Farahnaz Forotan worked at three of the main television broadcasting stations in Afghanistan between 2012 and 2020, She has hosted major talk shows including Purso Pal for
TOLOnews and Goft-i Go-i Wehza (Special talk) and the weekly program Kabul Debate for
1TV. Farahnaz has traveled throughout the country and abroad to report on
Afghanistan-related stories, including reporting from the
Sangin District of Helmand when it was a dangerous war zone held by the
Taliban. Her courage was commended by the team's leader, Bismillah Mohammadi, after he unsuccessfully ordered her to stay behind. She rose to prominence with an investigative documentary on the lives of
Taliban prisoners, which dissected their thought-process and rationale for targeting not only Afghan and international forces, but also the general public in Afghanistan. As of 2019, Farahnaz was a student at a private university in
Kabul as well as a practising journalist. In 2019 and 2020, Farahnaz conducted a social media campaign and travelled the country collecting testimonies from women, in an attempt to prevent the Taliban from using the
Afghan peace process to roll back freedoms for women that had been acquired since the fall of the Taliban. The testimonies were used to lobby Afghan leaders, foreign diplomats and civil society groups, and Farahnaz's campaign had the backing of UN Women Afghanistan. In 2019,
The New York Times reported that her social media campaign, known as #myredline, "implores women to stand up for their rights." On April 4, 2019,
Reuters reported she "launched the movement by declaring that her pen, symbolic of her profession, was her red line." On April 21, 2019, Farahnaz told
AFP that President
Ashraf Ghani had tweeted that women's rights were a "red line" in the peace process. She has been inspired by the work of other women such as
Shakila Ibrahimkhail. On July 24, 2018 Farahnaz was one of thirteen Afghan women leaders who met with Canadian Status of Women Minister
Maryam Monsef to discuss challenges facing Afghan women. In 2019 she and Ferdous Samim co-founded the Taak Foundation to raise awareness of fundamental rights through public education and engagement. On November 9, 2020, Farahnaz received a call from the Afghan Journalists Safety Committee, which informed her that according to foreign intelligence services, she was on the Taliban's blacklist of people, that
The New York Times described as a "hit list," which forced her to take refuge in
Paris,
France. Targeted killings of journalists, activists, and prominent women in other fields have surged since the February 2020 peace agreement negotiated between the Taliban and the United States under former president
Donald Trump.
Targeted killings in December 2020 included journalists
Malalai Maiwand of Enikass Radio and TV and
Rahmatullah Nikzad, chief of the Ghazni Journalists' Union. An attack on March 2, 2021 killed
Mursal Hakimi,
Sadia Shanat, and
Shanaz Raofi of Enikass Radio and TV. == References ==