Slain Afghan journalists hailed on Press Freedom Day

Afghanistan’s slain journalists were remembered on World Press Freedom Day Thursday, days after the deadliest attack on the country’s media since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Ten journalists, including Agence France-Presse chief photographer Shah Marai, were killed in assaults on Monday, underscoring the dangers faced by the media as the wartorn country slips deeper into violence.

“Afghanistan’s journalists are among the bravest in the world,” said Omar Waraich, Amnesty International’s deputy director for South Asia.

“Working in some of the most difficult conditions, they have faced threats, intimidation and violence for simply doing their jobs.”

A double suicide blast in Kabul on Monday, claimed by the Islamic State group, left 25 people dead including Marai and eight other journalists, while a BBC reporter was killed in a separate attack in eastern Khost province.

Media workers from Tolo News, 1TV, Radio Free Europe and Mashal TV were also among the dead in Kabul.

The deadly assaults have shaken Afghanistan’s tight-knit journalist community. Most of them are close friends as well as colleagues who look out for one another as they work in an increasingly hostile environment. But they remain defiant, with dozens of them returning to the site of the Kabul blast hours later Monday in protest.

“World Press Freedom Day reminds me and my colleagues of the importance of reporting – reporting for a vibrant democracy,” Parwiz Kawa, editor-inchief of the Hasht-e-Subh Daily newspaper, told AFP.

1TV editor-in-chief Abdullah Khenjani said Thursday was a “mourning day” for the broadcaster, which lost a reporter and cameraman in Monday’s blast.