Afghan Taliban order girls TV anchors to cowl their faces

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers ordered all feminine presenters on TV channels to cowl their faces on air, the nation’s greatest media outlet mentioned Thursday.

The order got here in a press release from the Taliban’s Virtue and Vice Ministry, tasked with imposing the group’s rulings, in addition to from the Information and Culture Ministry, the TOLOnews channel mentioned in a tweet.

The assertion known as the order “final and non-negotiable,” the channel mentioned.

The assertion was despatched to the Moby Group, which owns TOLOnews and several other different TV and radio networks, and the tweet mentioned it was being utilized to different Afghan media as nicely.

An Afghan native media official confirmed his station had obtained the order and was advised it was not up for dialogue.

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He mentioned the station had no different possibility. He spoke on situation he and his station not be recognized for concern of issues with the authorities.

Several feminine anchors and presenters posted their pictures on social media exhibiting them with their faces coated with face masks throughout presenting applications. One distinguished TOLO presenter, Yalda Ali, posted a video of herself placing on a face masks with a caption: “a woman being erased, on orders from the Virtue and Vice Ministry.”

On one station, Shamshad TV, implementation of the order was blended: One girl anchor appeared with a face masks on Thursday, whereas one other later within the day went with out, exhibiting her face.

During the Taliban’s first time in energy from 1996-2001, they imposed overwhelming restrictions on girls, requiring them to put on an all-encompassing burqa that even coated the eyes with a mesh and barring them from public life and schooling.

ALSO READ | Life below Taliban rule: Afghan women wrestle for schooling | Ground report

After they seized energy once more in Afghanistan in August, the Taliban initially appeared to have moderated their restrictions someway, asserting no gown code for ladies. But in current weeks, they’ve taken a pointy, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists.

Earlier this month, the Taliban ordered all girls in public to put on head-to-toe clothes that leaves solely their eyes seen. The decree mentioned girls ought to go away the house solely when mandatory and that male family members would face punishment for ladies’s gown code violations, beginning with a summons and escalating to court docket hearings and jail time.

The Taliban chief additionally issued a decree barring women from attending college after the sixth grade, reversing earlier guarantees by Taliban officers that women of all ages can be allowed an schooling.