Webinar highlights the plight of media persons in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan
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New Delhi/IBNS: The Afghan media industry as well as its employees, including journalists, have been struggling to survive since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban on Aug 15.
The sudden and forceful power seizure has turned most of the Afghans into victims of the most severe violations of human rights in the world with a range of hardcore Islamic restrictions.
In modern times, the world is denoted as globalized and any citizen would want to uphold their identity with dignity, but in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, this identity has been left in a chaotic order, according to speakers at a webinar by Red Lantern Analytica, a New Delhi based think tank.
The Taliban is steadily dismantling the human rights gains of the last twenty years, and amongst others, the most affected community has been the news bearers or journalists who are actually upholding the freedom of speech and expression.
To discuss the burning issue of Afghanistan, Red Lantern Analytica on Saturday organized a webinar which was moderated by Sania Jamal, a Research Scholar at the Jamia Millia Islamia.
One of the speakers in the webinar, Abdullah Khenjani, former Deputy Minister of Coordination, Strategy and Policy in Afghanistan’s State Ministry for Peace, pointed out that the takeover of Taliban has made various changes and shifts and most of the supportive mechanisms including the unions, the journalist federation have disappeared.
“No government or institution is any longer promoting or supporting free media in Afghanistan, and under Taliban’s oppressive regime self-censorship of the journalists has gone to the highest,” said Abdullah Khenjani, who used to coordinate the peace process with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghan government.
“Nearly 7,000 Afghan journalists and media workers including the most prominent and leading journalists have left the country and have taken asylum in some other countries which resulted in an evident brain drain in Afghanistan,” Khenjani added.
