During the news coverage of suicide bombing incident today in Jalalabad seven reporters from different media outlets were violently beaten up by security forces. Some of those reporters are saying that in addition to the insults some of their equipmentwas also broken or seized.
They also claim that the security forces didn’t let them take pictures from the incident area.
Nengarhar province security forces have had no comments yet, but an official from Interior Ministry has anonymously acknowledged the incident and said that an investigation will be conducted regarding this issue.
Defending institutions of freedom of speech, media and reporters condemn the behavior of security forces regarding reporters and ask the high ranking officials of Interior and defense ministries and national directorate of security to investigate this case.
Mr. Sayad Muhammad Ali Redwani, spokesperson of Afghanistan National Journalists’ Union (ANJU) said: “It’s not the very first time that reporters are facing such behaviors. The problem is that the officials do not prevent the repetition of such incidents.”
Officials from ANJU say that in a joint meeting of leading members of Afghanistan Journalists’ Federation (AJF) and spokesmen of security establishments two month before, means of preventing such incidents were discussed.
AJF is recently established and has 9 member organizations which are working to support and protect journalists.
Mr. FahimDashty CEO of ANJU and member of AJF leadership, who was present in the meeting with security establishment, said: “we had specific suggestions to security establishments in order to prevent these incidents. For instance establishing a team of security personal who will provide reporters the opportunity to cover the suicide attacks and bombing incidents.”
But recently Jalalabad incident showed that security establishments have not taken practical pace regarding this issue yet.
