Qasim Muzafari of the Bidar Daily newspaper in Balkh province and Jamshid Hakak of Asia TV in Herat have both experienced the sometimes deadly occupational hazards of Afghan journalism. On August 26 unidentified attackers stabbed Muzafari, who is hospitalized in critical condition. On May 8, a policeman in Herat attacked Hakak after a verbal dispute, inflicting skull and facial injuries that required his hospitalization.
Muzafari and Hakak aren’t alone. On August 27, the nongovernmental media freedom advocacy group Afghan Journalists Safety Committee (AJSC) released statistics that indicated that 39 Afghan journalists had been victims of violence or threats of violence in the first six months of 2015. One reporter was killed and 23 were beaten or otherwise assaulted. The AJSC attributed the majority of those incidents – 28 of the 39 – to Afghan government authorities.
Those statistics are dismaying, but not surprising. Human Rights Watch has documented increasing intimidation and violence against Afghan journalists from both government figures and private parties over the past two years. Those incidents, combined with a lack of government protection and waning international support, are jeopardizing media freedom in Afghanistan. The Afghan media advocacy organization Nai stated that 2014 had been the most violent year on record for journalists in Afghanistan, with attacks up by 64 percent from 2013.
While AJSC attributes 72 percent of violence and threats against journalists from January to June 2015 to government authorities, the media also face threats from the Taliban, who explicitly threatened in a December 13, 2014 statement to attack any journalists seen as supporting “Western values.” In December, Afghanistan’s chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah, pledged decisive action to protect journalists from attack and to prosecute those responsible for such abuses. Those 28 incidents of threats and violence by government authorities against journalists in the first six months of 2015 are a poignant reminder of the dangerous gap between the government’s rhetoric in support of media freedom and its failure to back those words with action.
