Social media users said that senior members of a group that has killed several journalists in Afghanistan over the past two decades are currently feeling good about the freedom of speech on Twitter.
The reactions come after Anas Haqqani, senior Taliban member and brother of the group’s interior minister, expressed support for Twitter which has been dubbed as a rival to the newly launched “Threads” app.
Jane Ferguson, a journalist from PBS, said, “Haqqani (his fighters have been murdering Afghan journalists and their families for years) feels good about Twitter’s freedom of speech….”
Anas Haqqani's recent tweet about Twitter has been interpreted by many as his entry into the fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the owners of Twitter and Meta companies.
Despite severe violations of freedom of speech in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, this well-known figure of the Haqqani network on Monday said that Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta platforms.
Besides reactions of journalists to Anas Haqqani’s statement, Ali Maisam Nazary, the head of foreign relations of the National Resistance Front, said on Twitter that the Haqqani faction of the Taliban is notorious for "massacres of civilians and assassination of journalists", and now he has praised Twitter for its commitment to freedom of expression.
Nazary said that the group’s own actions contradict these values as they commit war crimes and suppress “the rights and liberties of Afghanistan’s citizens, particularly their freedom of expression”.
He asked Elon Musk, the executive chairman of Twitter, to prevent terrorist groups that threaten global security from exploiting the social media network.
Homeira Qaderi, prominent human rights defender, also reacted to Haqqani’s stance on Twitter.
She pointed to the detention of her brother, Khalid Qaderi, a journalist from Herat city and wrote, “My brother who is a journalist, was imprisoned for a year just for expressing his opinion.”
Qaderi said that it is “shameful” that Anas Haqqani talks about freedom of speech.
Natiq Malikzada, another Afghan journalist , also wrote on his Twitter handle, “While Anas Haqqani lectures us on freedom of expression, the Taliban intelligence under the control of his brother Sirajuddin Haqqani is busy shackling journalists that defy the group’s policy on media censorship.”
Twitter is one of the most favoured social media networks of the Taliban’s officials and supporters of the group. In a joint research in 2022, researchers from four prestigious universities in the United States and Canada found that the Taliban have used Twitter and other social networks as a weapon to dominate Afghanistan.
These researchers investigated the use and influence of Taliban accounts in social networks from April 1 to September 16, 2021.
In this research, it has been stated that the Taliban was more successful in using Twitter than the 18 main Afghan news organisations.
Anas Haqqani talks about freedom of speech on Twitter even though after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, about 60 percent of the media has collapsed or has been banned in Afghanistan and the Taliban intelligence detains journalists.
In late 2022, Afghanistan’s Journalists Center in a report said that after the Taliban’s takeover of the country, media and journalists’ freedom in Afghanistan has severely deteriorated.
