Pakistan: No Country For Journalists – Analysis
By Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
On May 29, 2024, unidentified assailants shot at and injured a journalist, Haider Mastoi, and subjected his friend to severe beating in Rohri town, Sukkur District, Sindh. Mastoi, who works as a reporter for the Sindh News TV channel in Khairpur District, and his friend Khan Mohammad Pitafi, were passing through the Achhiyoon Qubbiyoon area on a motorcycle, when three armed motorcyclists forced them to stop and opened fire at the journalist. Later, at a hospital, Mastoi disclosed that the attackers were not interested in robbing him or his friend. They just targeted him and fled.
On May 24, 2024, Journalist Nasrullah Gadani, succumbed to his injuries at a Karachi hospital. Gadani was injured in gun attack by unidentified assailants in the Mirpur Mathelo tehsil (revenue unit) of Ghotki District in Sindh on May 21. Gadani was associated with a Sindhi newspaper Awami Awaz, and had suffered serious bullet injuries when he was going from his home to the Mirpur Mathelo Press Club.
On May 22, 2024, Syed Iqrar ul Hassan, a prominent TV anchor with ARY News, and three of his team members were attacked by a group in the Gujranwala city of Punjab. Hassan and his team sustained injuries.
On May 21, 2024, Kamran Dawar, a freelance journalist and social activist, who was associated with the National Democratic Movement (NDM) and ran a Facebook page Waziristan TV with 148,000 followers, was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the Tappi area of Miranshah in the North Waziristan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). Former Member of National Assembly (MNA) and NDM chief Mohsin Dawar stated that the journalist faced threats to his life “for his critical views against militancy.” However, according to News Intervention, Dawar regularly voiced criticism of the Pakistani military on his social media platforms.
On May 15, 2024, journalist Ashfaq Ahmed Sial, who was a reporter in the daily newspaper Khabrain, was shot dead by unidentified motorcycle-borne assailants while he was on his way to work in Muzaffargarh city, Punjab.
On May 3, 2024, Muhammad Siddique Mengal, president of the local Khuzdar Press Club and journalist for the local newspaper The Daily Baakhbar, died after a motorcyclist placed a bomb on the journalist’s vehicle at a busy crossing in Khuzdar town (Khuzdar District), Balochistan. Two other persons were killed and 10 were injured in the incident. Mengal, who was also a provincial officer-bearer of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), had received a death threat in the form of a letter in April, raising concerns about his safety. Additionally, he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in a shooting incident on August 11, 2023.
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), there have already been eight incidents of attack on journalists in the current year (Data till June 2, 2024) in which six journalists were killed and two sustained injuries.
The first incident of killing of a journalist inside Pakistan after March 2000, was recorded on September 1, 2001, when Asadullah Khan, a reporter for the Kashmir Press International (KPI) news agency, was shot dead at Shahrah-e-Faisal in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh. Asad was on a motorcycle and, near the Pir Bukhari Mazar, unknown armed men intercepted and shot him dead. Since then, according to partial data collated by SATP, at least 75 journalists have been killed and another 30 injured in Pakistan, in 99 incidents (data till June 2, 2024). These numbers are probable underestimations. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists 90 journalists and media workers killed in Pakistan between 2000 and 2021.
Pakistan dropped two places in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on May 3. According to the Index, Pakistan now ranks 152nd out of 180 countries, compared to its standing at 150 in the 2023 Index. In its country profile, RSF noted that, since its founding in 1947, Pakistan has “oscillated between civil society’s quest for greater press freedom and a political reality in which the political-military elite retains broad control over the media.” The Index added that Pakistan was “one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with three to four murders each year that are often linked to cases of corruption or illegal trafficking and which go completely unpunished.” Further, “as the military has steadily tightened its grip on civilian institutions, coverage of military and intelligence agency interference in politics has become off limits for journalists.”
The killing on May 21, 2024, of Kamran Dawar, who was critical of the Pakistani military, strengthens the World Press Freedom Index’s allegation of military atrocities against critical journalists. Earlier, on October 23, 2022, Arshad Sharif, who also criticized Pakistan’s Army, was killed when Police shot at his car on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Subsequently, on December 7, 2022, a team of Pakistani investigators stated in a report that Arshad’s killing was a “planned assassination”. The 49-year-old journalist was living in exile after he fled Pakistan in August 2022, to avoid arrest in the wake of numerous cases, including sedition charges, slapped against him for making comments on his Talk Show – Power Play, aired on ARY News channel, which were deemed offensive to the military. Earlier, Sajid Hussain, a Baloch rights activist and journalist from Pakistan, living under political asylum in Sweden, was found ‘missing’ on March 2, 2020, from Sweden. As he had been forced to flee Pakistan in 2012, after his investigative journalism attracted frequent death threats, Hussain travelled from Oman to Dubai, to Uganda, finally settling in Sweden. His body was later found in the Fyris River in Uppsala on April 23, 2020. Hussain, was working part-time as a professor in Uppsala University, and was also the Chief Editor of Balochistan Times, an online magazine he had set up, in which he wrote about abductions, drug trafficking and the long-running insurgency in Balochistan.
