'Women Meet Muttaqi in Kabul': Taliban Dub 'No Female' Journalists at Afghan FM's India Presser 'Unnecessary'

A spokesman for the Taliban Taliban made it clear on Saturday that the absence of female journalists at the Perse Conference directed by the leader of Taliban and Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in New Delhi was unintentional, according to a report by News18. The press conference, which was organized at the Afghanistan Ambassade in New -Delhi following bilateral talks between Foreign Minister Jaishankar and Muttaqi, delivered widespread criticism after women journalists claimed to have been denied access. No joint press briefing was held after the official meeting between the two ministers, and the Afghan side alone did a separate media interaction on the embassy site. What did the Afghan spokesman say? News18 reports, citing a spokeswoman for Afghan, that Muttaqi regularly contacts women journalists at his office in Kabul. It is believed that the spokesman refers to female reporters who are not Afghan, who should usually follow a strict dress code during the meeting of Taliban’s officials, the report states. “Muttaqi meets women in his office in Kabul regularly. I have interviews with female journalists myself,” the spokesman told News18. According to the “Taliban 2.0” regime that came to power in August 2021, Afghan women and girls faced the UN calling the worst women’s rights crisis in the world. Rather than a more moderate approach, the Taliban systematically expanded and strengthened their restrictions on women’s lives, which effectively eradicated it from public existence. Earlier in the day, after the return of the opposition parties, the Foreign Ministry (MEA) made it clear that it had “no involvement” in the press interaction. “Mea was no involvement in the press interaction held by the Afghan FM in Delhi yesterday,” the ministry said in a statement. What did the leaders of Congress say? The exclusion of women journalists has created political outrage nationwide. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi brighten his position on the incident and call it “an insult to the female journalists of India”. In a post on X, she said: ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji, please explain your position on the removal of female journalists from the press conference of the Taliban’s representative on his visit to India. If your recognition of women’s rights is not just a comfortable attitude from one election to another, how then is the insult of a bit of India’s most capable women in our country, a country whose wife is his back leg. ” Former Home Secretary and Senior Congressional P Chidambaram also expressed shock and disappointment, saying male journalists should have walked out with their female colleagues in Solidarity. I am shocked that women journalists are excluded from the press conference provided by Mr. Amir Khan Muttaqi was addressed. “I am shocked that female journalists were excluded from the press conference addressed by Mr Amir Khan Muttaqi of Afghanistan. In my personal view, the hammal Journalists should have ended when they found that their women’s colleagues were excluded (or not invited),” Chidambaram said in a post. India’s most capable women were allowed in our country? The visit of the Minister of Taliban, who started on October 9 and will last until October 16, has seized the first high-level delegation from Kabul to India since the Taliban in August 2021 in Afghanistan (with input from agencies)