A video shared by Afghan journalists on Twitter shows a visibly petrified television anchor surrounded by armed Taliban fighters assuring safety on air, asking people to not be afraid and to cooperate with the new regime.
The 42-second clip, shared on Twitter by BBC reporter Kian Sharifi and Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, shows the host of a political debate programme reading a statement from the Taliban as well as at least eight Taliban fighters.
“With armed Taliban fighters standing behind him, the presenter of Afghan TV’s Peace Studio political debate programme says the Islamic Emirate (Taliban’s preferred name) wants the public to “cooperate with it and should not be afraid,” Sharifi tweeted. Sharifi said in another tweet the programme is called Pardaz and that later the presenter interviewed a Taliban fighter who “presumably outranks the rest of the lot in the studio.”
Last week, Deutsche Welle said a relative of one of its journalists was killed by Taliban fighters while hunting for him. The German public broadcaster said last Thursday that the Taliban were conducting a house-to-house search for the journalist, who now works in Germany. The Taliban also raided the homes of at least three other DW journalists, the broadcaster said.
The Taliban have been going door-to-door in parts of Afghanistan looking for women and girls above the age of 15 for marriage to their fighters, a journalist who escaped the seized country has revealed. In complete contrast to their claims of respecting women and their rights, the Taliban were taking girls without their consent and marrying them forcibly or raping them, Hollie McKay wrote in The Dallas Morning News.
McKay shared what she witnessed in the country before she managed to escape: “In my own experience of being inside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif as it fell last Saturday, I saw the bustling city brimming with women immediately become a ghost town. The few women who eventually stepped into the sunshine were sheathed in blue burqas, neither seen nor heard,” said McKay.
She said that though she was able to leave Mazar-e-Sharif, her Afghan friends who remain behind are gripped by the fear of the unknown that awaits them. “I thought of how hard women had fought for their freedoms in this country, only to have them cleaved away with a click of the insurgency finger,” said McKay.
McKay also spoke about Afghan woman activist Fariha Easer, who she had met many years earlier. Fariha, who used to be the voice of embattled Afghan women across the country, has decided to stay. “My friends on the outside are begging me to leave my country,” Fariha said. “But how can I, when my sisters are suffering?”
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Assembly Elections Live Updates here.
Comments
0 comment