Deutsche Welle :
The Taliban rulers in Afghanistan last week imposed a new round of wide-ranging restrictions that attempt to control people’s lives, behaviors and social interactions.
The new laws hit Afghan women and girls particularly hard, requiring women to hide not only their faces and bodies but also their voices outside the home.
They deepen the already pervasive restrictions on women and girls in Afghan society and expand the group’s control over Afghans’ private lives.
The United Nations and rights groups have strongly criticized the latest rules.
Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the UN mission in the country, said the laws provide a “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future and extend the “already intolerable restrictions ” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation.
Banishing women from public life
Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban have rolled back progress achieved in the previous two decades when it came to women’s rights.
They have banished women and girls from almost all areas of public life.
Girls have been barred from attending school beyond sixth grade, and women have been prohibited from local jobs and nongovernmental organizations. The Taliban have ordered the closure of beauty salons and barred women from going to gyms and parks. Women also can’t go out without a male guardian.
The introduction of these laws signals not just control but a consolidation of the Taliban’s authoritarian grip, said Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“This Taliban law deals with the most minor human interactions and extends beyond monitoring personal relationships in society,” she told DW.