Taliban forces in Kabul raided the offices of a Tamadon TV, a private station, on Tuesday, and threatened its staff, according to Afghanistan Journalists Centre.
Sources, who did not want to be named, have stated that a group of seven armed Taliban members entered the head office of Tamadon TV. The group gathered the station’s employees in one room, threatened them, and confiscated two vehicles belonging to the station.
Afghanistan Journalists Centre, an Afghan media rights organisation, has condemned the Taliban’s action in a statement and said:
“The Afghanistan Journalists Center considers the attack by the Taliban on Tamadon TV, which involved violent behavior accompanied by insults and threats to staff, as well as confiscation of the station’s vehicles, to be a flagrant violation of the law and an attempt to exert pressure and interfere in the affairs of a news media outlet, which is prohibited under Article 4 of the country’s Mass Media Law.”
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Broadcasting from Kabul, Tamadon TV was founded by Ayatullah Asif Moseni, a Shiite cleric, in 2007. It broadcasts news, religious programmes and other Islamic contents. The Taliban had previously ordered the channel to stop some of its shows.
The group has imposed ever-expanding restrictions on the media, which resulted in the closure of half of them in Afghanistan. At present, the media operating in the country are broadcasting under strict censorship.
