Taliban Court May Prosecute Afghan Media Outlets Running Operations From Abroad

OCHA stressed that Afghanistan is facing the risk of famine, economic stagnation, and poverty.

After the Taliban leader issued a decree that banned Afghan women from working in non-governmental organisations, many international humanitarian organisations stopped operations in Afghanistan.

Aid agencies said that they are unable to continue providing aid in Afghanistan without their female colleagues.

The Taliban also insisted on their position regarding the prohibition of women's work and said that this decision was made based on Islamic Sharia laws.

The embassy said that Hassan Kazemi Qomi, Iran's special representative for Afghanistan, has been appointed as the acting ambassador of the country's embassy in Kabul.

Aminian leaves Kabul after his statements delivered in a private gathering on Afghanistan had been leaked from a bulletin of the Fars news agency and published in Afghanistan International.

The statement about the Taliban had become a controversial issue in Afghanistan.

In his speech in Tehran, Aminian had compared the Taliban to the Mongol armies and suggested that the Islamic Republic should treat the group like the Mongols so that they become civilised.

According to international human rights laws, forced disappearances in a systemic manner is considered a "crime against humanity".

Nai added that the organisation has recorded 132 cases of violence against journalists and media workers in Afghanistan in 2022. The organisation stressed that there has been a 17% decline in violence against the Afghan media community compared to last year when 159 cases of violence against journalists had been recorded.

However, Nai emphasised that the reduction of violence against journalists does not mean that Afghanistan is a safe country for journalists and media workers.

The media support organisation also announced that over the past year, hundreds of journalists and media workers have become unemployed, and around 50 percent of the TV stations, 48 percent of radio stations and print media, and 80 percent of online media groups have stopped operations in Afghanistan.

Speaking to Iranian journalist, Mohammad Hossein Jafarian, the NRF leader said that the cost of a watch or cloth of these critics could provide for the resistance fighters for a year.

Recently, Afghan political activists have criticised Ahmad Massoud for being inexperienced in military issues and that the forces under his command have been killed due to lack of ammunition.

However, in response to his critics, Massoud has said that in guerrilla warfare, the fighters cannot carry much ammunition. According to him, Andarabi had run out of ammunition after 30 hours of firefight and had been killed.

The media watchdog group has also emphasised that with the Taliban regaining control of Afghanistan, the achievements of the last two decades in the field of freedom of expression in Afghanistan have been rapidly disappearing.

In 2022, the AFJC recorded at least 260 incidents of violations of the freedom of media and journalists, including threats, arrests, and violent encounters in Afghanistan. The group stressed that the figure shows an increase of about 138% as compared to 2021. The report added that with a few exceptions, the rest of the violations have been committed by the Taliban officials or the group’s members.

In 2021, AFJC had recorded at least 109 incidents, including death of eight journalists and media professionals, as well as the arrest and threats of journalists.

AFJC has stressed that among the detained journalists, at least three journalists and media workers, including Khalid Qaderi, a former presenter of Radio Nowruz in Herat, Faizullah Faizbakhsh, an independent journalist, and Qadratullah Tarar, a reporter for Zarghun TV in Khost, has been in Taliban custody since November 11, 2022.

In the last 12 months, the Afghan Journalists Center has recorded 128 cases of threats to journalists and media organisations.

AFJC’s findings show that the security apparatus, especially the Taliban's Intelligence directorate and the Ministry of Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue of the Taliban, have been directly and indirectly involved in the arrests, threats, suppression of media freedom, and freedom of speech in Afghanistan.

AFJC’s findings show that more than half of the active 600 media organisations including audio, video, print, and online ones, have been closed after the Taliban came to power in 2021, and hundreds of journalists and media workers have left the country, while women journalists have been marginalised.