Rights body condemns violence against journalists

A local Afghan rights body supporting free media in Afghanistan on Monday condemned the beating of two journalists by officials in the western province of Herat and called on the government to investigate the incident. “A freelance journalist from Herat, Reza Shair Mohammadi, was beaten up by police in the Shar-e-Naw district of Herat, on Friday, 10 February, during the second day of confrontation between Shia and Sunni [groups],” Nai - a group funded by the European Union (EU) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - said in a statement. Other reports said that Ehsan Sarwaryar, a journalist working for Pajhwok Afghan news, was also beaten up by provincial police on the same day in the Charahi-e-Mostofiat area of the city near the office of the governor, the NAI stated in its press release. When contacted by IRIN, Sarwaryar had this to say about the incident: ”Police beat me on my head, taking my camera, satellite phone and tape recorder. The security forces of the governor are pursuing me, so I have been changing my location each day.” The police are denying the incident even took place. “This allegation is completely baseless. We have very friendly relations with all journalists in our province,” Nisar Ahmad Paikar, chief of police in Herat, said. The Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) had earlier warned that free media had been under considerable pressure in Herat, where a prominent female poet, Nadia Anjuman, 25, was killed after a serious assault in her home in November. The province was the most dangerous in all of Afghanistan to be a journalist in 2005, the AIJA said in its annual report. Freedom of the press has been a contentious issue in post-Taliban Afghanistan. In December 2004, Abdul Hamid Mobarez, former deputy minister of information and culture, resigned in protest over what he described as the ministry's "censorship of the media."