By Zahra Nader
Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan three months ago, the group has threatened journalists and is imposing media guidelines that especially harm women journalists, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
The report documenting the Taliban’s threats and prosecution of journalists comes a day after the extremists released their second media guidelines, banning media from airing movies and dramas depicting women actors and imposing mandatory “hijab” on women journalists. It also warned the media to avoid publishing content contrary to the “principles of Sharia and Afghan values.”
“Taliban intelligence officials have made death threats against journalists who have criticized Taliban officials and have required journalists to submit all reports for approval before publication,” the HRW report reads.
“Since the Taliban returned, there is no freedom of speech and access to information is censored. We cannot work on critical and investigative reports in any way because if we criticize the Taliban, this will cost us,” said a 32-year-old journalist who covered western Afghanistan for the past 14 years, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They would label you as a spy if you dare to expose their deeds,” he told Rukhshana Media.
“The Taliban’s new media regulations and threats against journalists reflect broader efforts to silence all criticism of Taliban rule,” associate Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Patricia Gossman, said in the report.
Women journalists are particularly at risk since they are affected by the Taliban’s restriction on women and media, where women are mainly banned from office work until the group prepares a “framework” that would allow their return. But as the Taliban’s media regulations also disproportionately affect women journalists, it is not clear whether they would be allowed to remain in the profession in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
On August 31, just two weeks after the Taliban’s lightning takeover of the country, Reporters Without Borders warned that “Women journalists are in the process of disappearing from the capital.”
“The disappearance of any space for dissent and worsening restrictions for women in the media and arts is devastating,” Gossman is quoted as saying in the HRW report.
The economic crisis and the Taliban-imposed restriction forced over 250 media outlets across the country to close their doors, leaving 70% of media employees out of work, Afghan TV channel Tolonews reported today.
HRW highlights the harsh treatment and difficulties that journalists face in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. In one example, HRW talked to a journalist who was threatened to be “hang[ed]” if he continued to publish reports criticizing the Taliban.
