Anisa Shaheed is an Afghan broadcast journalist known for covering violence, human rights abuses, and corruption in Afghanistan. She was head of news at TOLOnews, an independent Afghan television channel.^[1] She was a 2022 recipient of the Knight International Journalism Award, given by the International Center for Journalists in recognition of her work.^[2][3]

Career

Anisa Shaheed grew up in the Panjshir Valley in northeast Afghanistan, where she witnessed the Taliban's violations of women and human rights before they were ousted by United States forces in 2001. She earned a degree in journalism from Kabul University. She began her journalism career covering politics for Cheragh Daily Newspaper before switching to TV broadcasting. She joined Afghan independent TV channel TOLOnews in 2009 as a reporter, and rose through the ranks to the position of head of news.^[4] At TOLOnews she covered beats such as human rights, elections, current affairs, and security.^[5]

After the return of Taliban to power in 2021 and their subsequent crackdown on journalists and women's rights, Shaheed fled her country to the U.S., where she continued writing about the situation in Afghanistan as a freelancer.^[6][7]

In June 2022, she was honoured by Reporters Without Borders for her “Courageous” coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and Afghanistan's Free Speech Hub named her “The Face of Afghanistan’s Freedom of Expression”.^[2]

References