Awarded Afghan woman journalist: It’s jail or death
Afghan TV journalist and women rights activist 26 year old Najwa Alimi is hiding since the Taliban takeover. “We women who have been free and opposed against the Taliban are for sure on the list of people who cannot continue – it will be either jail or death, she said in an interview with Swedish public service broadcaster SVT.
She is a reporter at Afghan TV channel Zan TV that has almost only women staffers, but now she is hiding.
Zan TV was created to offer programming that especially addresses issues relevant to women in Afghanistan. It was founded by Hamid Samar, a media entrepreneur, in Kabul in 2017.
In 1919, Alimi got the Per Anger award, an international award promoting democracy and human rights. Anger was a Swedish diplomat and Raoul Wallenberg’s co-worker at the Swedish legation in Budapest during World War II when many Jews were saved by being supplied with Swedish passports.
The Anger jury said that Alimi with courage and risk for her own life was fighting for that women should be seen and their stories told in Afghanistan. That she is working to let young women get access to books so that they via literature can break their isolation.
“She gives hope to a new generation of Afghan girls and boys”, the jury said.
Alimi was nominated for the ward by Reporters Without Borders.
When she got the award, she said that men in Afghanistan should abandon the traditional view on the society. They should learn about the women’s value and about women’s right to a place in the society.
The Afghan men must understand that together we are strongest, she said. Today she is hiding.
She tells SVT that she is now alternating between hiding places. For the first time in her life, she has bought a burka to be able to secretly move between the places where she is hiding.
She fears the life in Afghanistan will never be the same again and that this is the end for modern women in the country.
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