Impunity Spotlight: Pakistan

Shan Dahar, Abb Takk Television

January 1, 2014, in Larkana, Pakistan

Dahar, a reporter for Abb Takk Television, was shot in the back while filming outside a pharmacy near the Badah Press Club in Larkana, according to his sister and brother-in-law who spoke to CPJ. He died shortly after at a local hospital.

Initial media reports suggested that Dahar was hit by a stray bullet as weapons were being fired into the air during New Year celebrations, but in the days that followed, journalists and local media support groups suggested this was an intentional killing.

Pakistan

Hopes that last year’s conviction of six suspects for the assassination of television reporter Wali Khan Babar would herald a new dawn for journalists have dwindled in the face of fresh violence and the leadership’s failure to implement a series of commitments to CPJ to address impunity. Three journalists have been slain since the last index period, bringing Pakistan’s total to 22 for the most recent decade. They include Shan Dahar who was gunned down while investigating illegal sales of aid medicine at a local hospital. With the exception of Babar’s case, impunity remains the norm in these murders and in a slew of recent, non-fatal attacks, such as the shooting that gravely injured popular news anchor Hamid Mir. Threats to journalists stream from military and intelligence agencies, political parties, criminal groups and militants, and corrupt local leaders. Pakistan is a focuscountry for the UN Plan of Action for the Safety of Journalists and Issue of Impunity, an initiative that has improved dialogue and coordinationamong civil society, media, and the government but not yet led to any significant reduction in impunity.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.119 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 9th with a rating of 0.123

Impunity Spotlight: RUSSIA

Mikhail Beketov, Khimkinskaya Pravda

April 8, 2013, in Khimki, Russia

Mikhail Beketov, 55, the former editor of the independent newspaper Khimkinskaya Pravda in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, died in a Moscow hospital from heart failure stemming from a choking episode during lunch, Elena Kostyuchenko, Beketov’s friend and a reporter for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told CPJ by phone.

The choking incident was directly related to a November 2008 assault on Beketov, which left him in a coma for several months, according to Kostyuchenko and news reports. When he was in the coma, surgeons maintained his breathing by inserting a tube during a tracheotomy. Kostyuchenko said the combination of the deep tracheal scars and the food led to him choking, which blocked airflow to his lungs and in turn led to heart failure.

In November 2008, neighbors had found Beketov lying in his front yard in Khimki, more than 24 hours after unidentified assailants crushed his skull, broke his legs, smashed both hands, and left him to die in the cold. Physicians removed part of Beketov’s brain after the attack, and amputated a leg as well as some fingers, according to news reports. The journalist regularly visited the hospital for checkups.

Prior to the attack, Beketov had publicly accused Vladimir Strelchenko, then the mayor of Khimki, of nepotism and corruption and had heavily criticized his administration’s decision to replace parts of a local forest with a freeway.

Russia

The conviction in July of the mastermind behind the double murder of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasiya Baburova brought a glimmer of relief to a bleak record of impunity but, with 11 unsolved cases for this index period, Russia remains the worst country in Europe and Central Asia region at prosecuting journalists’ killers. Baburova’s case is unique; in nearly 90 percent of murders of journalists in Russia, no one is convicted. This fact stands in stark contrast to a statement by Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin in 2014 that 90 percent of all homicides in Russia are solved. The few prosecutions that have advanced, such as the high-profile case of Anna Politkovskaya, resulted so far in only the sentencing of those who carried out the crime-not those who ordered it. Other investigations havetapered off. Despite a personal promise by President Vladimir Putin to bring the attackers to justice, not a single person has been arrested for the assault on environmental journalist Mikhail Beketov, who succumbed in 2013 to injuries he sustained in 2008 when thugs bludgeoned him into a coma. CPJ has called for a re-investigation into the ultimately fatal beating.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.076 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 10th with a rating of 0.098

Impunity Spotlight: BRAZIL

Rodrigo Neto, Rádio Vanguarda and Vale do Aço

March 8, 2013, in Ipatinga, Brazil

Two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot Neto as he was getting into his car after attending a local barbecue in Ipatinga, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, according to news reports. The journalist died at a local hospital.

