Officials in Afghanistan announced in a Tuesday press conference that the regime’s morality police dismissed 281 members of its security forces for failing to maintain a beard while discharging their duties.
Discussing the Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue’s annual disclosure, Director of Planning and Legislation Mohibullah Mokhlis told reporters that in addition to the enforcement of public grooming standards, the agency had confiscated 21,328 musical instruments, detained over 13,000 individuals for ‘immoral acts,’ and prevented thousands of ‘immoral and unethical’ media products from being distributed to its citizens in the last year.
The ministry, established in 2021 after the Taliban retook power in the Central Asian nation, is tasked with the implementation of religious decrees given to them by the Islamist leadership in the country.
The bureaucracy has come under continued censure from human rights organizations that accuse its associates of pursuing directives that limit personal freedoms, violate human rights, and have an inequitable impact on the lives of women and girls.
A July publication from the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan noted that the punishments following the department’s arrests were frequently “arbitrary, severe, and disproportionate,” creating “a climate of fear and intimidation among certain segments of the population.”
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