Women banned from visiting popular national park
In the heart of Bamiyan province, the Band-e-Amir national park is off limits to women.
Mohammad Khaled Hanafi, Afghanistan’s acting minister of virtue and vice, claimed that ladies were not wearing the hijab within the park.
He urged security organizations and religious leaders to prohibit women from entering until a solution was found.
Band-e-Amir, which became Afghanistan’s first national park in 2009, is a popular tourist destination.
The prohibition on women entering will prevent many families from being able to enjoy the park, which is a well-liked family destination.
The park is described by Unesco as a “naturally created group of lakes with special geological formations and structure, as well as natural and unique beauty”.
Tolo News in Afghanistan quoted Mr. Hanafi as saying that visiting the park to take in the scenery “was not required.”
Religious leaders in Bamiyan claimed that the women who were in the park but not according to the rules were locals.
There have been concerns about substandard or absent hijabs, but these people are not from Bamiyan. According to Sayed Nasrullah Waezi, leader of the Bamiyan Shia Ulema Council, “They come here from other places.”
We’ll return, I’m confident of it, Afghan MP Mariam Solaimankhil wrote in a poem she tweeted about the ban on X, formerly known as Twitter.
On Women’s Equality Day, Fereshta Abbasi of Human Rights Watch highlighted that women were prohibited from entering the park, calling it a “total disrespect to the women of Afghanistan.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, questioned why it was essential to prohibit women from attending Band-e-Amir in order to adhere to Sharia and Afghan tradition.
In the past, the Taliban has prohibited women from engaging in specific activities on what they claim is a temporary basis, like prohibiting them from attending schools in December 2022.
Since the Taliban retook power in August 2021, women have been prohibited from engaging in a long number of activities, the most recent of which being the prohibition on visiting the Band-E-Amir national park.
Women banned from visiting popular national park
The Taliban most recently ordered the closure of hair and beauty salons in Afghanistan and prevented women from taking the national university entrance examinations in mid-July.
