AJIA PROTEST TO KARZAI OVER JOURNALIST TAKEN TO CUSTODY
PARIS 22 Dec. (IPS) The Association of Iranian Journalists Abroad (AIJA)
protested Sunday to the Afghan interim Prime Minister-President Hamed Karzai for
the "illegal" interrogation of Mr. Abdol Qaffoor E’teqad, the Editor
of the independent weekly newspaper "Farda" (Tomorrow).
Mr. E’teqad had been taken into custody Friday 20 December and interrogated at the Prosecutor’s office after his paper published a cartoon considered as "offending" to Mr. Karzai, the US-installed Premier, the French news agency AFP quoted his brother, Mohammad Haroon as having said.
The offending cartoon, published on 15 December, showed a Mr. Karzai playing an organ and singing, "Reconstruction, reconstruction, reconstruction", accompanied by the Finance Minister on drums and foreigners dancing around the Afghan duo waving dollars, as the UN special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations Special Representative for Afghanistan, announces on the microphone: "Soon we'll have another ceremony at the World Bank to borrow some money - but with interest".
The cartoon was probably referring to the reports that most of the hundreds of millions US Dollars promised by donor nations for the reconstruction of the war-ruined nation had been distributed to various ONG’s and the United Nations paying their staffs and expenses, with barely 100 million left for the government.
Mr.E’teqad was taken into custody on Thursday at his office by two judicial officials who explained that it was over his cartoon of Karzai", Mr. Haroon explained, adding that the agents who took his brother away said they came on orders of Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
The cartoon was published on Dec 15, just before Karzai left for a major donors conference in Norway, where more than 20 countries pledged two billion dollars to Afghanistan.
In a letter faxed to the office of the Prime Minister, the Rome-based AIJA expressed its "deep concern" over the "undemocratic" way the Afghan authorities are dewing with the press and the "autocratic intolerance" shown by Mr. Karzai towards critics.
Afghan journalists have recently complained of increasing harassments from the authorities, saying that the government is reverting more and more to coercive methods aimed at intimating journalists in the exercise of their activities.
"It is difficult to understand why the Defence Minister should have ordered judiciary agents to take Mr. E’teqad to custody, as it is difficult to understand why the Prime Minister, educated in a democratic country and who has pledged to respect freedom of the press, must be so intolerant to allow drifts from and blows against Afghanistan’s nascent democracy", the AIJA observed. AFQAN JOURNALIST INTERROGATED 221202