Afghanistan: Sharp rise in violence against journalists in 2013

Afghanistan remains an insecure country for reporters, where they are subjected to threats from state and nonstate actors, besides facing hurdles in access to information

Nai Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan (NSPMA) on Monday released its annual report about violence against Afghan journalists, reporting of 76 cases of violence in 2013. The cases including 3 murders, 34 cases of beating, 6 arrests, 7 cases of injuries and 26 cases of threats and insult have been registered by NSPMA administration. The perpetrators mostly were the police, government officials, militants, ordinary people and private sector.

Head of Nai Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan, Sediqullah Tawhidi, addressing a press conference said that in 2012, 69 cases of violence against journalists had been registered in NSPMA, but in 2013, 76 different cases including 3 murders have been registered, a rise of 10% in violence against journalists.

He tied the increase in violence against journalists to the inertia and negligence of relevant government organizations in investigating cases and prosecuting perpetrators. Tawhidi termed one of challenges of reporters the internal problems of media and said that most of the contracts of TV channels were against Labor Law, and the owner of private channels acted like taskmaster every time they wanted relieved their reporters adding that in this issue the Ministry of Information and Cultural hasn’t done any legal measures for resolution of the reporters problem in the media. “Influence of the media’s owners marred the standard work of medias also using of media as a tool to overcome in their political and tribal ambitions is seriously going on it created some tribal struggles, and accusing of medias by some government bodies also brought arrange of concern over medias” said Tawhidi. He asked the Ministry of Information and Cultural to send the occupation regulation to the minister council for conferment so that the current job immunity of reporter and media owner’s problems should be solved.

Tawhidi expressed his concern over delaying of confirmation of Access to Information Law and said that if the concerned law is not confirmed by the parliament the reporters may face with various challengeable issues during providing investigative reports asked the parliament to confirm the Access Information Law as soon as possible so that the people profit the freedom of speech in the country.

“The parliament of the country should confirm the Access to Information Law before presidential and provincial election till the reporters provide complete reports according to its principles” said Tawhidi. According to increasing of violences toward newsmen in the country, Nia Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan is not optimistic about the secure future of reporter’s activities in 2014 asking the responsible organs to take serous measure for securing of reporters in the country. According to report of NSPMA in 2012 four television satiations, 11 newspapers, 24 weekly letters, two monthly letters, one magazine, started to activities.

Head of NSPMA said that so for there are 100 televisions network 200 private and government Radio stations, 200 print Medias and 12 Agencies, it shows that media are expanding in spite of too many problems in the country.