WAKIL KOHSAR via AFP
AFGHANISTAN – A gesture of rebellion quickly suppressed. The presenters of the major Afghan television channels appeared on the air with their faces covered this Sunday, May 22, thus complying with an order from the Taliban, a day after having defied it. Since their return to power last year, the Taliban have imposed a series of restrictions on civil society, many of which are aimed at subjugating women to their austere understanding of Islam.
In early May, the supreme leader of the Taliban issued an order that women must cover themselves fully in public, including the face, ideally with the burqa, a full veil with a fabric grid at the level of the eyes. Previously, only a scarf covering the hair was enough.
Afghanistan’s dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice had ordered female TV presenters to comply by Saturday.
The female journalists had initially chosen not to comply with this order, going on the air live without hiding their faces. Before turning around. On Sunday, female presenters wore full veils, leaving only their eyes and foreheads visible, to present the news on TOLOnews, Ariana Television, Shamshad TV and 1TV.
The “constrained and forced” chains
« We resisted and were against the wearing » of the full veil, assured Sonia Niazi, a presenter of TOLOnews. “But TOLOnews was pressured, (the Taliban) said that any presenter who appeared on screen without a face covering should be given another job,” she said.
TOLOnews director Khpolwak Sapai said the channel was « forced » to enforce the order by its staff. “We were told: you have to do it. You have to. There is no other solution”, declared the director of the chain. « I was called on the phone yesterday and told in strict terms to do it. So it’s not by choice that we do it, but coerced and forced,” he lamented.
Mohammad Sadeq Akif Mohajir, spokesperson for the Ministry of Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, said authorities had no intention of forcing female presenters out of their jobs. « We are happy that the channels have correctly exercised their responsibility, » he told AFP.
Multiplication of attacks on freedoms
The Taliban regained power in August 2021 announcing a more flexible regime than during their first rigorous reign. However, since that date, they have ceaselessly restricted freedoms and repressed opponents, attacking in particular the areas of education, work and daily life, affecting Afghan women in the first place.
The Taliban have ordered that women working in government be fired if they fail to adhere to the new dress code. They also required that women wear at least a hijab, a scarf covering the head but revealing the face. Then, at the beginning of May, they imposed on them the wearing in public of a full veil, preferably the burqa, already compulsory when they were in power from 1996 to 2001.
In the twenty years since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, many conservative rural women had continued to wear the burqa. But most Afghan women, including TV presenters, had opted for the headscarf.
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