Taleban pull 2 TV channels for breach of Islamic rules

KABUL: Two Afghan television channels have been taken off the airwaves for “violations against Islamic and national values”, a Taleban government spokesman said Thursday. Rights monitors warn Taleban authorities have been cracking down on media freedoms since their return to power in 2021 as they enforce an austere vision of Islamist rule.

Ministry of Information and Culture spokesman Khubaib Ghufran said the “Barya” and “Noor” TV channels had been suspended on Tuesday for failing to abide by “journalistic principles”. “They had programs creating confusion among the public and their owners are abroad,” he told AFP. “The media violation commission suspended their operations.”

He said “their owners have even taken stands as opponents” of the Taleban government and “until their owners come here, and answer the questions posed to them, their operations will be suspended”. The Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC) said in a statement Afghanistan’s media commission had repeatedly warned “Barya” for airing remarks by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a once-powerful warlord and former prime minister, about the Taleban government.

“Noor” had received warnings because it broadcast music and the uncovered faces of female presenters, the AFJC said. The “Barya” channel is owned by Hekmatyar’s son Habiburrahman Hekmatyar.

“Barya had religious and national values in mind, not Taleban values,” Habiburrahman Hekmatyar, who lives in exile and whose father has increasingly found himself at odds with Taleban authorities, said on social media platform X. “The only thing you won’t see from us is silence,” he said.

The “Noor” channel is owned by Salahuddin Rabbani, who also lives in exile and served as Afghanistan’s foreign minister under the former US-backed government from 2015 to 2019. His father, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was president of Afghanistan in the 1990s but fled the country as the Taleban surged to power for the first time and ruled from 1996 to 2001.