“...sign a bond undertaking that they will not do anything that would ‘disturb peace’.”

Committee to Project Journalists, Human Rights Orgs, call for the immediate & unconditional release of Kashmiri Journalist by India.

On March 20th, 2023, the Kashmiri journalist Irfan Mehraj was arrested on a charge of funding terrorism against the Indian stater. Mehraj, a freelance journalist working in Indian-administered Kashmir, was and continues to be held in detention by the Indian state under what Human Rights Watch called “an abusive counterterrorism law”, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, a law that goes back to 1967, amended in 2019. As the Guardian noted in 2021:

UAPA, ostensibly a terrorism prevention law, has instead routinely been used by the Modi government to detain those deemed critical of the government, from lawyers and activists to journalists, priests, poets, academics, civil society members, and Kashmiri civilians.

The use of the law before Modi’s government came to power in 2014 was negligible. But between 2014 and 2020, 10,552 people were arrested under UAPA.

For those held under the law, it is notoriously difficult to be granted bail, meaning those accused can be left in pre-trial detention for years. In one of the most stark cases, Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest with Parkinson’s disease who was detained for allegedly supporting anti-national activity, died in jail this year after being repeatedly refused bail even on health grounds. In another case, a journalist, Siddique Kappan, has been held under the law for more than a year without bail after being arrested while reporting. Last weekend, Parvez was denied bail and sent to Tihar prison in Delhi after 12 days of custody.

The US-based Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), in conjunction with 32 other human rights organisations, released a statement on March 20th, 2026, calling for the “immediate and unconditional release” of Irfan Mehraj, who has now spent three years in detention, what CPJ calls in the statement “politically motivated and fabricated charges”. The statement asserts that:

The authorities have used the UAPA - a draconian anti-terror law - and the repressive Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), which permits long-term detention without trial, to criminalise and silence journalists and human rights defenders in Jammu and Kashmir. This has worsened since the unilateral abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood in August 2019.

In recent months, the police continued to harass and intimidate journalists from Indian-administered Kashmir for their reporting, including through summoning them for repeated police interrogations and demanding that journalists sign a bond undertaking that they will not do anything that would ‘disturb peace’.

As I have written in the past, Indian-administered Kashmir has seen extensive censorship and police brutality, with ordinary people being “summoned by the police without reason, only to be taken to a notorious torture complex known as the Cage”, and told act as informers, or find themselves dying in a “police encounter.”

Part of Irfan Mehraj’s arrest, the statement points out, also included being a “close associate of” Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez of the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), who has been detained for four years as of the time of writing. According to Switzerland-based CIVICUS, Parvez had been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) of India in late November 2021 on ridiculous charges that included:

“waging, or attempting to wage war, or abetting waging of war”,” “punishment for conspiracy to wage war” against the Government of India, “raising funds for terror activities” and “punishment for conspiracy”.

The government of India, according to the statement, “has continuously failed to respond to concerns regarding human rights violations in Kashmir raised by United Nations experts and international human rights organisations.”

Afghan Journalist, Imprisoned for "Anti-Taliban Propaganda" is Released.

Afghan journalist Mahdi Ansary was released from Bagram Prison after serving 18 months, after being arrested for, according to the Taliban's General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) - think of them as the Taliban’s own ISI - producing “toxic propaganda” against the Taliban government - sorry, the “Islamic Emirate”. He was sentenced to a year and a half (the aforementioned 18 months) on January 1st, 2025. As part of his punishment, Ansary was made to publicly “confess”, as is par for the course for totalitarian regimes. Ansary’s “confession” was broadcast on Facebook, and still available as of the time of writing.

As Reporters sans frontières (RSF) South Asia chief Célia Mercier said at the time:

The staging of journalist Mahdi Ansary’s forced ‘confession’ illustrates the strategy of inflicting terror that is increasingly employed by the Taliban intelligence services. The GDI seeks to turn journalists into criminals to justify their detention and deter all independent reporting. These public humiliations mark a new phase in the relentless repression of journalists in Afghanistan. RSF condemns this appalling intimidation tactic and calls for the immediate release of Mahdi Ansary and the seven other journalists currently detained arbitrarily in the country.

Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which returned to power in 2021 after the US left almost overnight, leaving the people of Afghanistan to fend for themselves, has cracked down severely on the rights of those same people, especially women. As Nasratullah Taban wrote for The Diplomat in November 2025:

Just a few years ago, Afghanistan was known for its lively and free media. Independent news outlets grew, and after years of conflict, people could finally speak openly and debate issues. Both women and men worked together in newsrooms, reporting on corruption, abuse, and giving a voice to overlooked communities.

This progress ended suddenly in August 2021 when the Taliban took control. In just a few months, over half of Afghanistan’s 540 media outlets closed, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Thousands of journalists lost their jobs, and almost 80 percent of women journalists had to leave the field. TV channels stopped showing women’s images, and even recordings of female reporters’ voices were banned.

Olof Blomqvist, writing for Just Security in July, 2025:

Just a month after the fall of Kabul, the new regime issued an 11-point “guidance note” to the media, banning coverage that goes against Islam and Afghan culture, or that is “insulting” to public figures. Since then, the Taliban have issued more than 20 other regulations on the media, ranging from bans on non-religious music to extensive pre-broadcast censorship.

It is no surprise that female journalists have borne the brunt of these restrictions. Taliban-imposed regulations mandate that women must cover their faces when appearing on camera, work separately from men in newsrooms, and are not allowed to share a screen with male presenters. In some provinces, women’s voices are even banned from radio broadcasts, while female reporters are often shut out from official Taliban press conferences. Other Taliban policies – such as a ban on movements without a mahram (male chaperone) – have made field work for female journalists essentially impossible.

At the same time, according to Blomqvist:

The Taliban portray themselves as media friendly, at least to international audiences. Unlike during their last stint in power, “Taliban 2.0” have refrained from destroying TV sets and video tapes, and instead embraced visual media in their own propaganda efforts. Authorities have even announced tax breaks for media outlets, and last year held events to – seemingly without irony – mark World Press Freedom Day. The Taliban often deflect criticism of the group’s harsh treatment of independent media, saying outlets are free to operate as long as they are “in line with related regulations and principles.”

Last February, the Afghan women’s radio station Radio Begum was shut down, and then allowed to resume broadcast, “after several violations, including the unauthorized provision of content and programming to a foreign-based television channel”. Begum TV, Radio Begum’s sister channel, is broadcast via satellite from France – out of the reach of the Taliban – and provides educational programmes that cover education for girls from grades 7 to 12, as the Taliban has banned education after the 6th grade for women and girls in Afghanistan.

New Reporting in Exile?

The crackdown by the Taliban on homegrown media outlets that are not fawning of the theocratic regime has meant that, as with other South Asian nations, journalists that value independence, freedom of expression, and safety, have no choice but to work in exile.

Via RSF once again, we learn of 8AM Media, a media outlet that:

...champions independent investigative journalism that serves the public interest by  exposing the reality of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. It notably documents violations of women’s rights, the exclusion of girls from the education system and failures of Taliban governance, as well as humanitarian, health and environmental crises, arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, and the situation of Afghan refugees and their forced expulsions — particularly from Pakistan and Iran. Its investigations make it an essential source for understanding life in Afghanistan, independent of official Taliban propaganda.

Out of safety, the media outlet:

...follows strict security protocols: encrypted communications, compartmentalisation of sensitive information, anonymisation of sources, risk assessments prior to publication, and support for the relocation of journalists.

However working in exile comes at a high human and financial cost. The newsroom’s physical distance from Afghanistan also has a significant psychological impact on its journalists who are constantly anxious about their relatives who remain in the country. Members of staff in exile in Pakistan are now threatened with expulsion to their country of origin as a result of the country’s policy of mass returns of Afghan refugees, even though they have participated in  sensitive investigations that put their freedom and lives at risk.

Rights Groups Call on New Bangladeshi Govt to “affirm its commitment to press freedom and media independence”

Bangladesh elected its new government in early February, in the wake of widespread demonstrations and protests in 2024 that saw several young protesters killed by police, and resulted in the ousting of the nation’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who then fled the country. The newly elected PM, 60 year old Tarique Rahman, back from exile, is not a young upstart or activist, but someone who belongs to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by his father and former president, Ziaur Rahman (killed in 1981, in a military coup). His mother, Khaleda Zia, was PM from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006.

