RASC News Agency: The Afghanistan Media Support Union (AMSU) has sounded the alarm over what it describes as an existential threat to press freedom in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, warning that a relentless campaign of censorship, intimidation, and violence has placed both journalists’ lives and the public’s right to information in extreme peril.
In a statement released on Sunday, September 14, AMSU declared that the Taliban’s tightening restrictions represent a deliberate strategy to suffocate the last remnants of independent media. It cited credible reports of Taliban commanders issuing direct death threats against journalists an escalation that, according to AMSU, has rendered reporting “a profession of constant fear and mortal risk.”
The statement also drew attention to the Taliban’s newly imposed ban on broadcasting news footage through Balkh National Television, a prohibition enforced by local Taliban authorities that AMSU condemned as “a calculated strike at the very heart of free expression.” In Panjshir, the Taliban have gone even further, shutting down Panjshir National Television entirely, thereby severing local communities from critical access to information.
“These are not isolated abuses,” AMSU stressed, “but components of a systematic policy designed to extinguish independent journalism and entrench a monopoly of propaganda.” The organization warned that the cumulative effect of these repressive tactics has forced numerous outlets into silence or self-censorship, while the Afghanistani public remains increasingly cut off from transparent reporting.
The grim situation has been underscored by chilling testimony from within the Taliban’s own circles. Mawlawi Mohammad Omar Mokhles, a former Taliban commander in Paktia, recently admitted that the group had plotted to assassinate several journalists who narrowly escaped with their lives. Media experts argue that such revelations only confirm what Afghanistani reporters have long feared: the Taliban are not merely restricting information they are actively targeting those who attempt to uncover the truth.
Independent observers note that Afghanistan now ranks among the most hostile environments on earth for journalists. “The Taliban have engineered a climate where telling the truth is synonymous with signing your own death warrant,” one Kabul-based journalist told RASC News under a pseudonym for security reasons. “Every newsroom lives under the shadow of surveillance, every reporter works under the threat of disappearance or death.”
AMSU has appealed to the international community, global media watchdogs, and human rights defenders to take urgent, coordinated action. Without immediate intervention, the organization warns, Afghanistan risks becoming a complete informational vacuum where propaganda is elevated as truth, dissent is criminalized, and millions of Afghanistani citizens are left voiceless in the face of tyranny.
