Human Rights Watch: Censorship and violence by the Taliban are applied to the media

Human Rights Watch says widespread Taliban censorship and violence against local media in provincial and district capitals applied.

The group released a report yesterday accusing local Taliban members of threatening, detaining and beating journalists, saying that the situation of journalists, especially female journalists, outside Kabul was much worse than inside the capital.

“Taliban harassment of journalists outside major urban areas has largely gone unreported and has led to media censorship or closure in remote provinces,” Afghan Human Rights Watch quoted Fereshteh Abbasi as saying.

Meanwhile, reporters from other provinces told the agency that the Taliban were monitoring their activities and forcing them to share the content of their reports with the Department of Information and Culture before publishing them.

They said Taliban intelligence officials were talking to the media in the provinces about what to publish and what not to publish.