Opinion: Afghanistan blasts are an attack on press freedom

In a double suicide attack in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, one of the attackers mingled with reporters — and detonated the explosives. It was a calculated attack on press freedom, says DW's Sandra Petersmann.

At least nine reporters are dead, killed on the job. Killing civilians is a war crime, but who cares about such laws in places like Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo? On the Afghan battlefield, too, targeted attacks on civilians have become part of everyday life. 

Civilians are tortured and killed to demoralize the population, to make them docile and to silence them. Journalists are civilians, and when they are silenced, democracy itself is endangered.

Growing media sector seen as threat
According to eyewitness reports, the second attacker in Kabul carried a camera and pretended to be a reporter, mingling with the actual journalists reporting on the first explosion — the same journalists who risk their lives every single day to give the victims of the Afghanistan war a face and a voice. - Read More

Opinion: Afghanistan blasts are an attack on press freedom - DW