The Taliban has banned women from visiting Afghanistan’s national park in Bamyan and the Band-e-Amir lakes.
Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, acting minister of the Taliban’s Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced the new rule on Saturday in a public address during his trip to Bamyan. He said work was being done to put in place a process to allow women to visit the park in the future.
“Starting today, women are not allowed to go to Band-e-Amir National Park,” he said in video report published by Tolo News. He called on scholars, elders and the Taliban soldiers to enforce it.
The national park in central Afghanistan was established in 2009. It contains vast natural blue lakes in the mountainous region of Bamyan that has attracted thousands of domestic and foreign visitors every year.
Women are already banned from most public parks, recreational areas, doing sport, and eating in garden restaurants across Afghanistan.
Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, restrictions on girls and women have increased exponentially with them excluded from almost all social life in the country.
