President issues new decree on impunity of media outlets

President Ashraf Ghani has issued a new decree on impunity of media employees and facilitate the media activities.

The recent decree of President Ghani obliges the ministries of information and technology, justice and the Independent Administrative Reform Commission to prepare a draft that access to information and privacies can be separated.

According to the law, the cases of violation media just review by media commission and even the general attorney does not have the authority to directly review the cases.

“All media violations will be tracked by the commission that formed according to the law and no other institutions can directly investigate the cases,” said Sayed Zafar Hashemi, deputy spokesman of President.

President Ghani has also demanded to make a report on addressing all cases of journalists murders in the past 15 years and to be finalized as soon as possible.

“We welcome President’s new decree and some articles of this issue can be very helpful for us,” said Rahimullah Samandar, member of Afghanistan Journalists Federation.

The Afghanistan Journalists Federation says that recently threats against media employees have increased and the government must take serious measures for preventing them.

Although Afghnistan’s national unity government has taken measures designed to improve freedom of information, including dissolving the commission for the verification of press offences and adopting a law on access to information, journalists are increasingly the targets of acts of violence and intimidation.

Journalists have paid a high price in Afghanistan since 2001 that most of the murder cases are still unpunished.

Most of the slain journalists were directly killed by the Taliban, who are waging a war opposed to the Afghan people’s desire for peace and democracy. Afghanistan’s recent history has clearly shown that peace is impossible without justice.