[cr-india] Afghanistan: Latest Female Journalist's Slaying Highlights Plight [with video]

[George Lessard]

Afghanistan: Latest Female Journalist's Slaying Highlights Plight

By Golnaz Esfandiari

<http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/06/ab72dc28-770c-4fbe-afb8-44fd1fa83c9d.html>

[excerpt]

June 6, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- An Afghan radio journalist has been shot dead in
Afghanistan in the second fatal attack on a newswoman in less than a week.

Zakia Zaki, who ran the private broadcaster Peace Radio, was killed by
multiple gunmen in her home north of Kabul, in the central province of
Parwan, late on June 5. The gunmen reportedly shot her in front of her
young son before fleeing the scene.

Neither the identities of the killers nor their motive is clear at this
point.
MORE: Watch a video of Zakia Zaki.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4j9pQ7L6M

Zakia was a former headmistress and a representative to Afghanistan's
Constitutional Loya Jirga in 2003-04. But she had received threats in the
past in connection with her work at Peace Radio, which she had managed
since 2001.

The head of Afghanistan's Independent Journalists Association, Rahimullah
Samander, says that Zaki had contacted his group over those threats.

"She has been threatened because of some of her programs, and [the people
who issued the threats] said that some [Peace Radio] reports were
[critical of] one of the region's [prominent] figures; they said the
programs were a plot against that person," Samander says. "Regional
commanders are influential in the province and they have created problems
for her several times in the past. She had come to me and told several
other colleagues about it."

No Isolated Case

Zaki's slaying comes less than a week after the murder of a popular
22-year-old television presenter, Shakiba Sanga Amaj, who was also shot
dead in her family home in the capital.

A suspect has been arrested in the Sanga Amaj case, and some reports
suggest that her murder was an act of revenge for spurning a proposal of
marriage.

Reporters Without Borders has suggested that even if a family feud is
behind the "cowardly" killing of Shakiba, Afghan authorities should not
overlook her professional activities as their investigation proceeds.

Two years ago, in May 2005, a presenter on the private Tolo Television,
was shot dead in her Kabul home in a case that remains unsolved. Shaima
Rezaee had been criticized for what some regarded as her Western style and
appearance.