February 24th, 2012
An Afghan radio journalist was
beheaded on Tuesday night in the southeast province of Paktika, Afghanistan. AFP quoted a local official as saying that Samid Khan Bahadarzai, 25, had been lured to a meeting with unidentified men hours before his body was found near his home in Urgun, a town close to the Pakistan border. Afghan news website Khaama Press reported that the journalist had worked for Mehman Radio, a local station.
February 15th, 2012
Parviz Safi, a cameramen for state-owned English-language TV station Press TV, was
attacked with acid by three unidentified men on 6 February in the Afghan capital, Kabul. The journalist suffered second-degree burns to his face, but the substance missed his eyes and his life is not in danger. On 18 January last year, Razaq Mamoon, who worked for several media organisations and presented a programme on independent TV station Tolo TV, was also sprayed with acid. He was seriously injured and is still receiving medical treatment abroad.
September 20th, 2011
A journalist was forced to apologise to
Afghan war lords at gun point.
Afghan-American journalist Nabil Miskinyar claims he was picked up for lunch on 12 September by four men, including Najibullah Kabuli, owner of the private Emrooz Television channel. Miskinyar says he was forced to conduct an interview with two guns pointed at him. The journalist, known for his hard-hitting monologues, was told he and his family would be killed if he did not apologise. Miskinyar said in the interview “if I did not say the right things, or if I have attributed false things to these leaders of the resistance, then I apologise to the Afghan people.’”
September 12th, 2011
A BBC stringer who was
killed in Afghanistan in July was shot by a US soldier who mistook him for a suicide bomber during a battle against insurgents,
NATO has said. Releasing the findings of its investigation into the death of
Ahmed Omed Khpulwak, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force
issued a statement expressing its condolences for the killing, but said its forces had complied with the laws of armed conflict and acted reasonably. According to the statement, US forces shot Khpalwak in order to “detonate a suicide vest IED”, after mistaking him for an insurgent.
June 30th, 2011
French journalists, Herve Ghesquiere and Stephane Taponier, have returned home after
18 months captivity in
Afghanistan. The reporter and cameraman for television channel,
France 3, were captured in 2009 while filming in the mountains of Kapisa. The pair were kept in solitary confinement for eight months and locked up for 23 hours a day. A media blackout was imposed on the French media throughout the first few months of their captivity out for “a political reasons and concerns for their safety”.
January 21st, 2011
Afghan police are searching for the men who
threw acid on a prominent Afghan TV reporter and author. Tuesday’s attack on Razaq Mamoon has left his face disfigured. Mamoon is the author of The Footprint of Pharaoh, which criticises Iranian interference in Afghanistan, he has allegedly claimed that his attackers were Iranian agents.
December 9th, 2010
Two journalists were among 50 people killed by suicide bombers on December 6.
Abdul Wanab, from
Express News and Pervez Khan
Waqt TV died and a third journalist Mohib Ali was injured in the attack on an administrative building in the town of Ghanalai, on the border with Afghanistan. The journalists were covering a peace jirga in which local government officials and tribal elders were discussing an anti-Taliban strategy.
October 25th, 2010
By harnessing the internet to expose the hidden mechanics of war, WikiLeaks puts governments on notice — obsessive secrecy cannot be sustained. Emily Butselaar reports
The most interesting element of WikiLeak’s publication of almost 400,000 leaked secret Iraq war files has been the lack of criticism. This time, military claims that the leaks threaten security and will put the lives of coalition troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in danger have been widely ignored.
There is clearly a public interest in the conduct of wars by our armies and governments and the files reveal that the US did — despite earlier denials — record civilian casualties. They also confirmed the existence of the now infamous Frago 242, the 2004 US army order that directed coalition troops not to investigate allegations of abuse unless US forces were involved. Some of the documents detail thousands of incidents of often stomach-turning torture, abuse and molestation. And others demonstrate governments’ excessive reliance on secrecy.
The anodyne nature of many of the documents demonstrates the over-classification of sensitive material. Secrecy rather than transparency is the norm — national security the justification even where that argument has no validity. If governments are to seek some secrets, they must cultivate a greater culture of transparency as the convention. The US Department of Defence has admitted that July’s unauthorised release of the so called war logs — 91,731 classified US military records from the war in Afghanistan — has not resulted in the disclosure of sensitive intelligence sources.
Julian Assange, Wikileaks’ founder and spokesman, and his band of hacker activists set up the whistleblower site in 2006. With its simple “keep the bastards honest” ethos, Wikileaks was carefully designed to be an “uncensorable system for untraceable mass leaking”. It aimed to discourage unethical behaviour by airing governments’ and corporations’ dirty laundry in public, putting their secrets out there in the public realm.
But with its success — and its many exposés — has come criticism. Earlier this year it released a shocking video of a 2007 US attack in Iraq. Alongside the unedited footage it released an edited 17-minute version that critics claimed was misleading. The release and the title they gave it, “Collateral Murder”, marked WikiLeaks’ move from reporting to advocacy: it was actively protesting the war in Afghanistan.
Handwringing began over the site’s move from objectivity. No longer would it be just a repository of raw source documents. Assange expressed surprise that the site had ever been cast as a bastion of impartiality, describing the concept as idiocy. But a politically active stance made it easier for outsiders to attack the site’s integrity. It could no longer be seen as an objective, neutral spokesman, a change of image that may have long-term ramifications.
The site was also damaged by failures in WikiLeaks “harm minimisation” system, the system by which they redact information. When Reporters Without Borders accused Julian Assange of “incredible irresponsibility” after the release of the Afghan War logs, he cited a lack of resources, an argument it is difficult to find sympathy with when the safety of individuals is involved.
For an organisation on a mission for total transparency the organisation is notoriously secretive about its own activity. It maintains its cloak and dagger antics are necessary to protect its sources, but the very questions that WikiLeaks was set up to address, power without accountability or transparency, can be applied to its own operations.
Today’s Independent focuses on internal rows that have been long-rumoured within WikiLeaks amidst claims that the focus on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has subsumed the rest of the organisation’s activities.
It’s easy to forget just how many stories WikiLeaks has broken. Its tremendous success has meant the site has often struggled under the volume of users. It has faced down corrupt governments, investment banks and the famously litigious Church of Scientology, made public top-secret internet censorship lists and broken injunctions — as in the case of the press gag granted to UK solicitors Carter Ruck in the interests of their client, Trafigura.
It’s possible the site will eventually force governments world wide to re-examine concepts of privacy, transparency and secrecy. WikiLeaks is just the vehicle, in the internet age leaks will continue. All governments can do is strive towards a greater culture of transparency if they want to keep their legitimate secrets under wraps.
Emily Butselaar is online editor of Index on Censorship
