Taliban authorities in Kandahar province have ordered all the departments of their de facto administration to prevent girls and women from going to health centers and to cemeteries.
Mawlawi Abdulhai Omar, head of Kandahar’s Department of Vice and Virtue, ordered in an audio message all departments at the district level to prohibit girls and women from going to clinics and cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones.
“From now on, you should absolutely ban women. Don’t let them in cemeteries. They get out wearing makeup and walk towards the cemetery,” he says in the message.
“Girls dressed in new clothes are running towards the cemetery. They get out of the house in the name of the cemetery,” he says. “When they go to the clinics, they wear makeup. They are not married yet. They go to the clinic under the pretext of illness. You should absolutely ban them in any way possible.”
“Anyone whose daughter or sister is like this, if she has a brother, arrest her brother. If she has a father, punish her father and punish him for not correcting her daughter.”
The exact date the message was sent is unclear.
Kandahar province is considered the spiritual heartland of the Taliban and has generally had more restrictions on women and girls than in other parts of Afghanistan. But some reports suggest that they are facing even heavier restrictions since the Taliban took power in Kabul.
