The Taliban’s growing restrictions on internet and social media platforms are infringing upon the rights of Afghans, United Nations experts said Friday, after the country faced severe disruption to telecom services in recent weeks.

Afghanistan suffered a 48-hour internet blackout from September 29, coinciding with a new “morality drive” introduced by Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, who had earlier ordered the suspension of fiber-optic services in several provinces.

Authorities confirmed the fiber-optic shutdown but offered no explanation for the two-day nationwide outage.

Although connectivity was largely restored by October 1, U.N. experts — including Richard Bennett, the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan — said the Taliban have since imposed restrictions on access to major social media platforms starting October 7.

According to the internet monitoring group NetBlocks, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have been blocked across multiple service providers in Afghanistan.

“These new restrictions, though not yet total, appear to form part of a broader and deliberate effort to control public discourse and regulate social behavior,” the U.N. team of experts said in a statement.

They urged the Taliban authorities to immediately restore full access and refrain from further curbs that violate Afghans’ civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights.

The experts warned that such shutdowns further isolate the Afghan people from the international community and sever communication with relatives abroad, who often provide vital financial support through remittances.

The U.N. experts, appointed by the Human Rights Council in Geneva, serve independently and on a voluntary basis.

The Taliban government has not yet commented on the U.N. statement.
 
 
Source:AP