KABUL —
Underneath Taliban rule, journalists are being threatened, attacked and detained for his or her work whereas others, lots of them ladies, have been compelled from their jobs.
Afghan journalist Zaki Qais tells CTV Nationwide Information he lives in worry and switches homes usually. Final week, two males figuring out themselves as native police got here to his door in Kabul and left him bloodied and bruised. Qais blames Taliban thugs for the assault, and believes their intentions had been lethal due to his work as an outspoken social media journalist.
“I present folks the violence of the Taliban,” Qais stated in an interview in Kabul. “They got here with a knife and dragged me out of the home.”
Qais says he was crushed and whipped by the Taliban twice earlier than. They warned that commentary posted to the greater than 300,000 followers on his Fb web page was not actual journalism.
“How can a journalist do his job in Afghanistan?” Qais stated, his head nonetheless bandaged from the latest assault. “I make the Taliban indignant. In the event that they arrest me once more, they’ll kill me.”
In line with the Worldwide Press Institute, Afghanistan was tied with India because the second most dangerous nation for journalists in 2021, following solely Mexico. The state of affairs could worsen.
For the reason that Taliban takeover in Aug. 2021, tons of of newspapers, radio stations and tv shops have reportedly shuttered. Whereas many journalists fled, rights teams report that those that stayed in Afghanistan have confronted assaults and arrests, together with as retaliation for masking uncommon anti-Taliban protests. Many feminine journalists have additionally been compelled out of labor.
When the Taliban seized Kabul final August, Setara Farahmand’s mom informed her to come back house instantly. Farahmand was a information anchor for a ladies’s tv community within the metropolis. She has not labored there since.
“It’s unhappy to see what’s occurred to ladies journalists,” she informed CTV Information from her house in Kabul. “The state of affairs could be very dangerous for us.”
Farahmand says she and her three sisters seldom exit now and really feel like prisoners in their very own nation. In addition they stand out as ethnic Hazaras, a persecuted minority group, which provides one other layer of jeopardy to their younger lives.
Farahmand’s 14-year-old sister Zohal needs to comply with in her footsteps, however not in Afghanistan.
“I see the state of affairs will not be good for us to be a journalist,” Zohal stated. “Due to that, I need to be a journalist in a foreign country.”
