Cats have more freedom than women in Afghanistan, Hollywood actress Meryl Streep has said in an appeal to the international community to stop the Taliban’s repression.

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the actress pointed out that even animals had more rights now in Afghanistan following increased restrictions on women.

In response, a Taliban spokesman said they “highly respected” women and would “never compare them to cats”.

Streep’s comments come after the Taliban government last month introduced a new set of “morality laws”.

Among other things, these rules state that women’s voices can no longer be heard in public and that they are not allowed to look directly at men they are not related to by blood or marriage.

The measures add to a litany of restrictions that the regime has imposed on Afghan women and girls since returning to power three years ago.

Women have to completely cover their faces and bodies when leaving their homes. Women and girls aged over 12 are also prevented from going to schools, parks, gyms and sport clubs. There are restrictions on the type of work that they are allowed to do.

“Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park,” Streep said on Monday at an event to raise awareness of Afghan women’s rights at the UN headquarters in New York.

“A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban.

“A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law.

“The way that this culture, this society has been upended, is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world,” said Streep, who called on world leaders to “stop the slow suffocation” of Afghan women and girls.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who attended the same event, said Afghanistan “will never take its rightful place on the global stage” without educated women and women in employment.

In response to Streep’s remarks, a Taliban spokesman said that “none can deny women the rights which Islam has given them”.

“We highly respect them in their role as mother, sister, wife. They are [an] essential part of [the] family and society but we never compare them to cats,” Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban’s political office, told the BBC.

He added that currently hundreds of thousands of women work in various government ministries and as entrepreneurs.

Western countries, led by the United States and the European Union, have condemned the new laws, but the Taliban has defended the edict saying it is in accordance with Islamic Sharia law.

The Taliban has also said they are trying to change the education system to more closely align with Islamic principles, and have repeatedly promised that women would be readmitted to schools once those issues are sorted. To date, however, there has not been any movement.