Daily Times

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a US-based watchdog body, has called on the Taliban to stop, what it called, the “relentless campaign of media intimidation” and abide by its promise to protect journalists in Afghanistan. “Two years after the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s once vibrant free press is a ghost of its former self,” Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, said in a statement issued on Monday. “Worsening media repression is isolating Afghanistan from the rest of the world, at a time when the country is grappling with one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies,” CPJ said.

“Access to reliable and trustworthy information can help save lives and livelihoods in a crisis, but the Taliban’s escalating crackdown on media is doing the opposite.”? Despite an initial promise to allow press freedom after taking power on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have shut down dozens of local media outlets, banned some international broadcasters, and denied visas to foreign correspondents, CPJ pointed out.