Afghanistan: Attack on Journalists Threatens Media Freedom - Human Rights Watch

Journalists Face Escalating Intimidation and Violence
(New York) ­– Anti-government insurgency groups should immediately stop intentionally targeting civilians, Human Rights Watch said today. The January 20 suicide attack on a minibus in Kabul transporting journalists affiliated with Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s 24-hour news channel, was an atrocity designed to undermine Afghanistan’s still-fragile media freedom.

Both the Taliban and an individual who claims to represent a group that affiliates with the Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed seven journalists from the entertainment channel Tolo TV and its production wing, and injured 25 others, including bystanders. Human Rights Watch is not able to independently corroborate these claims. A Pashto-language Taliban statement described the bombing as “revenge” for alleged “false allegations” against the insurgency group. The statement explicitly listed both Tolo TV and its news channel rival 1TV as “military targets” for allegedly serving as “informational warfare tools of the American and Crusading forces.”

“The targeting of journalists reflects a depraved strategy to make media freedom a casualty of the ongoing conflict,” said Patricia Gossman, senior Afghanistan researcher. “Designating journalists and other civilians as ‘military targets’ does not make them so, and deliberately attacking them constitutes a war crime.” - Read More at the HRW

Afghanistan: Attack on Journalists Threatens Media Freedom