Date: 13/08/1404
Reporters Without Borders: Taliban Humiliate Journalists by Publishing Forced Confessions
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states that the Taliban intelligence agency is humiliating Afghan journalists by publishing forced confessions. Célia Mercier, one of the organization’s senior representatives, said the Taliban’s purpose in releasing these confessions is to portray journalists as criminals and justify their arrests.

The organization has called for the immediate release of all journalists currently detained by the Taliban.
In a statement published on Tuesday, RSF said: “The broadcast of forced confessions of journalists in humiliating videos marks a new phase in the relentless repression of the media in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s intelligence directorate uses this tactic to instill fear and silence independent voices.”
According to the organization’s report, Hamid Farhadi, Mahdi Ansari, Abu Zar Sarepolai, Mohammad Basir Hatef, and Shakib Nazari are among the journalists who have been arrested and imprisoned on charges of “propaganda against the Taliban authorities.” RSF added that, in addition to these names, three other journalists are also being held arbitrarily, though it did not disclose their identities.
The organization noted that most of these journalists were coerced into giving forced confessions, which the Taliban later disseminated on social media to intimidate others and suppress independent journalism.
RSF highlighted that since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, the Afghan media landscape has become severely restricted, with at least 165 journalists arrested. Afghanistan now ranks 175th out of 180 countries in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index.
Meanwhile, since the enactment of the Taliban’s “Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law,” the publication of images of living beings has been banned in more than 20 Provinces. Despite this, the Taliban themselves continue to widely use social media and visual media under their control to broadcast images of their officials and advance their propaganda objectives.

This entry documents the publication of forced confessions of detained journalists by Taliban intelligence authorities. The use of coerced statements for public dissemination reflects the use of detention and psychological pressure to criminalize independent reporting and suppress dissent, indicating the deployment of intimidation tactics to control media narratives within a system characterized by arbitrary detention and coercive enforcement.