(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: 13 November 2001 – 13 November 2002: The press freedom situation one year after the fall of the Taliban One year after the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, 150 publications are being sold on the streets of the city. Electronic media projects are springing up […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
13 November 2001 – 13 November 2002: The press freedom situation one year after the fall of the Taliban
One year after the flight of the Taliban from Kabul, 150 publications are being sold on the streets of the city. Electronic media projects are springing up and dozens of journalists are taking advantage of the various forms of training established by international organisations.
The change is radical. After five years of Taliban domination, which had turned Afghanistan into “a country without news or pictures” (according to a Reporters Without Borders report in September 2000), the Afghan press today enjoys “unprecedented freedom,” says editor Fahim Dashty of Kabul Weekly, the first privately-owned newspaper to reappear after the departure of the Taliban.
However, this freedom has been achieved amid attempts to impose controls by the new government, which for the most part has its origins in the Northern Alliance. Furthermore, press freedom is still hampered 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.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) sent a fact-finding mission to Afghanistan (Kabul and Jalalabad) from 24 to 29 October 2002 to look into the press freedom situation there. Reporters Without Borders’ mission report assesses the first year of President Hamid Karzai’s administration.
For the full text of the Reporters Without Borders mission report, see www.rsf.org.
