Guidelines have been published against “opposite Islamic and Afghan values” programs, and to force women journalists to wear the veil.
Le Monde with AFP
The Taliban Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Vice Prevention has called for Afghan television to no longer broadcast a series showing women, in the context of new “religious guidelines” distributed on Sunday, November 21st.
“Télévisions should avoid showing sheets and series of rosewater in which women played,” says a departmental document for the media. He also requests that women journalists wear “the Islamic veil” on the screen, without specifying if it is a simple scarf, already usually focused on Afghan televisions, or a more covering veil. Afghan televisions are also expected to avoid “opposed programs to Islamic and Afghan values” as well as those who insult religion or “show the prophet and his companions”.
“These are not rules, but religious directives,” said the spokesman for the ministry, Hakif Mohajir. This is the first time that this department has been trying to regulate Afghan television since the Taliban Power by mid-August.
from 1996 to 2001, television and cinema were forbidden
During their first reigns, from 1996 to 2001, the Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of the Vice, responsible for ensuring the daily respect of the “Islamic values” of the population, was feared for its fundamentalism and the punishments he trained.
The Taliban had banned television, cinema and all forms of entertainment believed immoral. The surprised people watching television were punished and their equipment destroyed, to be in possession of a VCR was subject to public flagellation. For a while, it was even possible to see TVs hanging on lamps.
Unwanted girls at school and in public services
In 2001, the Taliban returned to power last August in a country with a transformed media landscape after twenty years of government supported by Westerners. During these two decades, the media sector exploded, dozens of private radio stations and private television channels appeared. They have offered new opportunities to women, who did not have the right to work or study under the Talibans of the 90s.
Today, although affecting a more moderate face, the Taliban still have not allowed many women to return to work in public services. Courses for girls in colleges and high schools, as well as in public universities have not yet reopened in the majority of the country.
In private universities, the Taliban asked that students are veiled. Their fighters have repeatedly struck journalists accused of covering “unauthorized” women’s events.