By Freshta Ghani
In addition to facing threats, torture, and arrest by the Taliban, journalists are also the victims of deadly blasts. On Monday, March 11, an award ceremony to honour 25 journalists ahead of National Journalists Day in Mazar-e-Sharif was targeted by an explosion.
According to the venue, the Tabian Cultural Centre, three people, including two journalists, were killed and 37 people, including 15 journalists, were injured in the explosion, though the Afghan Journalists’ Centre stated that 19 journalists had been wounded.
Journalist Munir Ahmad Bahir, head of Azad Radio in Mazar-e-Sharif, was one of the journalists invited to that celebratory event. He arrived at 10 a.m. and said that it hadn’t started when the explosion occurred. “I heard a terrible sound and a thick fire with smoke came towards me and threw me about three meters away and I fainted,” he tells Zan Times.
He doesn’t remember how long he was unconscious, but when he opened his eyes, he was bloodied with face and leg wounds. Bahir was still lying among the wounded and dead. Fearing a second explosion, he limped out of the building, noticing that no ambulances had yet arrived to take away the wounded. “I went into the mosque that was near this centre, washed my face, and called one of my friends whose office was near the Tabian Cultural Centre that I was injured and come and take me,” he says. Bahir’s friends took him to the hospital.
The Tabian Cultural Centre is led by conservative Shia clerics whose beliefs have historically been close to the Iranian clerical regime. However, since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the centre’s clerics have positioned themselves as defenders of the Taliban regime. Although ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing a day later, claiming that it targeted the gathering because of the presence of Shias and journalists, many details of the deadly bombing and aftermath are still not clear. Officials of the Tabian Cultural Centre say that it is still under investigation by the Taliban.
Another journalist wounded in the attack is Rohullah Rouhani, a reporter with Shamshad TV. He sustained a serious head injury and one of his eardrums is damaged. In the audio message sent to Zan Times, Rouhani speaks of the venue’s lack of security: “There was no security guard at the gate of this cultural centre. We were guided inside without a body search or a search of our belongings.”
This lack of security is confirmed by Mohammad Atif Arian, a reporter for Agence France-Press. “When we entered the building of the Tabian Cultural Centre, they did not ask me who I was, what I did, and why we came?” he tells Zan Times.
In total, Zan Times spoke to six journalists who were injured in the explosion. All confirmed that they were not checked when they entered the Tabian Cultural Centre. However, Seyed Sajjad Mousavi, head of the Tabian Cultural Centre’s public relations department, says that the March 11 event was organized in coordination with the Taliban’s Directorate of Information and Culture and the Taliban’s security branches. He said that while the centre could not buy an electronic security gate due to financial problems, it did assign a guard to check the attendees. “One person would open the gate for reporters, I would personally escort them inside, and another person was assigned to do the searches,” he said. Mousavi emphasizes that “there has been no shortcoming in safety and security precautions.”
Despite repeated calls from Zan Times, Abdul Nafee Takkur, the spokesperson of the Taliban Interior Ministry, not did not provide details about the security measures for the event, but, in a short phone conversation, directed this Zan Times reporter to his Twitter page, on which he had a tweet posted on March 11 that stated, “Today at 11:30 in the Police District 2 of Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh province, in the Tabian Cultural Centre, which belongs to the Shia brothers, an explosion took place due to an implanted mine. Unfortunately, a total of eight people, including five journalists and three children were injured.”
Speaking to Zan Times, Zia Boumia, head of the South Asian Journalists Association, says that the explosion has raised many unanswered questions and requires a comprehensive and well-rounded investigation. “How were the explosives moved inside the Tabian Cultural Centre?” he ponders. “Why were there no safety measures to protect journalists? And the non-attendance of the centre’s officials on time and day of the explosion also increases doubts.”
Life has become increasingly grim for journalists. According to a report by NAI Supporting Open Media In Afghanistan, there were more than 7740 journalists working in 526 media outlets in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power in August 2021. That number has fallen to fewer than 2000 journalists in 228 media outlets. Nearly 70 percent of male journalists and 95 percent of female journalists have lost their jobs, of which 1,800 have left Afghanistan while the rest are either unemployed or doing whatever work they can find, including manual labour.
Those still working in the media sector are enduring difficult conditions, including threats, beatings, illegal arrests, detention, and torture. Reports of those being arrested and brutalized have dramatically increased since the Taliban regained power, including Etilaatroz journalists Taqi Daryabi and Nemat Naqdi, who were tortured for covering women’s demonstrations.
In the last 12 months, the Afghanistan Journalists Centre reports that at least 237 incidents of violations – including 113 cases of threats or mistreatment, 94 arrests, and eight incidents of physical violence – of the freedom of media and journalists have been recorded in Afghanistan, more than double the 117 cases recorded in the previous year.
Journalists are losing hope that things will get better. Azizur Rahman Abram, a Tolo News reporter in Balkh province, says that the explosion at the Tabian centre took away his motivation to continue working. “If the situation continues like this, we will see that no journalist will be able to continue reporting on what is going on.”
Kreshma Fakhri has also contributed to this report.
Correction: In the tweet by Abdul Nafee Takkur, the word “injured” was incorrectly translated from Pashto to English to “killed.”
