Media Freedoms in Afghanistan Under Siege

In a stark assessment published on 23 October 2025, the rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that the Taliban has effectively gutted independent media across Afghanistan since its return to power in August 2021. The report details how the Taliban regime subjected remaining news outlets to widespread surveillance, censorship, arbitrary detention, and torture of journalists.

HRW’s findings stem from remote interviews with 18 journalists within Afghanistan and 13 in exile, together revealing a media environment defined by fear and constraint. Inside the country, media workers say the Taliban’s intelligence service monitors all content while the morality police enforce strict dress codes and behavior rules for newsroom staff, especially women. The report emphasizes that journalists attempting to cover “taboo subjects” such as women’s rights, Taliban internal dynamics, or war crimes are at risk of detention, ill-treatment, or worse.

Key measures include the 2024 Law on the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, under which ministry inspectors review media offices, require strict content compliance, and enforce bans on broadcasting women’s voices and depicting living beings. Furthermore, according to HRW, journalists abroad face threats of forced return—a violation of the principle of non-refoulement—if they are deemed to be working with opposition media.

The consequences are significant: self-censorship is now widespread, remaining outlets often limit themselves to reporting official events, and many female journalists have exited the profession entirely. HRW notes that while hundreds of outlets operated before August 2021, the number of independent outlets has shrunk dramatically—citing data that 40-60 percent had ceased operations within months of the takeover.

The report calls on the Taliban to immediately cease arbitrary detention, torture, and discrimination against journalists, and to restore a safe environment for media work. It also urges host countries to refuse the forced return of Afghan journalists and to provide support for those in exile.

In sum, this analysis by HRW underscores a dire deterioration of press freedom in Afghanistan—one in which the independent media has been systematically silenced, vulnerable journalists face repression both inside and outside the country, and the space for free reporting is shrinking almost to vanishing.

Reference – 

https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/10/23/afghanistan-taliban-tramples-media-freedom