I mentioned this in the earlier post about Clarissa Ward’s report from inside the airport in Kabul, but it deserves wider attention. While the UN and our ambassador to that body brag about issuing “very strongly worded press statements” telling the Taliban to respect human rights, the Taliban are issuing their own special statements back to the press. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reports this morning that a Taliban patrol looking for one of its journalists shot members of his family, killing one, to find out his location:

Taliban fighters searching for a Deutsche Welle journalist in Afghanistan shot dead a member of his family and seriously injured another, Germany’s international public broadcaster reported.

Deutsche Welle said that other relatives of the journalist were able to escape and are on the run. The Deutsche Welle journalist the fighters were hunting now works in Germany.

“The killing of a close relative of one of our editors by the Taliban yesterday is inconceivably tragic, and testifies to the acute danger in which all our employees and their families in Afghanistan find themselves,” Deutsche Welle Director General Peter Limbourg was quoted as saying in an article published on the broadcaster’s website on Thursday.

“It is evident that the Taliban are already carrying out organized searches for journalists, both in Kabul and in the provinces. We are running out of time!” Limbourg added.

It’s yet another reason, as I noted earlier, to feel some relief that Ward and her crew have made it into the airport. The so-called “general amnesty” is anything but, as NBC News reported a little earlier today. The Taliban has made a list and they’re not just checking it twice — they’re going door to door in their own version of Nacht und Nebel:

Fresh reports added to growing evidence of Taliban repression as the militant group’s fighters cracked down on protests and thousands of desperate Afghans continued their efforts to flee the country.

The Taliban are going door-to-door and screening names at Kabul checkpoints as they hunt for people who worked with U.S.-led forces or the previous Afghan government, according to an intelligence report submitted to the United Nations.

The report — compiled by a Norwegian intelligence group and sent to NBC News — casts further doubt on the militant group’s claims of a “general amnesty” in the wake of their takeover.

This is the first step any totalitarian regime takes when consolidating its power — liquidating the dissidents. Thanks to the rapidity of the American collapse in Afghanistan, the Taliban possesses a large trove of identifying data of those who assisted us in keeping the cities mostly stable against the Taliban threat. That includes, apparently, the biometric systems that we implemented to protect our allies and partners in Afghanistan.

Independent journalists will be a high-value target for the Taliban, as the Washington Post explained yesterday:

Over the past 20 years, a vibrant and growing media industry has taken root in Afghanistan, with many independent outlets reporting news from around the country, even in the face of violence and instability. Now its journalists are confronting an even more dangerous and uncertain future under Taliban rule — and meeting the moment with a mixture of anxiety, fear and a sense of duty.

Some are still filing reports from the front lines and interviewing Taliban leaders on air. Others, though, are in hiding as they look for ways out of the country, worried about their own safety and their families’ lives.

The change happened rapidly. On Monday, a dozen Taliban members visited Tolo’s Kabul office and seized several government-issued weapons from the station’s security detail.

The Post’s report tried to remain hopeful about a kinder, gentler Taliban, but the reality on the ground is clear that these are the same totalitarians as they were twenty years ago. And their sources are also very clear about what the West just did, too:

Another Afghan journalist told The Post on Monday that she heard the Taliban searching homes in her area. She sent digital photos of her personal documents to a contact abroad before destroying them.

“Everybody is scared right now,” she said in Dari. Many Afghans would want to remain — “this is our homeland” — if the situation weren’t so dire.

“The world has abandoned us,” she said. “The least they can do is help the journalists here who are in danger of losing their lives. Not our livelihoods, but our lives.”

The family of the Deutsche Welle family just learned that the hard way. Perhaps DW and other media outlets can ask joe Biden and Linda Thomas-Greenfield for another “very strongly worded press statement” on their behalf.