The
fatal shooting of senior Afghan broadcast journalist Mohammad Zubair Khaksar on
Friday and the beating of freelance reporter Yahya Jawahari on Sunday further
raise concerns for the safety of Afghan journalists, the Committee to Protect
Journalists said today. The attacks follow a suicide bombingattack on employees of the Kabul station Tolo
TV that killed at least seven people.
"Afghan
journalists have long been under the gun, but the pressure on them is mounting
as the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate," said
Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia program coordinator. "The government has made
promises to address the situation, but it must join with media owners and
Afghan journalists' organizations to find an effective method of reversing the
hostile environment in which journalists and media houses are forced to
operate."
No
one has claimed responsibility for fatally shooting Khaksar, a reporter for
Afghanistan's national television and radio broadcaster who also worked as a
cultural adviser to the provincial governor in Nangahar, as he returned from a
friend's house on the evening of January 29, according to press reports. The "Voice of the Caliphate," an
unregistered radio station operated by a group claiming fealty to the Islamic
State group, had threatened attacks on journalists in Nangahar and neighboring
regions, The Associated Press reported.
In
a separate attack on Sunday night, unidentified armed men sacked the
house of freelance reporter Yahya Jawahari in Mazr-i-Sharif,
according to a local media report.Jawahari was severely beaten. No one
claimed responsibility for the attack, and the motive remains unclear,
according to Afghanistan's Khaama Press news agency.
While CPJ research shows that it is rare for those
responsible for killing Afghan journalists to be punished, on January 22 Afghan forces said they had arrested eight members of a
Taliban-related group on suspicion of out the January 20 suicide attackin Kabul that killed at least seven employees from the
independent station Tolo TV. The victims were part of Tolo's entertainment
division, not its news team. The Taliban had openly threatened to
target the station after it reported allegations of summary executions, rape,
and kidnappings by Taliban fighters during the battle for the northern city of
Kunduz in Octobercpj
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