New on Taliban’s ban list, this time for media: No photos of living things – Times of India

Afghanistan‘s Taliban has banned several things since it came to power in 2021. The new on the list is a ban on news media from publishing images of all living things.
The Taliban’s morality ministry in Afghanistan has announced its intention to enforce a law prohibiting news media from publishing images of all living things. The implementation will be gradual, and officials will focus on persuading people that such images are against Islamic law.Saiful Islam Khyber, the spokesman for the ministry for the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice (PVPV), stated, “Coercion has no place in the implementation of the law.”
The new legislation outlines several rules for news media, including the ban on publishing images of living things and the requirement not to mock or humiliate Islam or contradict Islamic law, according to a report by news agency AFP. While some aspects of the law have not yet been strictly enforced, such as advising the public not to take or view images of living things on their devices, the implementation has begun in certain provinces like Kandahar, Helmand, and Takhar.
In Ghazni and Maidan Wardak provinces, local journalists were summoned by PVPV officials and informed about the gradual implementation of the law. Visual journalists were advised to adapt their practices, such as taking photos from a distance and filming fewer events. Under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, television and pictures of living things were banned nationwide, but a similar edict has not been widely imposed since their return to power in 2021.
However, officials have sporadically enforced censorship rules on business owners, such as crossing out faces on advertisements, covering mannequin heads, and blurring the eyes of fish on restaurant menus. The media industry in Afghanistan has suffered since the Taliban takeover, with the number of media employees dropping from 8,400 to 5,100, including only 560 women who have faced severe restrictions dubbed “gender apartheid” by the United Nations.