AFGHAN JOURNALISTS UNDER FIRE

With journalist and author Lynne O'Donnell, who has been reporting from the ground, Pulitzer Prize-winner Afghan photojournalist Massoud Hossaini, Dominic Medley who spent 16 years working in Afghanistan with NATO, the UN, helping establish the media outlets and training journalists, Abdul Mujib Khalvatgar, Executive Director of NAI, an Afghan non-governmental organisation whose mission is to build and promote independent media sector in Afghanistan and now is providing assistance to those in danger. Maria Salazar-Ferro, director of CPJ’s (Committee to Protect Journalists) Emergencies and board member of ACOS Alliance, Peter Jouvenal, former journalist producer who has worked in Afghanistan since 1980, covered the communist regime in 1992, and the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer The New Yorker, Johnny Mercer, a British Conservative politician and former British Army officer.

This event is going to look at the Taliban advance and the targeting of journalists, writers, activists and human rights advocates, government workers, and those who worked with international military forces and the evacuation efforts especially for the local journalist, interpreters etc.

Within days the situation has deteriated so far that Taliban has now taken control of the whole of Afghanistan, including Kabul. President Ghani and most of the cabinet have left. The last plane with US personnel left yesterday while Afghan civilians were still clinging on to the aircraft begging to be saved. The pictures from Kabul airport are haunting! 7