Afghanistan: Release demanded of a journalist arrested for blasphemy

The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) demanded on Wednesday the immediate release of the arrested publisher of a respected women’s magazine in Afghanistan on the charge of blasphemy. "Critical voices against the increasing Islamization of Afghanistan must not be silenced” said the GfbV Asia expert Ulrich Delius. The publisher of the serious monthly magazine "Rights of Women”, Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, was arrested because his magazine had criticised the severe punishment for theft and adultery according to the traditional Muslim Sharia law.

A speaker for the High Court of Afghanistan confirmed meanwhile that the journalist had been arrested following the charge of a Muslim preacher from Kabul for publishing an "anti-Islamic” article. According to Article 31 of the Media Law passed in March 2004 in Afghanistan the publication of articles is punishable if these "contradict the principles of Islam”. The publisher of the magazine is faced with just a fine, but it has often been the case that journalists had to leave the country after their release from prison because their lives were in acute danger. This happened in the year 2003 to the publishers of the weekly paper Aftab Afghanistan. Although they were acquitted of the charge of blasphemy they received death threats.

The National Ulema Council, led by the controversial extremely conservative High Court judge Fazl Hadi Shinwari, to which over one hundred Muslim preachers belong, had frequently sharply criticised the independent media of Afghanistan on account of their "immoral” and "un-Islamic” reporting. The Ulema Council had made an ultimate demand on the government to forbid television programmes acting contrary to the Sharia.