The Afghan government on Wednesday threatened to expel foreign journalists who violate a ban on reporting Taliban attacks during nation-wide elections and close local media outlets that do the same. The order was issued by the national security council, an umbrella for security agencies, and made in the national interest, foreign ministry spokesman Ahmad Zahir Faqiri told AFP.
Media outlets were free to cover polling Thursday, when 17 million Afghans are set to vote for a president for only the second time, but reports on violence or attacks were "forbidden", he said. "This is an extraordinary situation and all the media must obey the decision," he said of Afghanistan's first blanket ban on media since the fall of the repressive Taliban in 2001.
"Local agencies will be closed and international journalists will be kicked out" if they violate the order, he said. His words clarified a statement on Tuesday that drew fierce criticism from Afghan journalists, who are also under intense pressure from the Taliban to publish threats against voters as part of an anti-election campaign.
The bloody Taliban campaign escalated on Wednesday when gunmen stormed a bank building and fought pitched battles with police, making good on promises to sow fear ahead of the vote. Afghan and international journalists, who have flooded into Afghanistan to cover the vote, have reported being harassed and even beaten by security forces while trying to report on such incidents.
The office of the senior UN envoy based in Afghanistan contacted the foreign ministry to "ask for clarification or a withdrawal" of the ban, said spokesman Adrian Edwards. "The only grounds for restrictions under Afghan law are related to incitement to violence. The Independent Election Commission regulations on media are clear that incitement goes against the election law," he said.
"In this instance, very clearly it is hard to see how an election can function properly without the media doing their job." Calling the ban unconstitutional, Rahimullah Samander, president of the Afghanistan Independent Journalists' Association, said: "Journalists will ignore the ban." "It is a democratic day, a very important day for our independence. This type of ban does not sit well with democratic principles." The US embassy in Kabul also criticised the move.
"We believe that free media reporting is directly linked to the credibility of the elections and continue to support the freedom of the press and responsible reporting," it said. The foreign ministry statement issued on Tuesday was in both English and local language Dari, though the wording in Dari was much stronger than the English, which simply "requested" media refrain from reporting violence from an hour before polls open until four hours after they close.
In Dari, however, the statement said "reporting on any possible terrorist attacks is strongly prohibited". Samander, whose organisation has 2,500 members, said: "We have nothing in our constitution, media law or election law about banning such coverage coming directly from the Afghan government." Without access to information about attacks people would be incapable of informed decisions about going to vote, he said, effectively making the media collusive in exacerbating the dangers they faced.
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