Afghanistan

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its affiliate the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) in condemning the arrest of a US-based Afghan journalist without charge on Tuesday, June 17. Khalid Hadi Haidari, the editor-in-chief of Benawa.com, a Pashto language website established in 2004 covering human rights, freedom of speech, civil rights and related issues in...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) in calling on Afghanistan authorities to speed up the procedure for the release of a Pakistani TV journalist being detained in Afghanistan since April 22, 2014. Faizullah Khan, a reporter for ARY News TV based in Karachi, was detained by an Afghan security agency on the Pakistan/Afghanistan...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins the Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA) in condemning the detention of a journalist without charge. Syed Rahman Bekore, a member of the AIJA and a local reporter stationed at Kunar province for the Waqt News Agency was arrested on April 27 along with a Deutsche Welle reporter Abdullah Nezami and another local in Jalalabad...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the Associated Press was killed and a reporter from the news agency was wounded by a police officer in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, according to news reports. Anja Niedringhaus, 48, a photographer who had covered numerous conflicts, and Kathy Gannon, 60, the reporter, were shot in Khost Province in eastern Afghanistan, where they had traveled to cover...

A police officer in the remote town of Khost, near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, reportedly shot and killed one foreign journalist Friday and seriously wounded another. Veteran AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus, a German national, was killed in the attack and veteran reporter, Kathy Gannon, a Canadian national, was seriously injured. According to BCC News, Gannon was being given medical...

Sardar Ahmad, a senior reporter for Agence France-Presse's Kabul bureau, was killed in an attack on Thursday night, press freedom organisations have reported. Four gunmen stormed the Serena Hotel in Kabul during Nowruz celebrations, which marks the start of the Afghan and Persian new year. The assailants killed nine, including Ahmad, members of his family including his wife and two children; a...

A Swedish journalist was shot and killed in Kabul on Tuesday, Reuters news agency reported. Nils Horner, 52, was gunned down in a neighborhood populated by western NGOs, embassies and journalists. It’s the same area where 21 people, mostly foreigners, were killed when a Lebanese restaurant was attacked in January. Horner had been waiting outside a Lebanese restaurant with his driver and...

Ahamad Omid Khpalwak, a reporter for the BBC and the Afghan news agency Pajhwok, was killed July 28 during Taliban attacks on several buildings in Tarin Kot, the capital of the southern province of Oruzgan. Khpalwak was in one of the targeted buildings, the provincial headquarters of the national radio and TV station. “We offer our condolences to Khpalwak’s family and friends,” Paris-based press...

Riven by conflicts between influential groups, Afghanistan is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists. The Taliban, politicians and religious leaders are all guilty of press freedom violations and attacks on journalists. The violations take many forms including threats, physical attacks, arbitrary detentions, abusive trials and convictions, and kidnapping. The violence against...

French journalists Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier and their Afghan interpreter Reza, who were abducted by a Taliban group on December 29, 2009 in the northeastern province of Kapisa while doing a report for the French TV station France 3, were released June 29. Kapisa governor Abdol Hakim Akhonzadeh, who was reached in the town of Tagab, told Reporters Without Borders that the journalists...