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Afghanistan: Government violates media law by closing TV station

Reporters Without Borders — 2010-07-30T11:17:02Z

Reporters Without Borders condemns the Afghan governments latest interference in the media. The cabinet decided on 27 July to close down the privately-owned TV station Emroz for allegedly endangering national unity and to ban two programmes on two other TV stations on the ground that they were contrary to Islamic values.

The government must not under any circumstances violate the media law, which gives the media commission sole decision-making authority when a media commits an offence, Reporters Without Borders said. We call on the government to rescind these decisions and never interfere in the content of Afghan TV stations again.

When it met on 27 July, the cabinet ordered the ministry of culture and information and the attorney general to shut down Emroz, a station launched in August 2006 that is known for taking anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite positions.

Defending the decision, deputy culture and information minister Jalal Norani said it was important to insist on national values and interests.

Emroz owner Najibolah Kabuli described the stations closure as an act of revenge by pro-Iranian pressure groups. He added: Since 2009, our station has been organising a series of demonstrations in various cities against Irans anti-Afghan policies.

Media wars are nothing new in Afghanistan. Media backed by different political parties and foreign countries have been waging a news and information war since 1998. Emroz and Shemshad on the one hand, and Tamadon, a station that supports Afghanistans Shiite leaders, on the other, have been bitter rivals. The rivalry between the media reflects a battle for influence among the countries that support them, above all Iran and Pakistan.

Speaking on condition of anonymity in March 2009, a TV journalist told Reporters Without Borders: In what country can a powerful neighbour fund three TV stations? Irans influence has grown, but so has the influence of Pakistan and the United States.

The cabinet also decided at its 27 July meeting to ban Del and Nadel, a programme broadcast by the privately-owned TV station Yak, and Bazi Bakhat, a programme broadcast by the privately-owned Tolo TV. Both programmes were accused of being anti-Islamic.

The Union of Afghan Journalists and NAI, a press freedom organisation, said in a joint statement said the cabinets decisions could be dangerous for freedom of expression. While not defending the programmes and editorial policies of the three stations, they said it was the job of the media commission and it alone to determine whether a media was guilty of an offence and to take decisions affecting the media.

The charge of being anti-Islamic is one of the most common grounds for censoring media in Afghanistan. Although it lacks any precise definition, it is often used by the authorities to ban TV programmes.

For more information about the press freedom situation in Afghanistan, read the report that Reporters Without Borders released in March 2009: Report of fact-finding mission: Press freedom in free-fall in run-up to presidential election (http://en.rsf.org/afghanistan-report-of-fact-finding-mission-16-03-2009,30588.html)

Afghan journalist freed after being held for 86 days in Iran

Reporters Without Borders — 2008-05-30T08:40:24Z

IRAN

Reporters Without Borders announced the release yesterday of Afghan journalist Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of the monthly Haqoq-e-Zan (Women's Rights), after being held for 86 days in an intelligence ministry prison in the holy city of Qom (150 km southwest of Tehran).

"Nazab was held arbitrarily for three months," the press freedom organisation said. "The conditions were difficult and he was in solitary confinement for most of the time. He has been released conditionally and is not allowed to leave the country. We urge the authorities to drop the charges against him."

A refugee in Iran for the past 24 years, Nazab was arrested on 4 March in Qom, where he lives. The arrest was carried out by intelligence ministry personnel, who had an order issued by a special court for the clergy.

"According to the arrest warrant I was shown, I was accused of having suspicious relations with foreign embassies but the interrogation to which I was submitted was mainly about my journalistic activities and the articles published in Haqoq-e-Zan," Nasab told Reporters Without Borders.

Copies of the resettlement requests he had sent to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which were found during a search of his home, were also used to accuse him of "publicity against the government" and "publication of false information."

Nasab spent 81 of the 86 days in solitary confinement, and suffered kidney and chest pains that were not treated.

