During the recent months, specially during the two three recent weeks, violence against reporters and press activists has had unprecedented increase. During three recent weeks, 15 reporters have been witness of violence against them in different provinces and even they are not safe in the capital of the country.
While the statistics of violence against journalists show an increase of 70 percent during the last year, during the eight months of current year, number of violence has been increased almost more compared to the recent years. During these eight years, five reporters were expired and this number is almost two times more than the numbers on last years.
During a press conference which was held in Afghanistan’s National Union for Journalists (ANUJ) and was participated by representatives from NAI/one of the Afghan press free supporting institutions, while speaking about this issue, they criticized the government, specially Ministry of Culture and Information who are not reacting against such situation.
Sediqullah Tawhidi, Head of Afghanistan’s Media Watch accused the Ministry of Culture and Information for being careless in regards to the future of journalists and said: “Although Ministry of Culture and Information can design and implement plans in order to secure journalists with the support of other governmental institutions, but in fact they don’t feel responsible.”
Though Mohammad Fahim Dashti, the ANUJ Executive Director is appreciating the cooperation of Ministry of Interior and National Security Directorate in preventing violence against reporters, said: “Ministry of Culture and Information has the direct responsibility to create safe and better working opportunities for the journalists and reporters, and this ministry has not only fulfilled this responsibility, the authorities of this ministry are even not raising their voices when reporters face violent behaviors.”
Insisting that the supporting institutions of media and reporters are onto support media with all their capacity and capability and defending their professional and guild rights, Dashti included: “Our message for the reporters and media activist is that wherever and whenever they face any violence, get in touch with us so that we follow up their cases sooner and on serious basis.”
In this conference, the documents indicating the violence against journalists were also shared with the participants.
Authorities of ANUJ say among the 23 violence cases against journalists which have been reported to this union, more than 90% of them have been solved benefitting journalists. According to this union authorities, problems are increasing when these kind of cases are being shared with the Judicial resources, because in the most cases, the country courts are even not assessing such cases.
