At a seminar organised by the Pakistan Coalition on Media Safety here on Saturday Adnan Rehmat and Iqbal Khattak, representatives of the advocacy group, said a study had revealed that of the 622 journalists killed across the world between 2002 and 2014, as many as 110 belonged to Pakistan. Even then no effort was made to enact a law to deal with the matter.

They said the government had no mechanism to help it implement the UN Action Plan for Safety of Journalists.

They said media organisations had not adopted adequate security strategies, protocols and procedures to reduce the risks to which journalists were exposed.

They advised journalists to motivate legislators, political parties and parliamentary committees to introduce laws on safety of journalists.

Balochistan Minister for Information Abdul Raheem Ziaratwal said militant groups and criminal mafias which came into existence because of the Afghan war were involved in targeted killing of journalists.

Tahir Hussain of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said FIRs were registered under anti-terrorism laws against some Quetta journalists during the tenure of the previous provincial government and alleged that the present government was reluctant to withdraw the cases.

The senior vice-president of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Saleem Shahid, said a majority of journalists killed in the country belonged to Baloch­istan but their employers did not even bother to pay compensation to their families.

DAWN

A delegation led by PFUJ former president Pervaiz Shaukat handed over an open letter from the IFJ and the South Asia Media Solidarity Network (SAMSN) to the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and the United Nations in Pakistan on Sunday, November 2 – the inaugural International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. The IFJ and SAMSN as well as a list of international activists and organisations, wrote to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, calling on him to recognise November 2 as a National Day Against Impunity in Pakistan and to make concerted efforts to bring to an end to the country’s entrenched culture of impunity for journalist killings.

The PFUJ and its affiliates across Pakistan also held rallies, awareness lectures, and candle vigils in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Quetta, Hyderabad, DG Khan, Bahawalpur, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Hafizabad, Gujrat and Abbottabad.

The PFUJ also marked November 3 as a day to condemn the illegitimate act of imposing emergency rule under former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf and reiterated its pledge to defend the independence of media and democracy in future.

Over the past decade, Pakistan has consistently been ranked one of the most dangerous places on the planet to practice journalism. The targeting of journalists, including verbal and written threats, physical attacks, kidnappings and killings have been alarmingly high in Pakistan. The United Nations has listed Pakistan as a country needing special attention and supportive action to combat impunity against journalists, when it was included among the five pilot countries for implementation of its ‘UN Action Plan on Attacks on Journalists and Issues of Impunity.

See the IFJ’s infographic on Pakistan here.

The PFUJ said: “We will keep on raising voice against the crimes and unjust done with the journalists and put pressure on the government to end impunity against the journalists of the country and make efforts to provide a safe atmosphere to work and enjoy freedom of expression in the country.”

This year, 13 journalists and media workers have been killed in Pakistan and many more threatened, intimidated and attacked. Nearly 60 journalists have been killed in the last six years and more than 100 since 2000.

The IFJ Asia Pacific acting director Jane Worthington said: “Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world right now for journalists and the situation has undoubtedly worsened due to high level of impunity for crimes against media workers. Pakistan must respond to global calls and make immediate efforts to bring an end to the culture of impunity that leaves so many media workers exposed and in doing so threatens the future integrity of a free and independent media.”

International Federation of Journalists

ISLAMABAD: In little over two months this year, five confirmed journalists were killed in line of their duty – one in North Waziristan and four in Balochistan. Pakistan has been ranked the “most dangerous country” for journalists in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The impunity on crimes against journalists made the situation so vulnerable that media is vanishing from some places across country, especially Balochistan and tribal areas.

With government’s efforts appear to have led the journalist community to total disappointment over failures to stem the killings of journalists, the UN Action Plan on impunity against journalists may prove last chance to end this impunity.

A two-day international conference is being held in Islamabad on March 6-7 seeking to highlight the issue globally, benefit from the UN focus on Pakistan as a pilot country, as well as to help Pakistan’s beleaguered media defence community network with their counterparts at the international level in aid of beefing up their capacity to combat impunity against journalists in Pakistan, Adnan Rehmat, executive director of Intermedia organizing the conference, told Daily Times.

The conference is being jointly held with financial and technical assistance of IMS, Open Society Foundation (OSF), UNESCO and Intermedia Pakistan, a statement from the organizers read.

“It aims at highlighting and raising awareness about a new UN Action Plan against impunity in five pilot countries, including Pakistan, with the objective of building the country’s capacity to deal with safety of journalists and impunity issues ,” Adnan gave background details about the conference.

Federal Minister for Information & Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira is scheduled to inaugurate the conference.

The UN Plan of Action is expected to be rolled out in the coming weeks in Pakistan and is aimed at lending international support for action against impunity, including strengthening efforts led by both governments and the media sector and facilitating greater multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Attending the conference will be key international media support groups such as Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI), Article IX, International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Freedom House (FH), International News Safety Institute (INSI), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), International Media Support (IMS), UNESCO, International Press Institute (IPI), Internews Network, International Federation of Freedom of Expression (IFEX), Amnesty International (AI), World Association of Newspapers (WAN), Freedom of the Press Foundation (FLIP), Fojo Institut were invited to the conference.

Attending the conference will be a variety of Pakistani representative associations of media workers, owners and professionals and media defence groups such as Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Pakistan Broadcasters Association (PBA), Pakistan Council of Newspaper Editors (CPNE), All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS), Radio Broadcasters Association (RBA), Pakistan News Agencies Council (PNAC), among others; the government; security agencies and civil society representatives, etc.

“The conference will aim to establish two alliances – a ‘Pakistan Alliance of Media on Safety’ and an ‘International Friends of Pakistan Media on Safety’ – by linking up media defence groups from Pakistan with their key international level counterparts to facilitate networking on solutions and ideas as well as inflow of international support, advocacy expertise and technical assistance for Pakistan’s media,” Adnan spoke of likely outcomes of the conference.

Statistics, provided by Intermedia, say over 90 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 2000 and at least 70 journalists in the last five years alone and hundreds attacked, injured, kidnapped, arrested and intimidated in a variety of ways. From 2007 to 2013 the average of journalists killed every year is 13 – one every 28 days.

There has been no prosecution and conviction of any attacker – the prevalence of impunity is huge. Despite recent efforts by a variety of actors to combat this trend, the scale of impunity hasn’t been dented.

Source: Daily Times