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‘Crushed my face against concrete’: Journalists recount Taliban torture
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American non-profit promoting press freedom and defending the rights of journalists worldwide, said in a statement at least 14 journalists, including Naqdi and Daryabi, were detained and later released by the Taliban this week.
With the Taliban announcing a hardline regime in Afghanistan, journalists in the war-torn land have now opened up about being beaten up, detained, tortured, and even flogged by the militants. In interviews recorded by the BBC, the reporters and correspondents from Afghanistan recounted their harrowing accounts of the torture. Their offence? Reporting on protests in Kabul that held a mirror on the deteriorating economic and political situation of the country.
“One of the Taliban put his foot on my head and crushed my face against the concrete,” said Nematullah Naqdi, a photojournalist for the Etilaatroz newspaper, detailing how the militants tried to take away his camera when he started taking photographs of a protest in Kabul against the Taliban regime.
Naqdi was one of the two journalists for the newspaper who were arrested by Taliban officials in Kabul. Later, photographs of them bruised and scarred, with marks of flogging all across their backs, emerged on social media and went viral.
Naqdi and his colleague, Taqi Daryabi, recounted how they were taken to a district police station and lashed with whips, flogged with electric cables, and beaten up with batons. They were released later by the Taliban without any explanation.
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Daryabi told the BBC that when he was being handcuffed by the militants, even the thought of defending himself scared him since he figured it would only cause his attackers to torture him more. “Eight of them came and they started beating me,” he was quoted as saying. “Using sticks, police sticks, rubber - whatever they had in their hands. The scar on my face is from shoes where they kicked me in the face.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American non-profit promoting press freedom and defending the rights of journalists worldwide, said in a statement at least 14 journalists, including Naqdi and Daryabi, were detained and later released by the Taliban this week. Citing eyewitness reports and people familiar with the incident who spoke to CPJ over the phone, the non-profit organisation said that at least nine of these journalists were subjected to custodial violence.
Even though the Taliban had promised to put on a more ‘moderate’ face this time, the announcement of a hardline regime and multiple news reports of violence over the past week suggest that the militants never intended to move past their old ways. The Taliban are facing intense outrage from the people of Afghanistan, where journalists, women, and activists including university students, all are holding demonstrations against the outfit while the 'new government is imposing restrictions to curb the voices rising against it.
