Attacks show global dangers for journalists
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EVERY morning as I go to the office and every evening when I return home, all I think of are cars that can be booby-trapped, or of suicide bombers coming out of a crowd,” Afghan photojournalist Shah Marai wrote on his blog in 2016, reflecting on the dismal prospects for his country 15 years after the American invasion.
Marai, who worked his way up from driver and translator to become AFP’s chief photographer in Kabul, was full of anxiety but nonetheless committed to his work.
And there was good reason for this. At least 45 journalists and media workers have been killed in the country since 2001. The past three years have seen an uptick in deadly attacks even though the targeted murders of journalists had declined, according to Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2017 Impunity Index.
Until this week. On Monday, as Marai headed to the scene of a suicide blast with his camera, rushing to the site within minutes of the attack and assuring his colleague on the way that he would take photos and video, his fear came to fruition.
A suicide bomber, disguised as a member of the media, set off his explosives several minutes after the initial explosion in what appeared to be a deliberate attack on journalists and first responders who flocked to the scene. At least nine journalists were killed.
In a separate attack, unidentified gunmen shot dead a BBC Pashto journalist, Ahmad Shah, in Khost province on the border with Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the tactic of targeting journalists who head to the scene is not new. Suicide bombers in Pakistan and Iraq have also targeted journalists in double-suicide attacks, waiting for them to gather at the scene of a bombing before launching another attack.
In 2013, at least two journalists were killed reporting on the aftermath of an explosion in Pakistan, while the year before several Pakistani journalists were injured in a bomb blast apparently targeting media and other first responders to an earlier explosion.
Attackers know journalists will be covering events like explosions, attacks, or vigils, because they are inherently newsworthy. By deliberately targeting them assailants are seeking not only to murder reporters but to send a signal to the broader public: beware.
Monday’s attack was the most deadly day for journalists in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, which is significant for a country where journalists are routinely killed, threatened and attacked for reporting the news.
It is also devastating to Afghanistan’s burgeoning independent media as the country prepares for parliamentary elections scheduled for October.
And it was not just an attack on Afghan journalists, but on the global information network because without journalists, the world will not know what is going on in Afghanistan.
Some of the journalists killed were under 30 years old, and thus part of the next generation of journalists who would be covering their country’s transition and helping to hold those in power to account.
Maharam Durani, a 28-year-old law student who was training to become a journalist, was one of them. She was due to start work on a US-funded RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan weekly woman’s programme on May 15. Instead, she has become one of seven women journalists killed in the country since CPJ began documenting in the early 1990s.
Durani’s death is a blow not only to her family and colleagues, but to young women who aspire to a career in journalism. A 2017 study by the Centre for the Protection of Afghan Women Journalists found the presence of women journalists in Afghanistan has decreased recently, especially over the previous two years, mainly due to insecurity and violence.
One must truly be brave to pursue a journalism career in Afghanistan, where journalists face threats not only from nonstate actors such as Isis and the Taliban, which have claimed responsibility for bombing media organisations over the years, but also from security forces.
Last year Isis killed at least six people in an attack on the Jalalabad office of National Radio Television of Afghanistan (RTA) and killed one and injured many more in a suicide attack on leading Pashto-language Shamshad TV.
It’s hard enough for media organisations to protect themselves, much less their journalists. Like the vast majority of journalists killed each year, the 10 journalists killed just days before 2018 World Press Freedom Day were local journalists, committed to bringing the news of their homeland to the public.
Of the 1 290 journalists killed since CPJ began keeping records in the early 1990s, 1 136 were local journalists. Sadly, it is nearly guaranteed that no one will be brought to justice, as nine in ten killers of journalists go free.
Afghanistan has maintained one of the worst rates of impunity in journalist murders for nearly a decade, and no doubt the failure to address high rates of impunity in violence against journalists has contributed to making journalists targets of these terrible attacks.
The Afghan government must respond swiftly and decisively by launching an investigation into these brutal murders and ensuring that those who ordered the suicide bombing and killing of the BBC’s Shah are not allowed to roam free.
The international community, including the UN, should support these efforts. Targeting the media is a dire threat to holding free and fair elections and undermines Afghanistan’s attempts to bring peace and stability.
The only way to pay tribute to Marai, Durani, Shah and all of brave journalists who have lost their lives, is for the state to take decisive and meaningful action to turn the tide on impunity and signal that the murder of journalists will no longer be tolerated.