Extreme restrictions on media workers mean life in Afghanistan – including human rights abuses – will go undocumented, journalists say
The Taliban’s ban on images and videos of “living things” will make it harder to cover Afghanistan, journalists in the country said.
The Afghan ministry for vice and virtue has directed media platforms in Maidan Wardak, Kandahar and Takhar provinces to not show images of “living things with a soul”, taken as meaning people and animals.
A ministry spokesperson, Saif ul Islam Khyber, confirmed to the Associated Press that Taliban-run media stopped showing images of living things in some provinces on Tuesday to comply with the new law.
The ban, part of a set of “morality laws” published by the ministry in August, does not extend to visuals of the Taliban’s more prominent leaders.
In effect, this means journalists can no longer take pictures or videos of people and animals. Photojournalists in particular fear that the restrictions will harm their livelihoods.
I think they believe that images of living things become idols. If I recall, Amish have similar concerns, but they don’t try to enforce it outside of their community. Fortunately, there was no such thing as audio recording when their religion was invented, so hopefully at least that’ll be tolerated. Radio broadcasts are better than no broadcasts.
I think I remember a video where they found audio vibrations scratched into a piece of pottery or something, because some straw or a twig was resting on it while it spun and was being molded and it picked up the ambient noise. It wasn’t an intentional recording though, and the audio they were able to extract is right on the edge of being something somewhat recognizable from pure noise.
Was that video the X-Files episode Hollywood AD?