KABUL —
Just a day after defying the order to conceal their appearance, women
presenters on Afghanistan’s leading news channels went on air Sunday with their
faces covered.
اضافة اعلان
Since seizing
power last year, the Taliban have imposed a slew of restrictions on civil
society, many focused-on reining in the rights of women and girls to comply
with the group’s austere brand of Islam. Earlier this month,
Afghanistan’s
supreme leader
Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a diktat (decree) for women to
cover up fully in public, including their faces, ideally with the traditional
burqa.
The feared
Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice ordered women TV
presenters to follow suit from Saturday. But the presenters defied the order
and went on air with their faces visible, only to fall in line with the
directive on Sunday.
Wearing full
hijabs and face-covering veils that
left only their eyes in view, women presenters and reporters aired morning news
bulletins across leading channels like TOLOnews, Ariana Television, Shamshad
TV, and 1TV. “We resisted and were against wearing a mask,” Sonia Niazi, a
presenter with TOLOnews, told AFP. “But TOLOnews 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. “TOLOnews was compelled and
we were forced to wear it.”
Women presenters were previously only required to
wear a headscarf. TOLOnews director
Khpolwak Sapai said the channel was
“forced” to make its staff follow the order. “We were told ‘You are forced to
do it. You must do it. There is no other way’,” Sapai told AFP. “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.”
‘Not against women presenters’
On Sunday, male journalists and employees of TOLOnews wore face masks
in the channel’s offices in Kabul in solidarity with women presenters, an AFP
correspondent reported. Other women employees of the channel continued to work
with their faces visible. Ministry spokesman Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir said
authorities appreciated that media channels had observed the dress code.” We are
happy with the media channels that they implemented this responsibility in a
good manner,” he told AFP.
Mohajir also said that the authorities were not
against women presenters working in the channels. “We have no intention of
removing them from the public scene or side-lining them or stripping them of
their right to work,” he said.
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