On Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2011, Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema (@umarcheema1) won an International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists (you can read his acceptance speech here). He was honored for his bravery after being kidnapped and beaten in September 2010 by unknown assailants. Instead of staying silent as he had been ordered to do, he spoke out about the culture of fear that journalists face in Pakistan. [The photo on the right was taken after his attack.]
The day after the awards ceremony, SAJA and CPJ hosted a conversation about the state of press freedom in Pakistan with Cheema and Bob Dietz, CPJ's Asia director. You can listen to the conversation below.
Journalist receives death threat after "memogate" stories
Reporters Without Borders is concerned by a telephone death threat received three days ago by Mohammad Malick, editor of the Pakistani daily The News International, from a blocked number.
According to the New York Times, US officials have concluded, based on classified intelligence, that "senior officials of [Pakistan's] spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence," directed the killing of Asia Times Online investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad, who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29th, "in an effort to silence criticism" of the agency:
The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.
* * *
The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials. “There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this,” said one.
A third senior American official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Mr. Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.
“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information. [link]
[HT: Azmat Khan and Declan Walsh.] More from the Times's Eric Schmitt, appearing this morning on The Takeaway (audio player embedded to the right). As the Times reports, the ISI has threatened other journalists in the wake of Shahzad's killing:
The anger over Mr. Shahzad’s death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the army and the ISI, a military-controlled spy agency, in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.
Since that initial volley of questioning, the ISI has mounted a steady counter-campaign. Senior ISI officials have called and visited journalists, warning them to douse their criticisms and rally around the theme of a united country, according to three journalists who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.
* * *
The efforts by the ISI to constrain the Pakistani news media have, to a degree, worked in recent days. The virulent criticism after Mr. Shahzad’s death has tempered a bit.
A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents. [link]
This "counter-campaign" now may also have a legal component, in the form of a petition recently filed in the Supreme Court by a former government official seeking to ban certain journalists and media organizations from criticizing military and intelligence agencies:
The petitioner, Sardar Muhammad Ghazi, a former deputy attorney general for Pakistan, filed the petition under Article 184 (3) making the federation through Ministry of Information secretary, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), Geo TV anchors Najam Sethi and Hamid Mir, and Ijaz Haider, who wrote an open letter to ISI chief Lt General Shuja Pasha in the Express Tribune, as respondents.
* * *
"The pen pushers and anchor persons are spitting venom against the ISI and the armed forces," he said.
Ghazi contended that after the May 2 Abbottabad operation, which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden by US forces, and the attack on PNS Mehran in Karachi, a well-organised campaign was launched in the world media targeting army and ISI
"The anchorpersons and the writer jointly and severally are trying to run down the army generals and as such their command stands eroded in the eyes of the force being commanded by them," he stated. [link]
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 39 journalists have been killed in Pakistan since 1992, with eight journalists killed in 2010 -- making Pakistan the year's deadliest country in the world for journalists -- and at least five journalists killed so far in 2011. Overall, Pakistan ranks 10th on the CPJ's Impunity Index, which is based on unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of the country’s population.
In an interview with SAJA in 2008, Pakistani journalist
Umar Cheema said that it was only rural areas that are “volatile or hostile to
journalists…not urban areas.” But what happened with Cheema on Sept. 4, 2010, tells a
different story.
Cheema, a reporter with TheNews International in Islamabad and the 2008 Daniel
Pearl Fellow at The New York Times was “tortured and humiliated during
6-hour captivity after abduction by unidentified men from Islamabad,” The News International reported.
According to the news portal, a group of men covered
his face and took him to a building 45 to 50 minutes drive while he was
returning home after meeting his friends.
“A few unknown men wearing uniforms of Elite Force
came up to me, saying I crushed a man at Zero Point and drove off and then
these men forcibly took me along with them,” Umar Cheema said.
“I was held in illegal captivity for 6 hours during
which I was continuously tortured and humiliated in nude. They stripped me out
of my clothes, hanged me upside down and shaved off my head and moustaches,”
the senior reporter of the country’s leading English daily recounted.
Café Pyala, a blog that follows the news from
Pakistan and Pakistani media wrote that Cheema was “stripped naked, hung upside
down and beaten severely before his head and moustache were shaved off.”
According to the blog, Cheema, who is an
investigative reporter for The News
International, was “taken and dumped on the Islamabad Motorway with warnings
not to make the incident public.”
The captors had also warned Cheema to stop writing
against the government.
The Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award is the most influential and important prize in the world of press freedom. This year, a journalist in Sri Lanka (who was sentenced on Monday) is being recognized with the award. Excerpt from the press release:
The Committee to Protect Journalists announced today that it will honor
imprisoned Sri Lankan journalist J.S. Tissainayagam with a 2009
International Press Freedom Award. Tissainayagam, sentenced today to 20
years in prison on specious charges of violating anti-terror laws, is
one of five journalists who will be honored by CPJ at a ceremony in
November. The full slate of awardees, selected by CPJ’s Board of
Directors this summer, will be formally announced in September.
