‘Forced to wear it’: Afghan women TV anchors cover faces on air after Taliban order

Days after the Taliban’s modern-day order, girls presenters on Afghanistan’s pinnacle information channels went on air on Sunday with their faces protected. On Saturday, the various information anchors had reportedly defied the diktat to hide their look on TV however their employers had come beneathneath pressure.

The Taliban’s modern-day order turned into the various slew of restrictions, on the whole focused on the rights of girls and girls, they imposed in view that seizing powers of Afghanistan remaining year.

Earlier this month, Afghanistan’s best chief Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a diktat for girls to cowl up absolutely in public, inclusive of their faces, preferably with the conventional burqa.

On Sunday, carrying hijabs and face-masking veils, girls supplied and pronounced on information announcements and different programmes throughout famous channels along with TOLOnews, Ariana Television, Shamshad TV and 1TV, pronounced BBC.

Sonia Niazi, a presenter with TOLOnews, informed information enterprise AFP that that they’d resisted and have been in opposition to carrying a mask. “But TOLOnews turned into compelled and informed that any lady presenter who seemed on display with out masking her face have to accept a few different activity or absolutely removed,” she stated.

“TOLOnews turned into pressured and we have been compelled to put on it,” she added.

Earlier, girls presenters in Afghanistan have been handiest required to put on a headscarf. TOLOnews director Khpolwak Sapai stated the channel turned into “compelled” to make its team of workers comply with the order.

“I turned into referred to as at the cellphone the day prior to this and turned into informed in strict phrases to do it. So, it isn’t always via way of means of preference however via way of means of pressure that we’re doing it,” he stated.

Meanwhile, male reporters and personnel of TOLOnews wore face mask withinside the channel’s workplaces in team spirit with girls presenters.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Akif Sadeq Mohajir stated government preferred that media channels had discovered the get dressed code.

He, however, stated the Taliban government have been now no longer in opposition to girls presenters operating withinside the channels.

During the Taliban’s first time in energy from 1996-2001, they imposed overwhelming curbs on girls, requiring them to put on the all-encompassing burqa that even protected the eyes with a mesh and barring them from public lifestyles and education.

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