World Day Against the Death Penalty

Reporters Without Borders — 2008-04-13T06:16:00Z

On the eve of the 6th World Day Against the Death Penalty tomorrow, Reporters Without Borders would like to highlight the fact that this archaic form of punishment, whose continuing use is a political and human rights outrage, is still being used against journalists and those who defend free speech.

"It would be inappropriate, when talking about the death penalty, to suggest that its use in some cases is more appalling than in others," the press freedom organisation said. "But we want to highlight one of its pernicious aspects, which directly concerns journalists and free expression, with the aim of responding once and for all to those who still hesitate to support calls for the abolition of this irreversible punishment on the grounds that it is only used against the most horrible criminals."

The most emblematic case today is in a country which, paradoxically, is under the surveillance of powerful parliamentary democracies - Afghanistan. Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a young journalist and student, and contributor to the magazine Jahan-e Naw ("New World"), languishes in a Kabul prison cell awaiting the outcome of the interminable appeal proceedings against his conviction on a blasphemy charge.

Despite demonstrations by many fellow Afghan journalists and writers, this young man is still under the sentence of death that was issued by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in January 2008, at the end of a summary trial behind closed doors at which he was not defended by a lawyer.

In just one week's time, on 17 October, he will begin his second year in detention, which in itself is an appalling punishment for someone whose only crime was to have downloaded and kept articles about the role of women in Muslim society. A medical report confirms that he has been tortured while in detention.

A similar case in Iran last year highlighted how the death penalty can be a terrifying tool for silencing dissenting voices. Adnan Hassanpour, a 26-year-old journalist in Iranian Kurdistan who wrote for the now banned weekly Asou and various foreign news media, was arrested on 25 January 2007 and imprisoned in Mahabad (Kurdistan).

After sentencing him to death twice for "subversive activities against national security," the Iranian courts finally decided in September of this year that he could not be regarded as a "mohareb" (enemy of God) and transferred his case to a civil court in Kurdistan. This impassioned young advocate of Kurdish cultural rights is now being held in Sanandaj. He has already gone on hunger strike twice in protest against his prison conditions.

The charge of being "mohareb," a very vaguely defined capital crime, is often used in Iran as a weapon for threatening those who might be tempted to defy the government of the day. The blogger Mojtaba Saminejad, for example, was accused in 2005 of insulting the prophets before finally being acquitted.

Iranians who campaign for the abolition of the death penalty are also liable to the target of systematic repression. The authorities have for years been venting their anger on journalist and abolitionist Emadoldin Baghi, who has often been jailed. He was last arrested on 14 October 2007 after being charged with "propaganda against the regime" and publishing secret government documents "obtained with the help of detainees held for violating the security of special establishments."

He had just founded Guardians of the Right to Life, the first organisation to be formed in Iran with the specific aim of campaigning against the death penalty. The winner of the French republic's human rights prize in 2005, Baghi served a three-year prison sentence from 2000 to 2003 after writing a book about a 1998 wave of murders of intellectuals and journalists, and a column for the daily Neshat defending a modern view of Islam and its relationship to the death penalty.

But the Iranian government is not giving any ground. In fact, the parliament passed an extremely harsh bill on its first reading in July that is intended to "reinforce penalties for crimes against society's moral security." If definitively adopted, this law would be unique in the world, making the "creation of blogs and websites that promote corruption, prostitution or apostasy" punishable by hanging or by "amputation of the right hand and left foot."

Our concerns are not limited to the Muslim world. The Ethiopian authorities jailed the leaders of the main opposition party on charges of high treason and genocide in November 2005 after a wave of rioting and bloodshed was triggered by the announcement that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi's party had won the parliamentary elections.

Around 20 pro-opposition newspaper publishers and editors were also jailed on the same charges. They were all eventually acquitted or pardoned in 2007, but before that, some of them were sentenced to death for what was regarded as an ethnically-motivated coup attempt.

