Two Afghan journalists have been reportedly killed a few days ago. According to Afghanistan’s Free Media Watch, violence against journalists increased by 10 percent in 2020 after 11 journalists were killed.
Afghanistan’s Free Media Watch says that it recorded 130 incidents of violence against journalists in 2020, up from 115 in 2019.
Aliyas Dayee, a 33-year-old reporter for Radio Liberty and member of the Afghan Sports Journalists Federation (ASJF), was killed in southern Helmand province when a bomb attached to his car detonated.
A month later, on December 10, Sports Journalist Malala Maiwand was killed by unidentified gunmen in Nangarhar on her way to work. Maiwand is also not the first in her family to be targeted. Five years ago, her mother, also an activist, was killed by unknown gunmen.
” A brave, top-notch journalist with open eyes,” that’s how Aziz Tassal, director of the Kabul Press Club, described 26-year-old Malalai Maiwand.
While the Afghan government condemned the killings as ‘utterly despicable’ and thinks that the Taliban has been behind the majority of attacks on journalists, the Taliban denied that it was connected to the killings.
In 2021, the situation has not changed. On January 1, Bismillah Adel Aimaq became the fifth journalist to lose his life in the past two months. These killings have raised many concerns as journalists can no longer work freely. The incidents of violence against journalists and civil society activists have forced them to quit their jobs, a problem that harshly affects female Journalists in the provinces.
Afghan rights campaigners and pro-free media figures have also been targeted in a new and worrying trend that has drawn condemnation from the UN, Nato, and the European Union. Increasing violence against journalists in Afghanistan makes the country one of the world’s most dangerous for the press.