KUALA LUMPUR: The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Taliban to stop its relentless campaign of media intimidation and abide by its promise to protect journalists in Afghanistan.

“Two years after the Taliban takeover, Afghanistan’s once vibrant free press is a ghost of its former self,” Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator, said on Monday.

“Worsening media repression is isolating Afghanistan from the rest of the world, at a time when the country is grappling with one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies. Access to reliable and trustworthy information can help save lives and livelihoods in a crisis, but the Taliban’s escalating crackdown on media is doing the opposite.”

Despite an initial promise to allow press freedom after taking power on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have shut down dozens of local media outlets, banned some international broadcasters, and denied visas to foreign correspondents.

In the last two years, hundreds of Afghan journalists have fled to neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran, and many are now stuck in legal limbo without clear prospects of resettlement to a third country. Since 2021, Afghans have become among the largest share of exiled journalists receiving emergency support from CPJ each year.

When CPJ conducted its most recent annual worldwide census of imprisoned journalists on December 1, 2022, Afghanistan appeared for the first time in 12 years, with three reporters in jail.