A Colombo High Court sentenced Tissainayagam to 20 years of hard labor
in the first conviction of a journalist under the country’s harsh
anti-terror laws. Tissainayagam, known as Tissa, suffers from poor
health and said his confession to the charge was extracted under threat
of torture, according to his lawyers.
“We are announcing this award today to highlight the depth of outrage
at this unjust sentence,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “Its
harshness and the retroactive nature of the charges reflect
vindictiveness and intolerance. We are calling today for
Tissainayagam’s release—an appeal we plan to repeat at our awards
ceremony, when the world’s leading journalists gather to demand press
freedom for all of our colleagues.”
Full press release below. Post your comments, please.
PAKISTAN - “Extreme military pressure” forces closure of daily
Reporters Without Borders said today it was shocked by the closure of Pakistani Urdu-languge daily Asaap.
after it came under “tremendous pressure” from the government and the
security forces which were controlling its offices both inside and out.
Editor,
Abid Mir, speaking on the telephone from Quetta, the capital of
Baluchistan told the worldwide press freedom organisation that he had
“published the last edition on August 18” as a result of the
intimidiation.
“We are shocked by the control
and intrusions on the part of the security forces that obstruct the
running of the newspaper and constitute a violation of press freedom.
The government is adding to the gang-related and Taliban threats with
an unacceptable crackdown on journalists. We urge the Pakistani
authorities to get this harassment by the security forces stopped and
to allow journalists to carry on their work normally”, Reporters
Without Borders said.
The editor described the
Quetta offices as being under the "control of paramilitary security
forces and intelligence personnel” for the past two weeks. Around
dozens of soldiers from the paramiltary Frontier Corps were deployed
inside and outside the offices to check on visitors and staff.
I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of best wishes from people across the globe that have reached me courtesy Sree, the SAJA Forum, Nikhil @ Rediff.com and the many many personal calls and emails.
During
the 17 years that I spent circumventing the globe on a bicycle, sure I
did come across quite a few life-threatening situations but
nothing comes close to the irrational and incomprehensible mob frenzy
that I encountered in Nandigram on May 5. It is God’s grace alone that
saved me from getting lynched.
The
incident did leave me disillusioned about the times that we live in but
the concern and messages of solidarity that I have received from each
and every one of you has reaffirmed my faith in goodness, freedom of
press and human-kind.
Your
messages -- some long, some short, some emotional and some humourous --
have been a source of inspiration and strength. I thank you all from
the depth of my heart.
Honestly,
I an humbled that so many of you actually made time not only to send me
"get well" messages but also offered of help -- some offered to rush
medical help, some offered to replace of my camera gears or my glasses,
even a very dear lady offered to send me multivitamins -- which are any
day most welcome!!!!!
Believe me, it means a lot to me and I thank you all!
Pls
accept my apologies for sending this mass message. My shoulder and
collarbone still hurts when I try to type. But am hopeful of recovering
fully shortly. Yes, I am fully under medical care and still have not
been able to start doing photoshoot
I hope to see you all soon and express my gratitude personally.
Tom Lasseter is a McClatchy correspondent in Afghanistan, and in this piece he describes the rough treatment he got from President Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai during an interview about the drug trade and corruption. Lasseter went through a list of allegations against Karzai before the interview went downhill:
He began to glare at me and questioned whether I was really a reporter.
"It seems like someone sent you to write these things," he said, scowling.
Karzai glared some more.
"You should leave right now," he said.
I
stuck my hand out to shake his; if I learned anything from three years
of reporting in Iraq and then trips to Afghanistan during the past
couple of years, it's that when things turn bad, you should cling to
any remaining shred of hospitality.
Karzai grabbed my hand and
used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me,
and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.
I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."
"Mr. President, how are you attempting to control the corruption in your government?" Hagel recalled asking Karzai.
"Who is corrupt?" Karzai responded, according to Hagel. "Show me. Give me the names."
Hagel mentioned that U.S. and Afghan officials had accused one of
Karzai's brothers, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of the provincial
council in Kandahar, of links to narcotics trafficking. But Hagel
couldn't cite specifics, and Karzai refused to budge.
SAJAforum spoke directly to Jay Mandal at the Kolkata nursing home where he is recovering and is in good spirits, all things considered. He is lucky to be alive. His shoulder and knee are injured, but he insists that he will be in Delhi for an assignment he's had scheduled for some time now.
