The Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice said Tuesday it has arrested six university students accused of being influenced by what it called “deviant atheist ideas” and attempting to promote them indirectly.
The ministry did not identify which university the students attended. A Taliban spokesman for the ministry, Saif Khaibar, said the students had been under surveillance for showing “clear signs of ideological deviation” and were detained after evidence was gathered.
He added that in the past two months, Taliban enforcers had carried out operations against what they described as “intellectual and cultural invasions,” detaining several alleged propagators of “foreign ideologies.”
The arrests come as Taliban authorities have also detained several journalists in recent weeks. Local sources say a joint unit of Taliban intelligence and the virtue ministry has been responsible for many of the detentions.
Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, more than 500 cases of arrests, threats and violence against journalists have been documented. Rights groups say Afghanistan has continued to fall in global press freedom rankings amid mounting restrictions and crackdowns.
