Media representatives have been attending a meeting which was held by the Senate complaints commission, to complain on the minister of information and culture for his illegal practice and violation of the media law. In the meeting a petition have been presented to the Senate members in which carried over sixty signatures by chief editors of media organizations and Heads of Media supporting NGOs and Unions.
Faheem Dashty executive Director of Afghanistan's National journalist's union said:
It's been four years that minister of information and culture has been breaking the med law and refused to implement main articles of this law.
Dashty included, despite of sending many official letters to Presidential office ,ministry of justice, Parliament, Supreme Court, Attorney general and holding media sessions through discussions in televisions, also through meeting With minister of information and culture, we have tried to convince him to accept all media law. But still the efforts were not proved fruitful.
Seediqullah Tawhidi,Head of media watch, also emphasized on the repeated violation of media law by information and culture minister , he added that State run TV has to converse to the public media based on the media law, But still minister of culture has control over this TV. Assignment of two journalists in the media high council by culture minister indicates another violation of the media law, according to the media law the assigned journalists must have been elected from the mass media institutions.
The members of complaints commission of Senate attentively listened to all complaints, Dr Zulmia Zabuli head of C.C of Senate, have promised that he will compel the culture minister to implement the media law. He added that, we will demand him to be present in a hearing session of this commission and respond to complaints in the presence of parliament members and media representitives.
Zabuli said in response to a question that if culture minister refuses to be present in the complaints commission of Senate for replication, is there any other option to put pressure on him to implement the media law?
we will confer to attorney general and Supreme Court to consider the complaints against culture minister.
Media representatives called for rapid cancellation of illegal complaints commission of media, but also demanded for creation of legal media commission based on code 42-43 of media law and call for persecution of culture minister for committed of repeatedly violation of media law.
Faeem Dashty said, we will not only content for the cancelation of illegal "media complaints commission" and creation of legal mass media commission, but also strongly demand the information and culture minister as the illegal head of media complaints commission and its members to be summoned to the Supreme Court.
According to Dashty, Head of this illegal commission and its members should be asked based on which law they have been operating in the past four years and have been receiving the salaries and other privileges from the public funds.
