Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
24-04-2022
By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report
KABUL/ ISLAMABAD: The Taliban ordered a ban against video-sharing app TikTok and the survival-shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) game on Thursday, insisting they were leading Afghanistan’s youth astray.
The phone apps are popular among Afghans, who have been left with few outlets for entertainment since the group returned to power last year and banned music, movies, and television soaps.
The apps “made the young generation go astray”, the cabinet said in a statement, adding the telecommunications ministry had been ordered to shut them down.
It also directed the ministry to stop TV channels from showing “immoral material”, although little is being broadcast beyond news and religious content.
Despite promising a softer version of the rule that characterized their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban have slowly introduced suffocating restrictions on social life, particularly for women.
Most secondary schools for girls remain shuttered, and women are barred from many government jobs and travelling abroad or even between cities unless accompanied by an adult male relative.
The previous government of now-ousted president Ashraf Ghani had tried to ban PUBG, a battle royale first-person shooter game that is reminiscent of the book and film series “The Hunger Games”.
Just over 9 million people have access to the internet across Afghanistan, a country of around 38 million people, according to figures published in January from DataReportal, an independent data collector.
There are around 4 million social media users, with Facebook being the most popular.
Chinese-owned TikTok has been shut down twice before in neighboring Pakistan because of alleged “indecent” content.
During their previous regime, the Taliban’s feared religious police banned recreational activities such as kite flying and pigeon racing.
Earlier, the Taliban government in Afghanistan has already been issued a message to the women calling International Women’s Day a “great opportunity for Afghan women to demand their legitimate rights”.
“The Islamic Emirate (Taliban) is committed to upholding the Sharia rights of all Afghan women,” said the message.
The Taliban’s spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid also said that the government will “protect and defend the rights of Afghan women, God willing.”
International Women’s Day is being observed worldwide on March 8 to celebrate women’s achievements, fight against inequality, and gender bias.
Meanwhile, there is no space and sympathy even a little bid tolerance for Shia-Muslims in Afghanistan at Taliban’s end and almost every alternate day, the Shia-Muslims have been facing terrorism across country since 1970s but neither any anti-Taliban, Pro-Taliban or Taliban government or group consider the genocide of Shias in Afghanistan nor there is any value of Shia’s life across the country while neither the entire world media nor any country of the globe did rise yet any voice against Shia-killing, Shia-abducting, Shia-targeting, Shia-missing and Shia-torturing exactly the same has been happening in Pakistan against Pakistani Shia-Muslims except barking, experts, victims, sources and former as well as present officials of Afghanistan and Pakistan told Messenger.