The case of radio journalist and Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu-Jamal in the United States serves as a reminder that capital punishment still has not been abolished in the world's biggest economy. Sentenced to death in 1982 for the fatal shooting of a policeman, Daniel Faulkner - which he denies doing - Abu-Jamal has spent 26 years on death row. A Philadelphia federal appeal court commuted the sentence in March of this year to life imprisonment. The prosecution could still appeal.

Information Ministry and Council of Ulemas mounts offensive against independent broadcaster

Reporters Without Borders — 2008-04-02T08:07:05Z

Yesterday, U.S. president George W. Bush went before a NATO summit, imploring member nations to send more military troops to Afghanistan to "defeat the terrorists." It may be too late. The Afghan government appears to be rife with fundamentalist totalitarians. A young journalist awaits an appeal on his death sentence for possessing documents discussing women in Islam. And now this news about the struggle of Tolo-TV:

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by a campaign being waged by the ministry of information and culture, the lower house of parliament and the Council of Ulemas against privately-owned TV stations, especially Tolo TV, for broadcasting footage of men and women dancing together.

"It is regrettable that, through the ministry of information and culture, the government is supporting a campaign launched by fundamentalists against privately-owned TV stations," the press freedom organisation said. "How does the broadcasting of such images harm Afghan culture?"

Reporters Without Borders added: "We urge information and culture minister Abdulkarim Khoram to take back what he has said and to stop interfering in Afghan television content. We express our full support for Tolo TV, to which we gave an award in 2005 for its commitment to free expression."

The Council of Ulemas and the information and culture ministry announced on 30 March that the broadcasting of some Indian films and TV series, regarded as anti-Islamic, was to be banned by 14 April. The Afghan media received a note (see attached document) from the information and culture ministry supporting these bans. It named three series that TV stations were no longer to broadcast: Kamkam (on the Ariyana television station), Emtahan Zendehghi and Zamane Khosho Ham Haros Bud (on Tolo TV) and Dar Entezar (on Noorin).

The day before, the information and culture ministry issued a release (of which Reporters Without Borders has a copy) condemning a programme the previous day on Tolo TV showing men and women dancing together. This was "against the beliefs and traditions of Afghanistan's Islamic society," the ministry said. A Tolo TV representative told Reporters Without Borders that in the programme (a re-transmission of the "Afghan Oscars"), most of the women had their heads covered, and that the movements of the dancers were "very restrained."

Tolo TV representatives were summoned to appear before the parliament's Media Commission on 30 March at the ministry's request. They argued in their defence that programmes showing dancers were not unusual on Afghan television, including the state TV channel, and that the dance sequence that caused controversy was taken from a film that had been approved by the Afghan film board.

The lower house of parliament (Wolesi Jirga) adopted a resolution yesterday ordering the Afghan media to stop carrying "sensual" images (mobtazal) and saying foreign dancers should no longer be invited to Afghanistan. It also told the media to stop carrying advertising for banks offering loans on which interest is payable. But it postponed the discussion on the proposal to ban all singing and dancing by women on television.

Conservative parliamentarians were very critical of Tolo TV, and former warlord Abdul Rab-Rasoul Sayyaf called for the station to be banned. "Tolo conspires on behalf of foreigners," he said. "I already said this two years ago and no one took me seriously although I provided the government with evidence." Other parliamentarians, including Fawzia Kufi, who represents the province of Badakhshan, condemned these violations of press freedom.

The Council of Ulemas already asked President Hamid Karzai in January to ban Tolo TV and other privately-owned TV stations on the grounds that they were anti-Islamic.

Meanwhile, leading writer and journalist Rahnaward Zaryab appears to have escaped a murder attempt on 29 March when an armed man approaching his home in the Kabul district of Makrooyan was chased away by neighbours.

Two journalists are currently detained in Afghanistan. One is Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, now held in Kabul after being sentenced to death by a court in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The other is Jawed Ahmad, a journalist working for Canadian Television (CTV), who is being held by the US military at Bagram airbase, north of Kabul.

Article from a press release by RSF-Asia