JournalismPakistan.com | Published December 19, 2012
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NEW YORK: Pakistan, the deadliest place for journalists in 2010 and 2011, dropped two notches this year, but the number of fatalities held steady at seven, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found in its yearly analysis.
Four of those killings took place in Balochistan, the country’s poorest region and a scene of protracted violence between separatists, anti-separatists, various tribes and ethnic groups, Pakistani security forces and intelligence agencies, and groups aligned with the Taliban.
Among the victims was Abdul Haq Baloch, a correspondent for ARY Television, who was shot in September as he was leaving the Khuzdar Press Club, where he served as secretary-general. The authorities have held no one accountable in the killing, which is the near-universal result in media murders in both the region and across the nation.
“The fact that journalists are targeted so frequently in Balochistan has to do with the nationalist movement,” said Malik Siraj Akbar, founder and editor of The Baloch Hal and a native of Balochistan who now lives in the United States.
“There is a revolt across the entire province of Balochistan against the government. As one journalist gets killed in Khuzdar, and the government takes no action, it promotes a culture of impunity and emboldens the targeting of journalists elsewhere.”
The CPJ said the number of journalists killed in the line of duty increased sharply in 2012, as the war in Syria, a record number of shootings in Somalia, continued violence in Pakistan, and a worrying increase in Brazilian murders contributed to a 42 percent increase in deaths from the previous year.
Internet journalists were hit harder than ever, while the proportion of freelancers was again higher than the historical average.
With 67 journalists killed in direct relation to their work by mid-December, 2012 is on track to become one of the deadliest years since CPJ began keeping detailed records in 1992.
The worst year on record for journalist killings was 2009, when 74 individuals were confirmed dead because of their work—nearly half of them slain in a massacre in Maguindanao province, Philippines.
CPJ is investigating the deaths of 30 more journalists in 2012 to establish whether they were work-related.
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