There was a women's ministry in Kabul. That was before the Taliban took power. Now the new rulers have symbolically rededicated the building in the Afghan capital. From now on it is the seat of the religious police, which watch over the observance of the Sharia. Expressed in the parlance of the radical Islamists: "Ministry of prayer and orientation and for the promotion of virtue and for the prevention of vice". This is how the Taliban are setting an example. While on the international stage they act as if their reign is less extreme than in the 1990s, they are gradually restricting human rights in the country and relegating women in particular to the place that pays them - at the stove.
They are banned from public life and denied education. If they take to the streets to demonstrate for their rights, they are violently dispersed. The world should learn as little about this as possible. That is why journalists are at the top of the Taliban's hit list. Journalists can no longer do their jobs, the organization Reporters Without Borders reports on violent attacks on a daily basis. Not all have fled yet, nor are there reporters in Afghanistan. But how much longer?
Those who persevere are making a dramatic appeal to the international community. It is written by 103 journalists, including 20 women: “We are Afghan journalists of different political convictions and ethnicities. Some of us are still able to work. Others are hiding in Kabul or elsewhere in Afghanistan. Others have already fled abroad or are about to leave the country. We are all forced to remain anonymous in this appeal. We don't want journalism to die out in Afghanistan as it did in 1996-2001. Time is running out."
You need guarantees of protection. "Concrete commitments from the new leaders of Afghanistan" are needed, and the international community should insist on them. It is about resources and concrete help for persecuted journalists who want to leave the country. The media committee set up by the Taliban must “guarantee that it is actually a mechanism to defend press freedom and not to oppress journalists”.
Will the message get through to the federal government, which was so overwhelmed during the evacuation of those in need of protection after the fall of Kabul? She has not fulfilled her obligation to bring the rescued people, who came out of the country through the deployment of the Bundeswehr - which the Left Party in the Bundestag cynically did not agree to -. The fight for human rights and against international terrorism must be at the top of the agenda for the next federal government. One does not lead that by arming the Bundeswehr and making the citizens believe that life in peace and freedom does not demand any price and that it is enough to make the diamond.