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Selma (the name changed) is a journalist and live activist and works in Panjshir Province in East Afghanistan. He lost his job after a Taliban takeover from a war hit by a war in August.
After being threatened, he had since left the area and now in hiding, selling Bolani, local flat bread, on the streets to survive.
“I work as a journalist and human rights activist,” Selma, who asked not to disclose its original identity for fear of retaliation, told DW. “As you know, women’s rights are strongly related to religious ideology, so we are always in a dispute with extremists. This puts us in danger. “
Elma is one of thousands of journalists and media workers who have lost their jobs in Afghanistan since August.
According to a report published in December by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 40% of the media have been closed for the past five months with around 6,400 journalists losing their jobs. Hundreds have left the country. The report added that more than 80% of female journalists were now out of work.
Some provinces in Afghanistan have been abandoned with only a handful of media, and those who still have stopped broadcast music, attracting foreign content and carrying female hosts from the air.
Most have also softened news coverage they fear closure or worse and now broadcast strict religious content.
Afghans who enjoy a variety of media choices that for the past two decades now have a little access to important news and information.
“Without the freedom of the press is able to expose the bad failure of the government, no one will be able to claim that they fight hunger, poverty, corruption, drug trafficking and other specters that befall Afghanistan and prevent eternal peace,” Reza Moini, Head of the RSF Iran-Afghanistan table, stated in the report.
