Media Law Faces Possible Parliamentary Challenge

No sector of Afghanistan’s society has been subject to as much regulation as the media. Since the fall of the Taleban more than four years ago, three laws have been drafted to try to establish freedom of speech in a nation that has known only the law of the gun for over two decades.



But the government’s latest attempt to liberalise the media may come under attack from a parliament that is largely under the control of fundamentalist mujahedin, some of whom seem to have a poor grasp of the concept of press freedom.



Sayed Aqa Hussain Sancharaki, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of information and youth, pointed to provisions in the new law that will give independence to many state-run news organisations, including Radio/Television Afghanistan and the Bakhtar News Agency.



Sancharaki added that international organisations would now be able to register publications in Afghanistan, provided they have local editors. This was not been possible before, he noted.



“Compared with previous laws, this one has many points that benefit freedom of speech and make things easier for journalists,” he said.



Sancharaki said new legislation was needed in part because of “meddling by certain people”, but refused to elaborate on this.



The past year has seen some highly publicised media cases, including the imprisonment of a magazine editor for blasphemy and the fining of a television station for showing what the parliament considered “un-Islamic” materials. The minister of information and culture has been hauled before the legislature to answer for his allegedly lax control over the media.



Sancharaki did not say how the new law might affect similar cases in future.



Much will depend on how parliamentarians react to the bill. The law still has to pass muster in the legislature - a process that is new to Afghanistan. Until the new body convened in December, President Hamed Karzai ruled more or less by decree; his signature was sufficient to put a law into effect.



Now the executive will have to engage in more give and take with the lawmakers.



“I hope the parliament won’t make any changes to the law, because it really does guarantee freedom of speech,” said Sancharaki.



Rahimullah Samander, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association, acknowledged that the bill could run into problems in parliament.



“It is true that half of the parliament consists of mujahedin commanders and extremists,” he said. “But we will work to persuade them not to make any changes that make the law worse.”



In general, said Samander, the law is a good one, and will bring advances in media freedom.



“There are some problems,” he said. “There are no guidelines to explain the law. But these are small problems that can be solved in the future.”



The new media law has not yet been submitted to parliament, say legislators. Rahila Salim, a member of the commission that reviews new legislation, said she had not yet seen the document.



“I believe that the government has not referred the law to parliament because it thought that [we] might make some changes to it,” she said. “But no law can be enacted if it does not go through parliament.”



Ahmad Shah Afghanzai, the owner of Afghan TV, calls the new law undemocratic.



“I don’t see anything in this law that is better than the previous ones, and in some ways it is worse,” he said.



Afghanzai’s station was fined 1,400 US dollars by a media commission in January for broadcasting Bollywood movies and music videos, seen by some - especially in the legislature - as “un-Islamic”.



He has hotly contested the fine, and angrily condemns the new law’s establishment of another commission to monitor the media.



Afghanzai finds it especially galling that the proposed commission will have the authority to fine a media outlet without obtaining a court order. “This violates the principle of freedom of speech,” he said. “The media will once again fall under censorship.”



The new commission will be made up of two members of parliament, one person from the communications ministry, one from the Supreme Court, and one from the ministry of information and youth. Among other tasks, it will control the distribution of frequencies for the electronic media and monitor violations of the press law.



According to Sancharaki, the new law does not give the commission authority to formulate policies for the media; instead, its function is to defend journalists’ rights and to make them aware of their mistakes.



“The commission has the responsibility to find ways of solving problems regarding the media,” he said. “It only technically monitors the media. It does not interfere in media policy.”



But the fine points of the law may not matter as much as the ability to enforce it, said Mohammad Hassan Wolesmal, a political analyst who heads Afghan Milli Jarida (Afghan National Magazine).



“Every law has good points and bad points,” he said. “The most important thing is putting it into force. In Afghanistan, not a single law has been enforced in the past four years.”



The media law presents special problems, he added, especially given the composition of the legislature.



“No one in the country believes in freedom of speech, and implementing a media law is therefore a difficult task,” he said. “The majority of parliament is composed of extremists, and they will certainly introduce changes to it. They are afraid of free speech.”



Abdul Karim Khuram, press adviser to President Karzai, said that the new law could ensure freedom of speech, although the parliament might have other ideas.



“The parliamentarians are the nation’s representatives. They have the right to make the law more restrictive or more liberal. The president will not say anything in this regard because it will be the people’s choice,” he said.



Amanullah Nasrat is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.