Listen to a 15-minute conversation Mandal had with Sree Sreenivasan of SAJAforum:
[You are welcome to repost the audio or quote from anything said in the conversation]
ORIGINAL POST, Tuesday, May 5, 2009:
Photographer Jay Mandal, a frequent contributor to SAJAforum who covers events throughout the US and India (seen here with former president Bush), was beaten up while covering an election gathering in West Bengal. From Rediff.com, where he serves as Contributing Photographer:
Bengal-born, New York-based Mandal was covering a meeting convened by the Bharatiya Janata Party
candidate from Tamluk, Rajyashree Chowdhury. Nandigram is part of the
Tamluk Lok Sabha constituency. The meeting was attended by BJP national
spokesperson S S Ahluwalia among others.
Shortly
after the meeting got underway, a group of men on motorcycles wearing
Trinamool Congress headbands attacked the rally. On seeing Mandal
photographing the attack, they pounced on him, snatched his cameras,
smashed them and injured him badly.
More from The Telegraph, for which Mandal also works:
About 40motorcycle-borne Trinamul Congress activists in
Nandigram held a group of BJP leaders hostage for over an hour,
thrashed a New York-based photographer and smashed his two cameras and
lenses. <snip>
Freelance photographer Jay Mandal, who contributes to The Telegraph, was taking pictures of the motorcyclists flying Trinamul flags when attacked.
“Two
youths walked towards the dais and jumped onto it. My flash gun alerted
one of them. He came to me and gave me a big shove. I fell into a drain
with my two cameras. Under the impact, one of them broke. The other was
also badly damaged. I lost my glasses and without them, I am nearly
blind,” said Mandal.
[A guest post by Maha Atal, who works for Forbes and blogs here.]
Once a week, I go to my grandmother's apartment to watch Pakistani TV stations via satellite. Like many Pakistani-American families, we have spent the past two years glued to our screens as lawyers, politicians and citizens agitated for the restoration of the judiciary, disbanded by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Meanwhile, just as Pakistanis were tuning in, Musharraf and his civilian successors increased regulation of the televised and print media. Journalists ventured onto new media platforms and my mother and I spent many hours following the protests on news websites like GEO.tv, and when these too were restricted, on social media platforms like YouTube. Sometimes, we saw content from activists who used the web to promote their cause; sometimes, we saw journalists wander into the fray to cover it, and occasionally, to insert themselves into the protests. Now that the Chief Justice and the judiciary system have been restored, I asked Ayesha Tammy Haq, host of 24Seven on BusinessPlusTV what the convergence means for Pakistan's Fourth Estate.
SAJAforum: In some sense, there have been two protest movements underway here, one to free the judiciary and one to free the press. But the line between them is pretty thin, since many journalists have been active cheerleaders of and participants in the lawyers' marches and rallies. Can you describe how this happened?
HAQ: When this started [in November 2007], an independent press was a
relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan. We didn’t have a formal code of
conduct yet. The journalists and young reporters who went out to cover
the movement were sympathetic as they saw it as a force for change. The
clampdown on the press brought them in to direct confrontation with the
state hence their active role [in the events covered].
So the press became fairly partisan. During the marches, the producers would keep the frame tight so they never showed gaps in the crowd. People were killed in the streets in Karachi, but the media never showed the bad side.
The Daily Times did a wholeseriesaboutwhether the movement should be transitionist or transformationist. They became active participants not because they were marching with the lawyers but by using [their coverage] to shape government policy and saw this as their role. It was a conceptual movement.
Is there any concern about journalists giving up their objective stance to become newsmakers?
Journalists in South Asia are at 'severe risk' according to a new report
released by the Committee of Protected Journalists. CPJ, a New York-based
media watchdog compiles and analyzes deaths of journalists. Its
recent report lists 14 countries with unresolved cases of murders of
journalists. Iraq, Sierra Leone and Somalia topped
the impunity index list, but six out of the 14 are South Asian nations: Sri Lanka,
Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. [see last year's report]
Sri Lanka falls fourth on the list with 9 unsolved cases, while Pakistan
ranks tenth with 10 unsolved cases. Rankings are based on the CPJ
impunity index, which is calculated as a percentage of a country's population
and covers the years 1999 through 2008. [more on their methodology]
South Asian journalists face particularly
severe risks. The already murderous conditions for the press in Sri
Lanka and Pakistan deteriorated further in the past year. “We’re
distressed to see justice worsen in places such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Our findings indicate that the failure to solve journalist murders perpetuates
further violence against the press,” said Joel Simon, CPJ executive
director. “Countries can get off this list of shame only by committing
themselves to seeking justice.”
Here's a quick breakdown by countries:
Sri Lanka:
Rank 4
The CPJ reported nine unsolved cases and an increase in attacks against
reporters including the fatal killing of Lasantha Wickramatunga,
editor of a newspaper strongly critical of the government and its military
campaign against the Tamil Tigers. See our earlier coverage of his death.
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