and female access or imposing gender segregation.

However, he advised that “unfortunately, the orders were not obeyed and the rules were violated, and we had to close parks and gyms for women.

"In most cases, we have seen both men and women together in parks and, unfortunately, the hijab was not observed. So we had to come up with another decision and for now we ordered all parks and gyms to be closed for women."

He added that Taliban teams will now begin monitoring establishments to check if women are still using them.

A women's rights activist says the ban will also affect children, who would go to parks with their mothers.

The United Nations special representative in Afghanistan for women, Alison Davidian, condemned the ban, noting “this is yet another example of the Taliban's continued and systematic erasure of women from public life

"We call on the Taliban to reinstate all rights and freedoms for women and girls."

In 2019, it was reported that F45 planned to open a gym in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Image credit Shutterstock.