(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed its concern about a wave of repression aimed at the independent media in the Herat region of Afghanistan. The organisation has called on provincial Governor Ismael Khan to stop abuses of authority and violence against journalists in the region. Ahmed Shah Behzad, Radio Free Afghanistan’s correspondent in Herat, was expelled […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed its concern about a wave of repression aimed at the independent media in the Herat region of Afghanistan. The organisation has called on provincial Governor Ismael Khan to stop abuses of authority and violence against journalists in the region.
Ahmed Shah Behzad, Radio Free Afghanistan’s correspondent in Herat, was expelled from the western Afghan city by Governor Khan on 24 March 2003, a few days after local security forces physically attacked him. Most of the city’s journalists have gone on strike to protest repeated attacks on press freedom in the province.
“It is a pity that Herat now has curbs on free expression similar to those imposed during Taliban rule,” the organisation said in a letter to Khan, urging him to allow Behzad to return to the city as soon as possible. Radio Free Afghanistan is a branch of the United States-government funded Radio Free Europe.
On 24 March, local security chief Nasim Alawi told Behzad to leave the province the next day and banned the journalist from living in the region. About a dozen correspondents for international radio stations, including Voice of America correspondent Massod Hasanzada and BBC correspondent Mohammad Qazizada, then stopped work in protest and went to Kabul to tell the authorities about the harassment to which they are regularly subjected.
Several local publications, including the weekly “Takasus” and the monthly “Shugufa”, also joined the protest movement, which called on President Hamid Karzai to intervene in order to protect press freedom in Herat.
Herat-born Behzad was physically attacked on 19 March while covering the opening of the independent Afghan Human Rights Commission’s Herat office. Governor Khan took offence to the questions Bezhad was putting to officials at the event, especially Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali. He insulted the journalist and ordered him to leave the building.
Once outside, Bezhad was hit in the face by security chief Alawi and then beaten up by Khan’s henchmen. He was taken to a police station for interrogation and finally released six hours later, after Jalali, a former head of Voice of America’s Pashto-language service, intervened.
Two days later, Khan criticised media coverage of human rights in Herat and said the province’s journalists were no different than those who had backed the Soviet occupiers. He warned that “they will meet the same end.”
Pressure on the media in Herat has increased in recent months. The authorities shut down the privately-owned Mutbai Aslami printers in February, preventing the publication of several independent publications. On 1 March, a religious decree banned the public broadcast of satellite television programmes and foreign films, on the grounds that they might encourage immorality and advocate taboo behaviour. The sale and advertising of foreign films and posters about the films was also banned.
In a November 2002 report entitled “Press freedom one year after the fall of the Taliban”, RSF said that the situation was “still troubling in certain provinces such as Herat, where governors and warlords control almost all the news media and sometimes use force to muzzle journalists who criticise their power. The central government seems for the most part unable to stop these abuses, which have rarely been denounced by the United Nations.”
