Taliban authorities in Afghanistan are hanging intelligencers and assessing strict new media guidelines that especially harm women, Human Rights Watch said moment.
Taliban intelligence officers have made death pitfalls against intelligencers who have blamed Taliban officers and have needed intelligencers to submit all reports for blessing before publication. New guidelines from the Vice and Virtue Ministry mandate the dress of womanish intelligencers on TV and enjoin cleaner operas and entertainment programs featuring womanish actors.
“ The Taliban’s new media regulations and pitfalls against intelligencers reflect broader sweats to silence all review of Taliban rule,” said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “ The exposure of any space for dissent and worsening restrictions for women in the media and trades is ruinous.”
Several intelligencers said that they’ve been summoned by original officers incontinently after publishing reports on Taliban abuses. One intelligencer who had reported complaints about Taliban searching houses and beating people said that the deputy governor called him into his office and told him that if he broadcast anything like that again, “ He’d hang me in the city forecourt.”
Other media staff have reported that heavily fortified Taliban intelligence officers visited their services and advised intelligencers not to use the word “ Taliban” in their reporting but to relate to the “ Islamic Emirate” in all publications. In one fiefdom, intelligence officers ordered original media to replace the word for self-murder bomber with the word for fatality after a published report mentioned that Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani had recognized the families of self-murder bombers.
In a directive issued November 21, 2021, the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice banned broadcasting any flicks supposed to be “ against Islamic or Afghan values,” along with cleaner operas and dramatizations featuring women actors, and made the hijab – a head covering exposing the face – mandatory for women TV intelligencers.
Editors and intelligencers have complained about the restrictive climate for the media. The principal editor for a parochial media outlet said that utmost of his associates had stopped working for their safety. “ Access to information has come veritably limited,” he said. “ Taliban original officers have instructed us to partake our reports with them before publication.”
The Taliban have also pressed the media, especially in the businesses, to publish the reports they want and have ordered intelligencers in some cases to solicit them. One intelligencer said “ After they hovered us with death, we published what they said. Now we broadcast Quranic verses at the morning of the programs and naat (Islamic songs) because we sweat for our safety.”
Numerous media outlets have closed their services out of fear and are publishing only online. The principal editor for a women- led media office said that her staff use aliases to hide their individualities because the Taliban charge them “ of promoting Western values.”
“ I used to produce reports on purity testing and violence against women, which no bone can cover presently,” said a woman who had been a intelligencer in Herat. “ No program covers women’s issues, especially on Television channels. The educational and entertainment programs have all stopped.”
The atmosphere of fear has left people hysterical to partake information on incidents, similar as forced evictions or violent attacks by the Taliban. Intelligencers said that the Taliban authorities routinely ignore their requests for information, or simply deny reported incidents.
“ Despite the Taliban’s pledges to allow media that‘ reputed Islamic values’to serve, the reality for Afghanistan is that intelligencers live in fear of a knock on the door or a process from the authorities,” Gossman said. “ This is contributing to an information knockout in which Taliban abuses decreasingly be in secret and without responsibility.”
