Berlin (Kubha News) – Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has reported an alarming increase in restrictions imposed on journalists, with authoritarian orders on women journalists’ clothing, restrictions on women’s access to audiovisual media, and a ban on filming or photographing Taliban officials.
RSF says Afghanistan’s repression continues to intensify, specifically targeting women’s access to the media, both as journalists and as listeners and viewers.
Reporters Without Borders adds: “On February 18, Mullah Shirin Akhund, the Taliban governor of Kandahar, gave a written order to the officials and soldiers of Kandahar not to allow photos and videos to be taken at their meetings. Now only written materials and audio recordings are allowed. Security Commander of Khost province has banned women from calling during radio or television broadcasts.”
More broadly, the organization says, at the national level, the Taliban Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice has tightened the dress restrictions for women journalists by ordering them to wear black covering revealing only their eyes, on pain of being banned from working.
Reporters Without Borders says in its report that while journalists are under the yoke of severe repression, censorship and self-censorship, new local restrictions that could extend to the rest of the country and national restrictions further worsen the outlook for Afghan media. RSF has asked Maulvi Haibatullah Akhundzadeh, the leader of the Taliban, to end these repressive measures.
Since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, a multitude of restrictions on journalists have drastically restricted press freedom. Afghanistan ranks 152nd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2023 World Press Freedom Index.