Living in exile in London, UK, Tarique Rahman has been accused of corruption and nepotism throughout his time in politics. He has been quoted as saying that "Peace, law and order must be maintained at any cost... We will not tolerate any kind of chaos”. This tough-sounding statement may be a cause for worry, especially as the Committee to Project Journalists and other rights organisations have called upon him and his new government to:

...publicly affirm its commitment to press freedom and media independence, release detained journalists, and review cases filed against journalists under cybercrime laws, including the Digital Security Act and Cyber Security Act. 

In the joint statement, with CPJ joined by Amnesty International, Article19, CIVICUS and other groups, the signatories call upon Rahman and his government to hold to:

...the commitment to investigate, prosecute, and prevent enforced disappearances is a crucial step, although the families of at least 287 people that are still missing are awaiting answers. Various commissions set up by the interim government have made valuable recommendations that would help to achieve your promise to strengthen institutions. A strong and independent National Human Rights Commission is essential to investigate cases and prevent future abuses. Although many of the human rights violations that occurred under the Hasina administration have ended, others such as widespread arbitrary detention s persisted under the interim government.

Freedom of expression , though somewhat improved, remained at risk with arrests and attacks on journalists and media houses. An uptick in mob violence challenged the rule of law, particularly placing minority communities at risk. The rights of women and girls need to be protected in an environment where religious groups wish to restrict their freedom. Security forces have continued their violations, such as assault or torture in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. We remain concerned about the fate of the Rohingya refugees who are crowded into settlements in Cox’s Bazaar and on Bhasan Char, without proper access to livelihood or education even as humanitarian assistance is dwindling.

The statement also details and stresses the necessity of the new government to tackle the “arbitrary detention” of “politically motivated cases against perceived political opponents”, to protect the rights of minorities, indigenous peoples, Rohingya refugees, and LGBTQ+ people. In regards to LGBTQ+ people, the statements calls for the government to:

Decriminalise adult consensual same-sex conduct and ensure that LGBT people are protected from harassment and other abuses, and can fully exercise their human rights without discrimination.

To read the detailed 16-page statement by CPJ and the other rights organisations, please click here.

Pakistani Authorities brutally crackdown on and jail Aurat Marchers.

Since 2018, thousands of women across Pakistan have marked International Women’s Day (March 8th) with an annual Aurat March (“Women’s March” in Urdu):

...a day for us to celebrate our femininity, to share our traumas and pain, to express ourselves as we deem fit, and to demand our right to equality, health, education, mobility, and freedom from violence.

In March 2021, I wrote:

Emerging out of an aggressively patriarchal nation, the Aurat March has sought to be intersectional, working to make sure that voices from all different parts of Pakistani society are not only heard but amplified. Slogans at each March have tackled domestic violence, sexual assault and harassment, lack of proper access to health services for women, transphobia, attempts to silence women in public and other causes. A slogan (one of many) that has been taken up as a rallying cry by Aurat March participants "Mera jism, meri marzi” (“My body, my choice”), which “means that women want bodily autonomy and independence”, not only continues to be shared by Pakistani women, but reflects growing feminist movements across the world, particular in the Global South and North.

Given that Pakistan is, as I have just written, an aggressively patriarchal country, however, there has, inevitably, been backlash. In addition to accusations of being “foreign funded” to “destabilise” Pakistan (an accusation that has is essentially de rigueur when drawing attention to social or political failings in Pakistan or indeed the Global South in general), and criticisms from right wing commentators in Pakistan about slogans such as Mera jism, meri marzi being “vulgar”, there have been frequent hate campaigns targetting the March and its organisers across the nation.

This International Women’s Day saw Aurat Marchers in Islamabad, and supporters, being brutally attacked and arrested by law enforcement agencies. According to a report by Global Voices:

Organizers from the feminist collective Hum Aurtein say police used force to disperse the gathering and arrested more than 35 women, including several well-known activists. Authorities accused the group of violating Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a legal provision that bans public assemblies in designated areas. The detainees were released later that evening after nearly 10 hours in custody.

