In another severe blow to women’s rights in Afghanistan, the Taliban have barred women, including female doctors and patients, from entering the Herat Regional Hospital for not wearing the group’s prescribed blue burqa. Sources told an afghan media outlet that the restriction, enforced on Wednesday, led to several women being beaten at the hospital gates.
Witnesses reported that dozens of women; healthcare workers, patients, and visitors, were turned away despite wearing other forms of full-body coverings. Only those in the Taliban’s mandated blue burqa were allowed entry. Videos obtained by Afghanistan International show crowds of women standing helplessly outside the hospital entrance.
A female doctor at the hospital expressed her frustration in a letter shared with the outlet, stating, “We are women who have stepped forward to serve humanity, not to hide behind coercion.” She lamented that although she heals others, she herself feels “wounded every day by the pain of being unseen.”
Sources also confirmed that on the same day, women without burqas were blocked from entering the Herat Civil Registration Office, as the Taliban expand their enforcement of the dress code across public institutions.
“We have been forced to wear the burqa not out of choice or belief, but out of command and compulsion,” another female doctor said.
Since reclaiming power over four years ago, the Taliban have imposed draconian restrictions on women’s lives; banning girls’ education beyond sixth grade, restricting women’s movement without male guardians, and excluding them from most workplaces and public spaces. The Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has even declared women’s voices as “awrah” (forbidden) and ordered strict segregation in hospitals and offices.
The latest crackdown at Herat Regional Hospital represents a chilling escalation in the Taliban’s systematic suppression of Afghan women; silencing their voices, erasing their presence, and punishing their courage to serve.
