Top Human Rights News of the Week: Another Afghan Journalist Killed

Elyas Dayee, a radio journalist who worked for Radio Free Afghanistan was killed in a blast on November 11, 202o in Helmand, Afghanistan. As noted by officials, this was a targetted attack and Dayee was the second Afghan journalist to be murdered in less than a week. Dayee actively reported on the Taliban’s operations and received countless death threats to stop his investigations on the terror outfit.

At this time, there is no official statement from the Taliban but as the group is known to use IEDs (improvised explosive devices) which was found to be the cause of death of the journalist, it is easy to draw conclusions as to who corroborated the attack.

The Taliban did, however, release a statement on November 12, 2020, which accused the Afghan media of defamation and engaging in “enemy propaganda”.

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission condemned the attack in a statement and called it an attack on the right to freedom of media and expression. Afghan journalists have been receiving death threats from the terrorist organisation for a really long time. The death of both Yama Siawash, the journalist who was killed earlier this week and Elyas Dayee should sound alarms for the Afghan government and international entities to protect journalist who daringly put their lives on the line to investigate and report from Taliban controlled areas. Since 2001, over 120 media workers have been killed in Aghanistan.