Afghanistan Times
Related Articles
AT News
KABUL – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged the Taliban to halt their unrelenting campaign of intimidation against the media and to honor their commitment to safeguard journalists in Afghanistan.
“Two years following the ascension of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s once-thriving landscape of independent press has been reduced to a ghost of its former self,” Beh Lih Yi, Asia program coordinator at CPJ, said on Monday. He stated that the escalating stranglehold on media outlets is effectively isolating Afghanistan from the global community, an unfortunate circumstance occurring amid one of the planet’s most monumental humanitarian crises. In times of emergency, access to accurate and trustworthy information stands as a beacon of hope, capable of preserving lives and sustenance. Tragically, the Taliban’s intensifying crackdown on media is producing a contrary outcome, he said.
Despite their initial pledge to uphold press freedom after seizing control on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have taken measures to shutter numerous local media establishments, impose bans on select international broadcasters, and obstruct the entry of foreign correspondents through visa denials.
In August 2022, CPJ released a comprehensive report detailing the media predicament in Afghanistan. Since then, CPJ has diligently chronicled multiple instances of censorship, physical assaults, arbitrary detentions of journalists, and constraints placed upon female reporters. Spearheading this wave of repression is the Taliban’s intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence.
Over the past biennium, hundreds of Afghan journalists have sought refuge in neighboring nations like Pakistan and Iran, trapped in a legal quagmire with uncertain prospects for resettlement in a third country. Since 2021, Afghan journalists have constituted a significant portion of recipients of CPJ’s emergency assistance.
Upon conducting its latest annual global assessment of incarcerated journalists on December 1, 2022, CPJ noted Afghanistan’s appearance on the list for the first time in a dozen years, with three journalists incarcerated. The situation not only calls attention to the immediate danger faced by journalists but also highlights the broader implications for Afghanistan’s access to objective information and its connection to the international community.
