Female broadcasters on Afghanistan’s biggest news channels went on air yesterday with their faces covered, defying a Taliban directive to hide their appearance on television.
Since gaining power last year, the Taliban have imposed a host of restrictions on civil society, many of which are aimed at limiting the rights of women and girls in order to conform to the group’s austere interpretation of Islam.
Earlier this month, Afghanistan’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, issued an order requiring women to cover their faces completely in public, preferably with the customary burqa.
The dreaded Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice instructed female TV hosts to follow suit beginning Saturday.
The presenters, however, disregarded the rule and went on television with their faces visible, only to comply with the decision yesterday.
Female presenters and reporters aired morning news bulletins on popular networks such as Tolo News, Ariana Television, Shamshad TV, and 1TV while wearing complete hijabs and face-covering veils that revealed just their eyes.
“We resisted and were against wearing a mask,” Sonia Niazi, a presenter with Tolo News, told reporters.
“But Tolo News was pressured and told that any female presenter who appeared on screen without covering her face must be given some other job or simply removed,” she said. “Tolo News was compelled and we were forced to wear it.”
Previously, female presenters just needed to wear a headscarf.
Tolo News director Khpolwak Sapai stated that the channel was “forced” to make its employees comply with the injunction.
“We were told: ‘You are forced to do it. You must do it. There is no other way,’” Sapai told reporters. “I was called on the telephone yesterday and was told in strict words to do it. So, it is not by choice, but by force that we are doing it.”
Male journalists and Tolo News employees wore masks in the channel’s Kabul offices yesterday in solidarity with female presenters, according to an Agence France-Presse correspondent.
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