The military-mullah combine in Pakistan was the main reason for journalists falling prey to lethal violence as a result of their efforts to bring the truth to light. There are many instances of journalists being attacked for performing their professional duties. Prominent among these are the targeted attacks on prominent British-Pakistani journalist and activist, Gul Bukhari, known for his criticism of the military establishment, on June 5, 2018; Sabeen Mahmud, a prominent Pakistani women’s rights activist, attacked on April 24, 2015; and Hamid Mir of Geo TV, and well known political commentator, who survived a murderous assault on April 19, 2014. The latter two were attacked when they focused on the acute problems in Balochistan, where state agencies, particularly the ISI, and their non-state proxies, were engaged in the execution and forced disappearances of Baloch people.
The sheer impunity of the military establishment was demonstrated in the targeted killing of a journalist in 2011, when the ISI was accused of abducting, torturing and killing Saleem Shahzad, working as the Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online (Hong Kong) and Italian news agency Adnkronos (AKI). Shahzad disappeared in the evening of May 29, 2011, from Islamabad, and his mutilated dead body was discovered on May 31, 2011, from a canal in the Mandi Bahauddin District of Punjab. Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan claimed he had “credible information” that Shahzad was in ISI custody. Indeed, Shahzad’s friends and colleagues revealed that the ISI had warned Shahzad at least three times prior to his death. In October 2010, Shahzad was summoned to ISI headquarters the day after publishing a sensitive article on Afghan Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar’s capture.
Apart from these killings, the abduction, torture and intimidation of journalists in Pakistan have also broken the spirit of media professionals. Some of the recent incidents of abduction include:
- July 8, 2023: Daily Jung's senior journalist, Syed Muhammad Askari, was 'picked up' from near the Qayyumabad KPT Interchange on Korangi Road in Karachi. Askari's car was intercepted without any reason by masked men, while he was returning from a ceremony. Askari introduced himself and told them that he is a reporter for Daily Jung, but he was taken away and beaten up. He returned to his home after more than 24 hours.
- May 24, 2023: Senior journalist Sami Abraham of BOL TV was abducted by 'unidentified men' in Islamabad. Abraham's abduction was dramatic as his car was intercepted by four vehicles after he left the BOL TV office and nearly ten men took him away. He returned a week later.
- April 28, 2023: Irfan Kalhoro, a local news reporter for Dharti in Sindh, was abducted, tortured, and later arrested in the Pano Aqil District of Sindh province. In the evening Abdullah Chachar, a government employee, along with approximately 15 to 20 armed men, forcibly entered and ransacked Kalhoro's house, detained and tortured him. On his release, instead of acting against the perpetrators, Police officers at Pano Aqil Police Station lodged an FIR against him and arrested him.
- April 20, 2023: Gohar Wazir, President of Bannu's National Press Club and a journalist for a privately owned Pashto television channel, was abducted and held in an unknown location for over 30 hours by unidentified assailants. Wazir was reportedly tortured and suffered electric shocks during his illegal confinement.
While observing World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2024, Pakistan media body Association of Electronic Media Editors and News Directors(AEMEND) expressed concerns over the state of free media in Pakistan. AEMEND expressed its determination to continue the constitutional and legal struggle for freedom of expression in the country and to face unfavourable circumstances head-on. In a statement, AEMEND asserted that journalists and media outlets in Pakistan were facing severe challenges, as state and non-state actors were imposing restrictions on television programmes, shutting down broadcasts, exerting pressure for the termination of journalists, creating unnecessary stresses, and making illegal demands.
In addition to the threats from militants and the military, the State itself seeks to heavily restrict press freedom. On May 21, 2024, for instance, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) banned media coverage of ongoing court cases. The ban applies to all television channels and radio stations. The development takes place amid tensions between the Government and the Islamabad High Court over the alleged kidnapping of Kashmiri poet Ahmad Farhad on May 15. Farhad’s family accused the ISI of abducting the poet from his Islamabad residence for his critical social media posts that targeted the military.
In a country like Pakistan where freedom of press is highly curtailed and the lives of media persons are endangered by both state and non-state actors, the ground reality and truth can seldom be reported.
- Tushar Ranjan Mohanty
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management