Taliban wants to ban TikTok and PUBG mobile game for 'promoting violence'

The Taliban is set to ban TikTok after raising concerns the platform promotes violence.

On Saturday (17 September), Afghanistan's ministry of telecommunication announced its plans to ban the app following a meeting between the telecommunications ministry and the Sharia law enforcement administration. They said the decision is to protect the Afghanistan youth from the "immoral and non-Islamic content" on the platform.

In a statement to MailOnline, a Taliban official said: "They are just devastating our young people by advertising western lifestyle. We are living in an Islamic country and these platforms have been spreading content against it."

They continued: "Facebook is also spreading the same kind of content. Our youths are wasting a lot of time on that. It’s our duty to take care of young people."

The first-person shooter game PUBG, with around 100,000 players in Afghanistan, has also been swept by the ban.

Both are expected to be banished within the next 90 days.

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Sincethe Taliban regained control last year, many restrictions have been imposed – specifically on women's lives.

Younger girls have been stopped from going to school, and women can no longer appear in TV dramas.

TV hosts have been forced to cover their faces while broadcasting in line with a Taliban order.

TOLOnews presenter Farida Sial previously told the BBC: "It's OK that we are Muslims, we are wearing hijab, we hide our hair, but it's very difficult for a presenter to cover their face for two or three hours consecutively and talk like that."

She added: "They want to erase women from social and political life."

The Taliban have blocked over 23 million websites over the last 12 months for "immoral content".

At a conference last month, Najibullah Haqqani, Taliban's minister of communications, said: "We have blocked 23.4 million websites. They are changing their pages every time. So, when you block one website, another one will be active."

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