Hip-shaker Shakira sparks Afghan media clampdown
21 November, 2007
LONDON: hip-shaking performance by pop star Shakira has provoked a showdown between the Afghan government and the country’s independent media.
Senior Muslim clerics have joined the culture ministry to warn Tolo TV, the country’s largest private television station, of serious consequences following the broadcast of a concert by the Colombian singer, famous for her onstage gyrations.
The incident is the latest sign of a growing fight-back by the country’s powerful conservative establishment against the more liberal-minded newspapers and broadcast media and the tide of Western-backed liberal reforms since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.
Draconian new media legislation is soon to be signed into law by President Hamid Karzai after it was recently approved by the Kabul parliament. The measures will give the government greater powers to limit broadcasts deemed damaging to Afghanistan and its culture, primarily by forcing stations to carry more religious programmes or face going off air.
The Shakira broadcast caused consternation even though she appeared with computer pixellation covering her chest. Clerics and MPs criticised the concert, while one pro-government newspaper claimed the broadcast would provoke suicide bombers.
But the owner of Tolo TV, Saad Mohseni, said: "This was not that provocative and Shakira was pixellated. The government are looking for an excuse to have a go at us.
"When we give airtime to the Taliban we are ’talking to terrorists’, when we air people criticising the government we are told we are ’opposing peace and reconciliation’."
Afghanistan’s media has enjoyed a startling renaissance since 2001. Television was banned under the Taliban, but today eight independent TV stations are broadcasting.
But instances of press intimidation have risen in the past year. Two female journalists are among several murdered. The annual survey of media freedom by the organisation Reporters Without Borders ranked Afghanistan as 142nd out of 196 countries, and commented: "The Afghan media is in its worst state in six years.’’
Mr Karzai’s government has become alarmed by both press criticism and the danger that media liberalism could fuel the Taliban insurgency.
Afghanistan’s constitution guarantees the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which include freedom of speech and expression. But it also includes an article that states that "no law can be contrary to the provisions and practices of Islam’’.
This has proved a battleground between liberals and conservatives, particularly in relation to restrictions within Islam’s Sharia laws, most notably those on blasphemy.
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