On the morning of March 8, Aurat March organizers and participants gathered at a supermarket in Sector F-6, intending to march toward the Islamabad Press Club located downtown. Before the rally could begin, police detained the group and transported them in prison vans. Their mobile phones were confiscated, and they were taken to the Women’s Police Station in G-7. Witnesses said that friends and family members who arrived at the station seeking information about the detainees were also threatened with arrest.

Global Voices reporter at the scene observed police officers baton-charging people gathered outside the G-7 Women’s Police Station. Anyone standing near the station risked being detained. The area had been placed under heavy security, with a large police presence surrounding the building. And when members of the Global Voices reporting team attempted to document the situation, officers warned that they could also be arrested if they did not leave. Several individuals who tried to approach or enter the station were taken into custody.

As Usama Khiliji, a digital rights activist and Director of the Bolo Bhi digital rights organisation, remarked to France 24, "Anything and everything is a national security issue these days (for the state), anyone can be punished for it.”

The brutality and severity of the crackdown by the Pakistani towards Aurat March’s Islamabad chapter has raised questions and concerns about the remainder of Aurat March protests and events planned for later this year.

New Year, New Disinformation.

Aurat March, as with any intersectional rights movement in Pakistan, gets tarred with accusations of blasphemy (which literally carries the death sentence in Pakistan), being funded by foreign actors etc, almost like clockwork, pretty much for unintentionally making the government look bad (which doesn’t really take much). As mentioned earlier, I had written about the wilful disinformation against Aurat March by religious fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists who still pop up on Pakistani outlets from time to time. To learn more about some of the nonsense from 2021, including how the flag of a Pakistani socialist feminist organisation was mistaken for the French flag, check out that post for some right doozies.

So, in 2016 who is Aurat March being accused of being funded by? George Soros? Pope Leo XIV? Mole Man? Alas no. This year, the sterling critical thinkers of Pakistani social media have chosen *drum roll* Jeffery Epstein.

Yes, that one.

The well-connected and very dead financier and child molester, friend of Elon Musk, Andrew (the creep formerly known as -a- Prince), Peter Mandelson, Donald Trump, Bill Gates and many others, had, according to sleuthing Pakistani social media users, funded the nefarious Aurat March.

Except, no.

Just as transphobes claimed that Epstein and his friends “funded the “trans” movement, only for emails and other files to point out that Epstein funded and promoted transphobic pseudoscience (picked up by the media et al), there is no evidence that Epstein funded the Aurat March. Soch Fact Check, one of Pakistan’s most respected fact checkers, examined the allegations:

Soch Fact Check reviewed the documents available on the DoJ’s website using four key phrases: “Aurat March,” “March Pakistan,” “Women’s March,” and “Women’s movement pakistan.”

None of the terms turned up any results relevant to Pakistan’s Aurat March or its organisers nor do the documents contain references to Epstein providing any kind of funding to the movement.

We also checked the same in Jmail, an effort by Gen Z programmers — including Melissa Du, Riley Walz, and Luke Igel — to make “Epstein’s publicly released emails searchable through an interface cheekily copied from Gmail”. However, there were no relevant results.

We also reached out to the local chapters of the Aurat March across Pakistan for their comments and all of them denied the claim, saying their funding came from individual donors and not from abroad.

Interestingly, some of the social media posts being fact-checked also repeated another false claim that Pakistani education activist and Nobel Prize laureate, Malala Yousafzai, wanted to empower underage girls by handing them over to child abusers for money. Soch Fact Check has already debunked it here.

After examining the files, there was no such evidence found. Soch also reached out to members of different Aurat March chapters:

“We want to state clearly that Aurat March Islamabad accepts only local, individual, and community-led funding and we maintain complete records of our fundraisers publicly,” they said. “We refuse to engage with such unfounded accusations designed to distract [people] from our work. We unequivocally condemn the crimes exposed through the Epstein case and the powerful patriarchal networks that enabled the exploitation of women, girls, and children. Systems that shield abusive men anywhere must be dismantled.

At the same time, we find it deeply ironic that while conspiracy theories are manufactured about a feminist movement, there is far less outrage when religious leaders openly oppose child marriage laws. Maulana Fazlur Rehman has publicly stated he would ensure children as young as 12–15 are married and that he would sit in those marriages. Another senior JUI-F [Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl] leader, Hafiz Hamdullah, said he would personally marry a 16-year-old girl if ‘angry,’ rejecting the legal minimum age of 18, and called for mass marriages of under-18 children who have reached puberty.

