REUTERS/Ahmad Masood
- The Taliban is barring two female journalists at state-run TV from coming into work, reports say.
- Broadcasters Khadija Amin and Shabnam Dawran said they were turned away from Radio Television Afghanistan,
- The swift Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is undoing decades of progress towards press freedom and women rights.
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The Taliban is already banning two female presenters at state-run Radio Television Afghanistan from coming to work work, according to the Washington Post and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The Taliban, despite its public commitments to allowing women in public life, has a long track record of hostility to a free press and to women serving in public-facing roles. The group has ramped up its attacks on the media in recent months, and its retaking of Afghanistan is already rolling back much of the progress of the last 20 years on press freedom and women's equality in the country.
One female anchor at RTA, Khadija Amin, showed up to work to find that a male anchor had taken her place, with the new Taliban leadership of the outlet telling her to "stay at home for a few more days."
"There has been a change in the programs … [and] there are no female presenters or female journalists," Amin said, according to independent Tolo News.
Another female employee, presenter Shabnam Dawran, said she wasn't even let into the building.
"I was not allowed in, even though I was carrying my ID badge," Dawran said in a video posted to social media, according to the Post. "Male workers were allowed, but I was threatened. They told me that the regime has changed..our lives are under serious threat."
Female Afghan journalists have reported on the Taliban takeover of their country despite mounting threats from the Taliban.
In addition to the female broadcasters taken off the air, CNN reported on Monday that the Taliban had visited the homes of and made threatening calls to some female journalists. Taliban fighters also assaulted two male journalists covering protests in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, according to CPJ.
"Stripping public media of prominent women news presenters is an ominous sign that Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have no intention of living up their promise of respecting women's rights, in the media or elsewhere," CPJ's Asia program coordinator Steven Butler said. "The Taliban should let women news anchors return to work, and allow all journalists to work safely and without interference."
A United Nations report from February 2021 found that the rise in civilian casualties in Afghanistan has included 30 cases of journalists and other media workers killed since 2018, making the country one of the more perilous places in the world to be a journalist.
In addition to the journalists killed while on the job, dozens of female journalists, in particular, have faced attacks or left the country altogether in the past year, a Human Rights Watch report from April found. Women journalists outside of major cities face particular risk.
In March of 2021, three young women were gunned down outside the television station where they worked in Jalalabad, with an Islamic State affiliate claiming responsibility for the attack. The targeted killing of the three women followed the assassination of Malalai Maiwand, a television journalist, outside of the same station in December 2020.