The ‘morality ministry’ of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime has pledged to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things.
Journalists were warned that the new rules will be gradually enforced, though what punishments for flouting the diktats might be – if any – have not yet been made clear.
But the extraordinary move follows recently announced legislation formalising the Taliban’s strict interpretations of Islamic law that have been imposed since they swept to power in 2021.
“The law applies to all Afghanistan … and it will be implemented gradually,” Saiful Islam Khyber, the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV), said.
He added that officials would work to persuade people that images of living things are against Islamic law.
“Coercion has no place in the implementation of the law,” he said.
“It’s only advice, and convincing people these things are really contrary to sharia (law) and must be avoided.”
The new law detailed several rules for the media, including banning the publication of images of all living things and ordering outlets not to mock or humiliate Islam, or contradict Islamic law.
Aspects of the new law have not yet been strictly enforced, including advice to the public not to take or look at images of living things on phones and other devices.
“Until now, regarding the articles of the law related to media, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it, but that has not started in all provinces,” Khyber said.
He added that work has started in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and the neighbouring Helmand province, as well as northern Takhar.
Before the recent law was announced, Taliban officials in Kandahar were banned from taking photos and videos of living things, but the rule did not include news media.
“Now it applies to everyone,” Khyber said.
Television and pictures 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 broadly imposed since their return to power.
Since 2021, however, officials have sporadically forced business owners to follow some censorship rules, such as crossing out the faces of men and women on adverts, covering the heads of shop mannequins with plastic bags, and blurring the eyes of fish pictured on restaurant menus.
When the Taliban authorities seized control of the country after a two-decade-long insurgency against foreign-backed governments, Afghanistan had 8,400 media employees.Only 5,100 remain in the profession, according to media industry sources.
