daniel-pearl

New York, April 16, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Pakistani news reports of the arrest of a provincial government minister in the killing of Munir Sangi, a cameraman for the Sindhi-language Kawish Television Network (KTN). Sangi was shot in May 2006 while covering a gunfight between members of the Unar and Abro tribes in the town of Larkana, in southeast Pakistan’s Sindh province.

The December 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto plunged the nation into further turmoil after months of violent unrest and a bitterly contested state of emergency. An aggressive domestic press corps was in the middle of the momentous events, questioning government assertions and being targeted by government censorship.

By Anderson Cooper

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is a critical front in the most challenging news story in the world: the confrontation between U.S.-led Western countries and militant Islamists. Yet access to the border region has become increasingly restricted, and the Pakistani government continues to do everything in its power to dissuade outside journalists from entering. Few local journalists are left, most having fled or simply stopped working in what has become a high-risk profession, according to the Tribal Union of Journalists.

The military-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf, now in its eighth year, said in 2006 that it was fostering a free press, but the details belied the claim, and journalists continued to be targeted from many sides.

While the government has allowed the expansion of broadcast media, a three-person CPJ delegation that met with dozens of journalists in Islamabad and Peshawar in July heard a lengthy string of complaints of government abuse and neglect, as well as concerns about pending legislation that could allow monopolization of the country’s burgeoning media. The CPJ delegation had gone to Pakistan to meet with government officials after the high-profile slaying of Hayatullah Khan in June. Khan was the seventh journalist to be killed in Pakistan since the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, according to CPJ research. Only Pearl’s case was investigated to any degree of competency and publicly reported. The CPJ delegation contended that Pakistani journalists deserved the same level of attention from the authorities.

January 18, 2007

Minister for Interior Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao
Room 404, 4th Floor, R-Block
Pak Secretariat, Islamabad

Secretary for Interior Syed Kamal Shah
Room 402, 4th Floor R-Block
Pak Secretariat, Islamabad

Via facsimile: 092-51-9202624

Dear Minister Sherpao and Secretary Shah:

The Committee to Protect Journalists is disturbed by the Interior Ministry's failure to publicly produce investigative records as promised in regard to the deaths of eight journalists and to attacks and detentions involving more than 50 others in Pakistan since 2002.

CPJ Update November 2007 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

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New York, November 1, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges an immediate, high-level investigation into today’s murder of Mohammad Ismail, Islamabad bureau chief for Pakistan Press International (PPI). Ismail’s body was found this morning near his home in Islamabad with “his head completely smashed with some hard blunt object” according to Mazhar Abbas, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists. The Associated Press reported that a police investigator said an iron bar may have been used as a weapon.

New York, September 21, 2006—As violence against journalists and violations of press freedom grow in Pakistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the government to keep its promise to reveal all information it holds on media deaths and disappearances.

CPJ research shows that nine journalists have died for their work since 2002, and there have been at least 20 other cases in which journalists have been assaulted or improperly detained. In recent months, the shooting deaths of two journalists apparently went uninvestigated by the government, and the teenage brother of a BBC reporter was shot after the family’s home was bombed in December of last year. In addition, five men have disappeared, two of whom emerged from more than three months in secret government detention and were finally charged. The whereabouts of the three still missing is not known. The most recent unexplained disappearance happened on Wednesday.