Taliban bans all images of living things in Afghanistan

By Henry Moore

The Taliban has pledged to implement a law banning moving images of all living things in Afghanistan.

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The Taliban’s morality ministry told journalists this law would be gradually enforced.

It comes as part of a wider move by the Taliban regime to enforce its strict interpretation of Islamic law across the country.

“The law applies to all Afghanistan ... and it will be implemented gradually,” Saiful Islam Khyber, the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV), told AFP.

“Coercion has no place in the implementation of the law,” he added.

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“It’s only advice, and convincing people these things are really contrary to sharia (law) and must be avoided.”

This new law contains several provisions directed at news media, including a ban on moving images of living things and an order not to humiliate or mock Islam.

Up to now, these laws have not been strictly enforced, with only Taliban officials being banned from regularly posting photos of people on social media.

“Until now, regarding the articles of the law related to media, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it, but that has not started in all provinces,” Khyber said.

“Now it applies to everyone,” Khyber continued.

Journalists in several Afghan provinces have been contacted by the morality police and informed of the change.

They told visual journalists in central Ghazni to take photos from further away and film fewer events “to get in the habit” of complying with these new censorship laws.

Reporters in Maidan Wardak also attended a similar meeting.

During the previous period of Taliban rule, running from 1996 to 2001, television and pictures of living things were banned, but the current regime has resisted implementing these laws since taking power in 2021.

Prior to the Taliban’s bid to seize power around 8,000 journalists worked in Afghanistan. As of 2024, only 5,100 remain, local media reports.