Editor's note: this story was translated from the original VOA Dari article.
The United Nations says the Taliban have arrested at least 443 people primarily for alleged violations of their strict hijab rules, trimming beards, cutting hair, failure to attend congregational prayers at the mosque or listening to music.
A new United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report released Thursday, covering a period of three months from July 1 to Sept. 30, also documented 97 incidents of ill-treatment of Afghan women and men by the Taliban’s Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The Taliban’s law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the “morality law,” imposes punishments on violations of the Afghan Islamist group's strict interpretation of Islam, including enforcing dress codes and certain hairstyles.
“The law gives the Taliban’s morality inspectors extensive power to arbitrarily detain and punish individuals, including physically,” said the U.N. Human Rights Commission in a statement in 2024.
Last week, UNAMA said that it verified the arrest or detention of 52 women and girls for several hours in Herat and Kabul, from July to September, over violations of the Taliban’s dress code.
“Women were detained for not wearing a chador, having visible hair, wearing colorful scarves or makeup, or being in public without a mahram,” the statement noted.
After returning to power in 2021, the Taliban imposed repressive restrictions on women, including requiring women to cover their bodies from head to toe in loose clothing.
The group has issued more than 100 decrees imposing restrictions on women and girls.
These decrees are “institutionalizing discrimination and stripping them [women and girls] of their fundamental rights – with profound consequences for their lives and their communities,” said a new U.N. Women report, calling the women’s situation in the country, “the world’s most severe women’s rights crisis.”
In a virtual hearing on September 23, Asif Mahmood, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the Taliban continue their “repressive crackdown against those who violated or are perceived to have violated the group’s narrow interpretations of Sunni Islam.”
Mahmood noted that Afghan women and girls continue to bear the brunt of the Taliban’s religious decrees.
Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban have imposed restrictions on women and girls in Afghanistan, including barring them from secondary and university education, long-distance travel without a male relative, and access to public spaces.