The Taliban compelled a longtime battle correspondent to publicly retract a few of her articles this week, telling her that she would go to jail if she didn’t, she mentioned, within the newest crackdown on press freedom in Afghanistan.
The reporter, Lynne O’Donnell, an Australian who writes for International Coverage and different publications, defined her circumstances on Wednesday, after she had safely left Afghanistan.
“They dictated. I tweeted,” she wrote on Twitter. “They didn’t prefer it. Deleted, edited, re-tweeted. Made video of me saying I wasn’t coerced. Re-did that too.”
In an article on Wednesday in International Coverage, Ms. O’Donnell wrote that Taliban intelligence brokers had “detained, abused and threatened me.”
She mentioned the Taliban had taken challenge with articles that she wrote in 2021 and 2022 about the specter of forced marriages by Taliban fighters and the violence going through L.G.B.T.Q. people residing in Afghanistan. She wrote that one intelligence officer had advised her that “there aren’t any gays in Afghanistan,” whereas one other had advised her that he would kill anybody he discovered was homosexual.
Taliban officers denied Ms. O’Donnell’s narrative of occasions, claiming that she appeared to proceed to report within the nation after being denied press credentials this week.
“Ms. Lynne O’Donnell, upon arriving to Afghanistan, was denied a permission letter to function on account of her open help for armed resistance in opposition to the present authorities, and falsifying stories of mass violations and sexual slavery by authorities officers,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for the Ministry of International Affairs, mentioned in an announcement.
The compelled retraction by a Western journalist underscores the growing restrictions on the press in Afghanistan, the place new management that promised to permit media freedom is as a substitute harassing and detaining journalists.
A United Nations report launched Wednesday discovered that within the 10 months for the reason that Taliban took management of Afghanistan, 173 journalists and media staff had been topic to human rights violations, together with arrests, torture and threats. Six journalists had been killed in that interval, 5 of them by ISIS militants, and the opposite from unclear circumstances.
“What the Taliban management says shouldn’t be in step with how the lower-level Taliban act towards the media, so the scenario is getting worse, with a variety of censorship,” mentioned Susanna Inkinen, an Afghanistan adviser for Worldwide Media Assist, a nonprofit.
Reporting From Afghanistan
She mentioned the quantity of freedom that journalists had was depending on the province and the native Taliban. “Individuals are far more cautious what they report, how they report,” she mentioned. “There are points folks don’t cowl anymore.”
Ms. Inkinen mentioned she wasn’t conscious of every other case wherein a reporter had been compelled to publicly stroll again reporting.
In one of many coerced tweets, posted on Tuesday, Ms. O’Donnell wrote: “l apologize for 3 or 4 stories written by me accusing the current authorities of forcefully marrying teenage ladies and utilizing teenage ladies as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders. This was a premeditated try at character assassination and an affront to Afghan tradition.”
In one other, she mentioned: “These tales had been written with none strong proof or foundation, and with none effort to confirm cases by means of on-site investigation or face-to-face conferences with alleged victims.”
Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of International Coverage, mentioned the publication stood by Ms. O’Donnell’s work and its persevering with protection of Afghanistan.
“The truth that the Taliban compelled her to retract her reporting by way of a tweet speaks for itself,” Mr. Agrawal mentioned.
He added: “We’ll proceed to report on Afghanistan from afar and publish skilled evaluation as we’ve got lengthy completed. Lynne’s ordeal is affirmation that reporting from inside Afghanistan is turning into increasingly harmful.”
In an interview from Pakistan on Wednesday, Ms. O’Donnell mentioned the ordeal had lasted about 4 hours.
“The one factor I had in my thoughts that was my solely safety is that they’re determined for diplomatic recognition that can give them legitimacy as the federal government of Afghanistan, and so they don’t have that,” she mentioned.
Ms. O’Donnell, who now lives in London, was the Afghanistan bureau chief for The Related Press and Agence France-Presse from 2009 to 2017. She additionally reported from the nation within the lead-up to the withdrawal of U.S. forces final yr.
She returned to Kabul, the capital, on Sunday to see what had occurred to the nation within the yr since she left.
She mentioned native journalists had been detained, crushed and killed, with many leaving the nation.
“Their media organizations have been closed or compelled to simply accept no matter line the Taliban provides them,” Ms. O’Donnell mentioned, including of the protection: “It’s a black gap. The sunshine has gone out.”
John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, mentioned each Afghan and worldwide journalists confronted growing restrictions.
“To human rights teams, what’s most alarming is that the restrictions make it more durable and more durable to know what’s occurring across the nation on a day-to-day foundation,” he mentioned.
Mr. Sifton mentioned that whereas it was a priority that Ms. O’Donnell had been detained, the better dangers had been to folks she had spoken with and the native workers who had labored together with her and remained in Afghanistan.
“There are nonetheless working Afghan journalists making an attempt to do their job, and they’re going through far better threats than any of the expatriates,” he mentioned.