The Taliban in Herat province have implemented a gender segregation plan in the province’s restaurants, media reports said.

Men are not permitted to dine with their family members in family restaurants, according to sources, Khaama Press.

Owners have been verbally reminded that the rule applies “even if they are husband and wife”, according to Riazullah Seerat, a Taliban official at the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the report said.

According to a woman who did not wish to be identified, the manager of a Herat restaurant on Thursday told her and her husband to sit separately.

Seerat also stated that the ministry has issued a directive requiring Herat’s public parks to be gender segregated, with men and women authorised to attend only on separate days, Khaama Press reported.

“We told women to go to parks on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The other days are set aside for males to visit for leisure and exercise,” he said.

Since regaining control in August last year, the Taliban have increasingly implemented restrictions that separate men and women.

Last week, Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada had issued an order in Afghanistan, saying that if a woman did not cover her face outside her home, her father or closest male relative would be summoned and eventually incarcerated or fired from government jobs, Khaama Press reported.

At a press conference in Kabul, a spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice read out a statement from the Afghan supreme leader.

The statement detailed the procedures taken by the Ministry authorities to supervise the process of mandatory hijab. The initial stage in this procedure is to locate the residences of unveiled ladies and to counsel and warn the women’s parents.

The woman’s father or guardian is summoned to the relevant department in the second stage, and in the following steps, a case is lodged against the woman’s father or parents, and the person’s trial begins, Khaama Press reported.

(The story has been published via a syndicated feed)