TOLO TV Lashes Out Against New Afghani Media Restrictions

KABUL, April 23: The
Afghani privately owned network TOLO TV has teamed with the Afghan National
Journalists Union to call on the international community to help project media
freedom in the country, after authorities called for the ban of five Indian soap
operas.

The Ministry of
Information and Culture recently moved to ban the broadcast of a number of
popular Indian serials, after Afghanistan’s influential religious clerics
accused the shows of being “un-Islamic.”

A statement issued by TOLO
TV maintains that the ministry “bypassed appropriate legal channels” in issuing
the ban. The statement continued: “Whilst other stations have bowed to this
pressure, there is a consensus among the independent stations that this order
is illegal. In the interests of supporting a free media, TOLO TV will continue
to broadcast its programs. TOLO TV is Afghan owned and operated and has always
broadcast within the boundaries of our media laws and respected the values of
our Islamic society.”

The network maintains that
the shows in question are “all family oriented and conservative; their
universal popularity with our audiences should provide any commonsense test of
such. The Ministry’s sudden interest in them, after years of broadcast, is more
in line with hobbling the development of free media and debate in Afghanistan.
The fact that there are elections in 2009 should be lost on no one when
assessing what is motivating the Ministry’s actions.”

In an open letter to the
international media community, the journalists union and TOLO TV state that the
Ministry’s ruling is “against the Constitution of Afghanistan, Mass Media Laws
of Afghanistan and against the principles of freedom of speech and democracy.
As such, the decision has no legal weight or authority.”

The two parties also
accuse the regulatory authority of having “abused the powers granted to it by
using media organizations controlled by the government, in particular Radio
Television Afghanistan, to make inflammatory statements against private
television stations, the consequences of which are frightening and potentially
life threatening.”

The National Journalists
Union and TOLO TV said they are “extremely concerned about the physical safety
of TOLO TV staff in Kabul and the provinces, and the physical safety of members
of Afghanistan’s National Journalists Union.”

—By Mansha Daswani