the broadcast of “images of living beings” banned in the media by the Taliban regime

The Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice of the Taliban regime in power in Kabul confirmed on Monday the implementation of a law prohibiting the media from broadcasting “images of living beings”. One more ban in this country where freedoms have been gradually waning for three years.

This is one more step towards obscurantism. The spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice confirmed, Monday, October 14, the gradual implementation of a law for “prohibit the media from broadcasting images of living beings” as “content hostile to Sharia and religion“. The measure is part of a set of articles “to promote virtue and prevent vice” in the population, under Islamic law. A law comprising 35 articles which limit the work of the media, and all public expression, in particular that of women.

In practice, this means that faces must gradually fade, and that the moral police will be responsible for ensuring the dissemination of photos and videos. “It’s just about giving advice and convincing people that these things should be avoided,” believes it reassures the government, which explains that it is starting to disseminate the instructions in the different provinces of the country. No arrests have been reported so far, but reporters in Ghazni province in the center of the country have, for example, been advised to “get used to filming less and taking photos from further away“Journalists, but also traders in Wardak, in the center of the country, were warned: “the law will apply to everyone“. It is therefore necessary to cross out the faces on advertisements or cover the heads of mannequins in store windows with plastic bags. Zealous agents of the ministry have even forced restaurateurs to hide the eyes of fish on restaurant menus…

Three years after the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul, a major step backwards is taking place with prohibitions, in particular by this law on the prevention of vice. At the end of August 2024, it was she who was already planning to silence all speech by women in public spaces, with a ban on singing or reading aloud. In three years, more than 70 decrees have deprived women of their freedom, according to the European Council. The regime also boasts of 13,000 arrests in 2023 alone for “immoral acts”. A plunge into darkness that the international community seems to observe helplessly, busy with more urgent matters, and quite cynically accommodating to a new stability in the region, where attacks and trafficking have lost intensity. At what price? That of consumed freedoms, in a country where voices are silenced and faces fade under the yoke of fundamentalists, while more than a third of the Afghan population suffers from serious food difficulties.