Radical Islam apologist often branded as a journalist and profiled by Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint, CJ Werleman, is busy spreading propaganda that paints the Taliban in good light after the group managed to capture Kabul following the US Exit from Afghanistan. He appears to be making a considerable degree of effort to normalise the Islamist group.
On Tuesday, CJ Werleman claimed that the Taliban has not attacked civilians or US personnel at the Kabul Airport, assured women they could continue to work and study and that religious minorities could continue practicing their religion and announced a “general amnesty” for officials of the former government.
This was after he attempted to play defense for the Taliban by comparing them with crime statistics from the United States of America without any context.
The atrocities committed by Taliban against women and religious minorities are far too well documented for CJ Werleman to be not aware of them. And yet, he chose to play propaganda for the Islamist group by making ridiculous arguments.
Werleman, of course, has a history of spreading Islamist propaganda. During the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, he had claimed that the Uttar Pradesh Police had killed ‘peacefully protesting’ citizens.
The Police had responded to his tweet saying, “More than 250 police persons have been injured- 62 with gunshot injuries. Live and fired cartridges of non-prohibited bore (not used by the police) in excess of 700 have been recovered from ‘peacefully protesting’ citizens.”
Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint had eulogised Werleman in a profile describing him as a ‘bigot-turned-crusader against ‘Islamophobia’ who is taking on the Indian state’. C.J. Werlemen appears to have a special grudge against Uttar Pradesh, probably because a saffron-clad monk is the Chief Minister of the state. Numerous tweets of his refer to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath as ‘Hindutva terrorist’.
Earlier, The Wire had provided platform to a journalist who attempted to provide legitimacy to the Taliban. “So merely because they are spreading terrorism or oppressing women one says that they (Talibanis) do not have a stake there (Afghanistan) is sheer stupidity,” the journalist had said.
Note: Earlier this article identified CJ Werleman as columnist with ThePrint. However, it turns out, he was only ‘profiled’ by Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint and has not written any article for them. We have updated the copy. Error is regretted.
