Silencing the Media in Kapisa; Taliban Ban the Broadcasting of Images of Living Beings

Image: Bülent Kılıç/AFP

Journalists and media owners in Kapisa province say the Taliban have effectively silenced the media in the province by banning the broadcasting of images of living beings, an action they say openly violates freedom of expression.

A local journalist in Kapisa, who requested anonymity, told Zan News that the Taliban’s Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in the province has ordered media outlets to strictly refrain from filming and broadcasting images of living beings.

He said: “The Taliban are not only banning filming and broadcasting images, they are also trying to take away people’s livelihoods, especially those of journalists and media workers. When images are banned, we effectively become unemployed, and people no longer have a reason to follow the media because there is nothing left to broadcast. This truly shows the Taliban’s oppression.”

Meanwhile, the Afghanistan Journalists Center said the Taliban have issued a new order in Kapisa province completely banning the broadcasting of images of living beings, a move that critics say is another step in the systematic elimination of media and the silencing of public voices.

According to the Afghanistan Journalists Center, the order was issued on Thursday (29 January) by Jamaluddin Mazhari, the Taliban’s head of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Kapisa, and was conveyed to media outlets through the Directorate of Information and Culture.

Following the implementation of the order, Kapisa National Television has been forced to suspend its visual broadcasting and limit its operations to radio transmission. Media workers in the province told Zan News that private media outlets have also faced restrictions that have effectively made it impossible for them to continue their professional activities and have stripped visual media of their core function.

The Afghanistan Journalists Center said Kapisa is the twenty-fifth province in which the Taliban have banned the broadcasting of images of living beings, a decision that indicates this policy is not an isolated measure but part of a broader plan to exert full control over the information space in Afghanistan.

At present, National Radio and Television, the local office of the state-run Bakhtar News Agency, Kapisa newspaper, and several private radio stations, including Sada-e Nijrab, Nida-e Haqiqat, and Taneen-e Sada, operate in Kapisa province, media outlets that are now either being forced into silence or continuing their work under heavy censorship.