Afghan Taliban pledge to implement media ban on images of living beings

KABUL: The Afghan Taliban’s ethics ministry pledged on Monday to implement a law banning the media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists saying the rule would be phased in.

It comes after the Taliban government recently announced legislation formalizing the implementation of Sharia law.

“The law applies to all of Afghanistan […] and it will be implemented gradually,” Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Virtue (PVPV) spokesman Saiful Islam Khyber told AFP, adding that officials would work to convince people that images of living beings are against Islamic law .

“Coercion has no place in law enforcement,” he said.

“It’s only advice and convincing people these things are really against sharia (law) and should be avoided.”

The new law set several rules for the media, including banning the publication of images of all living things and ordering the media not to disrespect religion or contradict Sharia law.

Aspects of the new law have yet to be strictly enforced, including advice to the general public not to take or look at images of living things on phones and other devices.

Taliban officials continue to regularly post pictures of people on social media, and Afghan journalists told AFP they received assurances from authorities after the law was announced that they would be able to continue their work.

The intelligence ministry did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.

“Until now, as far as the media-related articles of the law are concerned, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it, but this has not started in all provinces,” Heiber said.

He added that “operations have begun” in the Taliban’s southern stronghold of Kandahar and neighboring Helmand province, as well as in northern Tahar.

Before the recent law was announced, Taliban officials in Kandahar were prohibited from taking pictures and videos of living things, but the rule did not include the media.

“Now it applies to everyone,” Heiber said.

Journalists were called

In the central province of Ghazni on Sunday, PVPV officials called on local journalists and told them that the morality police would gradually begin enforcing the law.

They advised visual journalists to take pictures from further away and film fewer events “to get used to it,” a journalist who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals told AFP.

Journalists in Maidan Wardak province were also told that the rules would be gradually implemented in a similar meeting.

Television and photographs of living things were banned across the country under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been widely enforced since their return to power.

Since 2021, however, officials have sporadically forced business owners to follow certain censorship rules, such as erasing the faces of men and women in advertisements, covering the heads of store mannequins with plastic bags, and blurring the eyes of fish depicted in restaurant menu. .

When Taliban authorities seized control of the country after a two-decade insurgency against foreign-backed governments, Afghanistan had 8,400 media employees.

Only 5,100 remain in the profession, according to media industry sources.

That number includes 560 women, who have borne the brunt of restrictions the United Nations has labeled “gender apartheid,” including the mandate to wear masks on television.

In Helmand, women’s voices have been banned from television and radio.

Afghanistan has slipped from 122nd to 178th out of 180 countries in a press freedom ranking compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).