‘A Betrayal’: Coverage of Pregnant Reporter ‘Helped by Taliban’ Is Called Out

Women’s rights groups have criticised the coverage around the story of a pregnant journalist from New Zealand who said she had been effectively stranded in Afghanistan and forced to seek help from the Taliban.

Charlotte Bellis has now been offered a place in New Zealand’s strict COVID quarantine system known as MIQ, the government said Tuesday, following an outcry about her situation in New Zealand.

The incident comes as the Taliban continues its brutal crackdown on women’s rights, with high profile activists recently disappearing. 

Bellis, who has long worked in the region, said she had been unable to return to New Zealand because of strict COVID border rules. She quit Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera last year and moved to Belgium with her Belgian partner. But she then flew to Afghanistan, claiming it was the only country where she still had a visa.

“When the Taliban offers you – a pregnant, unmarried woman – safe haven, you know your situation is messed up,” she wrote in an open letter in the New Zealand Herald newspaper at the weekend. Speaking on Fox News, she said the Taliban had said to her: “Congratulations, we’re really happy for you.”

But her assertion that she had been protected by the Taliban stands in sharp contrast to the situation of Afghan women under Taliban rule.

Activists who work to protect Afghan women’s sexual and reproductive rights have had to double down on security since the Taliban took power last August. 

Afghan women activists who VICE World News spoke to criticised the Taliban’s hypocritical treatment of women. 

“There are tons of reasons that the Taliban could have easily abducted [Bellis] and justified their actions according to Shariah and other cultural laws in their terms,” said Meena Nezami, the leader of Girl Up Afghanistan. “She was unmarried and pregnant, she was not a Muslim woman, she was a female journalist.

“The question is how she escaped this threat at a critical time when so many Afghan woman journalists are imprisoned, abducted and tortured for fighting for their basic fundamental rights.”

Farahnaz Roman, a human rights activist now based in the UK, said: “Afghan journalists since the fall of Afghanistan have been tortured, beaten and were forced to leave the country while some privileged non-Afghan journalists were and are welcomed in Afghanistan. 

“These non-Afghan journalists should feel responsible [for] how their storytelling will impact the lives of thousands of Afghan women, especially those who are still [under arrest]. It’s unfair if her story takes over the internet and not advocacy for those who [have] disappeared.”

Nezami added: “I wouldn’t blame Charlotte for promoting this story, she’s probably doing what she can to save her baby and herself being stuck amongst Taliban, and Taliban are benefitting quite well from her situation.”

Since returning to power, the Taliban have banned women from returning to work or travelling in public without being accompanied by a male guardian, as well as enforcing gender segregation at universities and banning girls above the age of 12 from going to school. 

Bellis’ framing of her situation has also been criticised from within New Zealand. Muzhgan Samarqandi, a former journalist in Afghanistan now based in New Zealand, wrote: “Charlotte says the Taliban have given her a safe haven when she is not welcome in her own country. This is obviously a good headline and a good way to make a point. But it is an inaccurate and unhelpful representation of the situation.”

“One commentary on Instagram, reposted by Charlotte, suggested her story represents the truly Muslim acts of the Taliban, which the Western media have not shown. This makes me angry,” Samarqandi continued. “If a person in power extends privileges to someone who doesn’t threaten their power, it doesn’t mean they are not oppressive, extremist, or dangerous. The Taliban distort Islam and manipulate Muslims for their political gain. They violate the rights of women and girls, and it is offensive to compare them to the New Zealand government in this regard.”

Nicolette Waldman, a human rights lawyer and Amnesty International researcher, told VICE World News: “We have been receiving very worrying reports about women being arrested and detained just for meeting a man in a public place or messaging or speaking with a man on the phone. 

“Even if these girls are later released, being detained can severely damage their reputation and their families may be reluctant to have them back. There were high rates for arrests for moral crimes like premarital sex before the Taliban took over, but we’re seeing so far that the threshold for arrest seems to have plummeted.”

Diana Nammi, Executive Director of the women’s rights organisation IKWRO which frequently works with Afghan women, told VICE World News over the phone: “It is of course contradicting with what they are doing in their own country with their own women. They deny women as human beings. If [Bellis] was Afghan, definitely she would now be executed or stoned to death.”

For women who speak up about their rights in Afghanistan, the risks remain high. 

In January, the United Nations raised concerns around the disappearance of two women’s rights activists – Taman Paryani and Parawana Ibrahimkhel – who were reportedly abducted from their homes. 

Paryani appears to have been able to publish a video before she disappeared.

In a tweet, Bellis revealed that she and her partner had received approval of their re-activated emergency MIQ application and that she will “continue to challenge the New Zealand government to find a solution to border controls to keep New Zealanders at home and abroad safe and their rights respected.”

But Amnesty International’s Waldman added: “The real, incredible coverage of this story, when it’s taking place against the backdrop of huge concerns about missing and disappeared women in Afghanistan…it seems a bit tone deaf that this is the story that’s receiving all of the coverage.”

Roman, the Afghan human rights activist now based in the UK, added: “When we see her story praising the Taliban has gone so viral, in almost all platforms, we see not only how the Taliban but the world is betraying us.”