We question why more energy is spent spreading conspiracies about Aurat March than confronting statements, mindsets, and the very real dangers that openly undermine children’s rights, dignity, and safety. It is telling that conspiracy theories about feminists generate more noise than public statements that attempt to legitimise child abuse.

Looking at the same sources used by Soch, and checking for myself, I have not found any evidence either. The reality is that people will continue to embrace conspiracy theories and disinformation, particularly in regards to intersectional rights movements, as it is far easier to subscribe to the idea that a shady, horrific individual and his cadre – who have all been in part responsible for promoting and backing some of the most regressive anti-woman, anti LGBTQ+, anti-”woke” culture war nonsense over the past decade or so – were/are behind Pakistani women and men fighting for equal rights for all, at the grassroots, rather than sit down and start questioning the infrastructural patriarchy, and gender and class inequalities that plagues Pakistan.

Sources:

Armstrong, K. (2026, February 13). Tarique Rahman: Who is the Bangladesh PM who spent 17 years in exile? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj98n7k7rmgo

‌Blomqvist,O. (2025, July 10). The Taliban’s Slow Dismantling of Afghan Media. Just Security. https://www.justsecurity.org/116034/talibans-slow-dismantling-afghan-media/

CIVICUS. (2025, November 21). India: Arbitrarily Detained Without Trial for Four Years - Khurram Parvez Must be Released. Civicus.org. https://www.civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/news/7986-india-arbitrarily-detained-without-trial-for-four-years-khurram-parvez-must-be-released

Corea, H., & Erum, N. (2024, July 29). What is happening at the quota-reform protests in Bangladesh? Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/what-is-happening-at-the-quota-reform-protests-in-bangladesh/

CPJ, partners call for release of Kashmiri journalist Irfan Mehraj after 3 years in detention - Committee to Protect Journalists. (2026, March 20). Committee to Protect Journalists. https://cpj.org/2026/03/cpj-partners-call-for-release-of-kashmiri-journalist-irfan-mehraj-after-3-years-in-detention/

(2020, December 13). “It is part of a larger crackdown and criminalizing of opinions.” Citizen South. https://www.citizensouth.org/it-is-part-of-a-larger-crackdown/

(2021, March 28). “These tools of the state are, by design, not intended to protect citizens, especially women and other vulnerable groups.” Citizen South. https://www.citizensouth.org/these-tools-of-the-state-are-by-design/

Factora, J. (2026, February 6). Emails Reveal Epstein Encouraged Controversial Scientist to Study “Transgender Biology.” Them. https://www.them.us/story/jeffrey-epstein-robert-trivers-transgender-research-emails

(2026, March 22). Rights groups fear use of arrest to stifle free speech in Pakistan. France 24; FRANCE 24. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260322-rights-groups-fear-use-of-arrest-to-stifle-free-speech-in-pakistan

Human Rights Watch. (2023, October 13). India: Arrests, Raids Target Critics of Government. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/13/india-arrests-raids-target-critics-government

Javaid, M. (2021, March 22). Pakistan’s feminists say will persevere amid increased threats. Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/22/pakistans-feminists-say-will-persevere-amid-increased-threats

(2025, February 4). The Taliban suspend Afghan women’s radio station for providing content to overseas TV channel. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-suspension-womens-radio-station-1ce9cd4ea44e0f10891f662bb9620475

In Afghanistan, new Taliban tactic to humiliate journalists: forced “confessions” broadcast online. (2025, November 4). Rsf.org. https://rsf.org/en/afghanistan-new-taliban-tactic-humiliate-journalists-forced-confessions-broadcast-online

Behind the scenes of a newsroom in exile: 8AM Media, a beacon of light in the darkness of Kabul. (2026, March 13). Rsf.org. https://rsf.org/en/behind-scenes-newsroom-exile-8am-media-beacon-light-darkness-kabul

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‌Taban, N. (2025, November 13). Afghanistan’s Media Under the Taliban: From Free Press to Propaganda Control. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2025/11/afghanistans-media-under-the-taliban-from-free-press-to-propaganda-control/