Jamaluddin Deldar, owner and executive editor of local radio station Radio Saday-e-Gardez, was detained by the Taliban at his office in Gardez city of Paktia province and transferred him to an undisclosed location on May 24, according to Dildar’s brother Parwiz Ahmad Dildar, who spoke to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The station has ceased operations since the arrest.
On the same day, Taliban intelligence agents detained Mirza Hassani, the former owner and editor of Radio Aftab, a local radio station in Daikundi province that stopped operations amid the Taliban takeover last August, at a checkpoint in Herat city.
Hassani was transferred to the 12th Directorate of the Taliban’s GDI in Herat after agents searched his phone and found news reports posted on his social media. He has reportedly been beaten and tortured while in custody and is accused of working as a reporter for the anti-Taliban militant group, National Resistance Front (NRF).
Hassani’s family and the Herat’s Scholars Council have called for his immediate release.
United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also tweeted asking on the Taliban to release all detained media workers and journalists, and to stop torturing, arbitrarily detaining, and threatening journalists.
According to the Afghanistan Journalists Center, at least 80 journalists have been detained and tortured by the Taliban in the last nine months.
In the latest South Asia Press Freedom report, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)documented 75 media rights violations, including 12 killings and 30 arrests, in Afghanistan from May 2021 to April 2022. An estimated 1,000 journalists have fled the country since last August, with threats, harsh restrictions and economic collapse leading to mass closures of media outlets.
The IFJ said: “The Taliban must cease its arbitrary arrest and detainment of Afghan journalists and media workers. The escalating number of media rights violations in Afghanistan continue to restrict freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The IFJ calls for the immediate release of Mirza Hassani.”
CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said: “The recent increase in arbitrary detentions of media workers and journalists mark a disturbing deterioration of press freedom and the ability of the Afghan people to access accurate, timely information.”
Image: VOA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons