“Apparently, the Taliban are already conducting an organized search for journalists in Kabul, as well as in the provinces,” said the director of the German public media, Peter Limbourg.
The German broadcasting service Deutshe Welle (DW) reported Thursday that the Taliban killed a relative of one of its journalists in Afghanistan and seriously wounded another.
According to the outlet, the militiamen were looking for their reporter from house to house and during the persecution they encountered several of his relatives, whom they shot, killing one of them and seriously injuring another, while the others managed to escape.
DW director Peter Limbourg said the event “demonstrates the grave danger” faced by all media personnel and their families in Afghanistan. “It appears that the Taliban are already conducting an organized search for journalists in Kabul, as well as in the provinces,” he said.
The Taliban have already searched the homes of at least three DW journalists, the outlet denounces, as well as allegedly kidnapping an employee of the private Afghan network Gharghasht TV, Nematullah Hemat, and killing the director of Paktia radio station. Ghag, Tufan Omar. In addition, two men, allegedly members of the fundamentalist movement, shot dead Amdadullah Hamdard, who worked for the German weekly Die Zeit.
UPDATE: Taliban fighters hunting one of our journalists have shot dead a member of his family in #Afghanistan and seriously injured another.
— DW News (@dwnews) August 19, 2021
The militants were conducting a house-to-house search to try and find him, but he is now safe in Germany. https://t.co/4ilc9iOehx
For this reason, Deutsche Welle, together with numerous media and organizations, asked the German government to create an emergency visa program for Afghan workers. The German Union of Journalists also considers it necessary to rescue journalists and provide them with protection in Germany and called on the authorities to take measures to solve the problem.
After taking Kabul last Sunday, the Taliban announced that they were ending their offensive in the country. The radical group declared an amnesty for all Afghan government officials and claimed that citizens “can feel safe.”