Press freedom getting worse in Afghanistan - group

Press freedom has become worse in Afghanistan and threats against Afghan journalists have risen in recent years, a media watchdog said on Thursday, urging the government to free a reporter jailed for 20 years for blasphemy. Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for press freedom, said they found progress and development has stalled in Afghanistan after U.S. and Afghan-led forces in 2001 toppled the Taliban, who had banned filming and taking of images among their other restrictions. Threats against Afghan journalists were mostly in the form of attacks or kidnappings by Taliban insurgents and criminal gangs, the group told a news conference in Kabul. But they were also concerned about threats posed to Afghan journalists by officials of the Western-backed Afghan government and a series of cases by NATO-led forces that kept journalists from doing their jobs properly. Some journalists were prevented by their employees from reporting freely about developments in their country, the Paris-based organisation said. "Press freedom in Afghanistan is getting worse in recent years and it is the government's responsibility ... to reverse this worrying trend," Jean-Francois Julliard, the head of Reporters Without Borders, told reporters. Wrapping up a week-long trip to Afghanistan, the group said "threats against Afghan journalists are becoming diverse". Two Afghan journalists were killed and some 50 were either threatened or attacked in 2008 alone, Julliard said. Most parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, which face growing Taliban attacks and operations by foreign forces, were too risky for journalists to work in and those areas suffered from a "black hole" of information. During its meetings with government officials, the group pushed for the freedom of Pervez Kambakhsh who was jailed for 20 years for talking about women's role in Islam and for printing an article from the Internet that was seen as blasphemous, Julliard said.