Brazil

Despite a growing record of convictions, deadly violence against journalists continues to outpace justice in Brazil. With 11 unsolved cases, the country maintains the same worldwide impunity ranking as last year. In a meeting with a CPJ delegation in May 2014, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff pledged to pursue “zero impunity” and support legislative efforts to federalize crimes against free expression. Since then, suspects in the 2013 killings of crime reporters Rodrigo Neto and Walgney Assis de Carvalho have been convicted and sentenced. As with the majority of cases, however, accountability has extended as far as the gunmen but not the mastermind. Prosecuting those who order killings of journalists remains a key challenge to breaking Brazil’s cycle of violence, particularly when taking into consideration the fact that local government officials are the leading suspects in the majority of cases.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.053 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 11th with a rating of 0.045

Impunity Spotlight: NIGERIA

Bayo Ohu, The Guardian

September 20, 2009, in Lagos, Nigeria

Ohu, 45, an assistant news editor for the influential private dailyThe Guardian, was shot by unidentified assailants as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos. The six assailants took a laptop and cell phone, according to the journalist’s relatives and local news reports.

Ohu was preparing to head to church to meet his wife, and two of his five children were home at the time, local journalists told CPJ. Neighbors drove him to a local hospital, but staff refused to treat him because he was not accompanied by police, journalists and news reports said. He died before neighbors could get him to another hospital, local journalists told CPJ.

NIGERIA

With five unsolved murders, Nigeria holds a place on CPJ’s Impunity Index for the third year in a row. At least two journalists have been killed by individuals affiliated with Boko Haram, according to CPJ research, while others, like prominent news editor Bayo Ohu, were killed in connection with their reporting on local politics. Ohu was shot at his front door in 2009; in 2012, three suspects were acquitted of the crime after police failed to present any evidence. Nigeria has failed to respond to requests by the director-general of UNESCO, the U.N. agency mandated to promote press freedom, for the judicial status of this and several other journalist killings. In June 2015, CPJ wrote to then-President-elect Muhammadu Buhari asking him to depart from his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, by making the prosecution of killers of journalists a priority.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.028 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 12th with a rating of 0.030

Impunity Spotlight: INDIA

Jagendra Singh, Freelance

Murdered: June 8, 2015, in Shahjahanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, India

Jagendra Singh, a freelance journalist who reported critically on politics and current affairs in Hindi-language newspapers and on Facebook, died from burn injuries he sustained after a police raid at his home on June 1, local reports said.

While being treated in hospital for burns covering more than half of his body, Singh made a statement to a police officer, Amitabh Thakur, in which he said another police officer, Sriprakash Rai, had doused him in petrol and set him on fire, the Press Trust of India reported.

INDIA:

Of the 11 journalist murders CPJ has confirmed as work-related in the last 10 years in India, all have been carried out with complete impunity, securing India’s spot on the Impunity Index for the eighth year in a row. Nearly all the victims reported on corruption or politics, like freelance journalist Jagendra Singh, who died from burn wounds in June. Singh reported on politics and illegal mining activities in Uttar Pradesh. In a statement before his death, he alleged that police set him on fire at the behest of a local government minister. India’s unrelenting impunity is fostering an increasingly dangerous climate for journalists. Just days after Singh’s murder, another journalist was beaten and dragged behind a motorcycle, and a reporter in West Bengal went missing, among other assaults. The Press Council of India, a statutory body, has called for a two-minute news blackout on November 2 to protest impunity in recent attacks against journalists.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.008 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 13th with a rating of 0.006

Getting away with murder

A CPJ report on impunity.

Murder is the ultimate form of censorship

CPJ’s 2015 Global Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free.

See the full Index.

The Road to Justice

Breaking the Cycle of Impunity in the Killing of Journalists

Increased international attention to the murders of journalists, governments fail to take action to reduce the high rates of targeted violence and impunity, the Committee to Protect Journalists finds. In the past 10 years, 370 journalists were murdered; in 90 percent of cases, there are no convictions. The unchecked, unsolved murders of journalists is one of the greatest threats to press freedom today.

Read the full report.

Who is killing Central America’s journalists?

Amid the violence and instability caused by organized crime and corruption in Central America, Honduras and Guatemala have experienced an alarming rise in the number of murders of, and attacks against, journalists. Near complete impunity for these crimes means the cases go mostly unsolved and the motives unexplained. As fear grips newsrooms in both countries, critical media outlets and journalists find they are reined in by governments increasingly intolerant of dissent.