Committee to Protect Journalists

Kidnapping for profit or propaganda: How hostage risk for journalists is on the rise

The reasons for kidnapping journalists has varied, from intimidation through short-term abductions by intelligence services, to attempts to gain political influence or force the press to report on certain causes. Kidnapping and murder by drug-related syndicates, some with suspected government ties, have become common in countries including Honduras and Mexico. Kidnapping for propaganda is another motive becoming more common.

In Pakistan, continued risk of violence means press takes every threat seriously

“Everyone will get their turn in this war, especially the slave Pakistani media,” warned Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban on Twitter this week. “We are just waiting for the appropriate time.”

The warning from the Pakistani Taliban faction Jamaat-ur-Ahrar that the press could be the next target in an attack came as the militant group claimed responsibility for the devastating Easter Day terrorist attack in Lahore that left more than 70 dead and hundreds injured.

Image: Forensics experts investigate the site of the Lahore suicide bombing. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and warned the media could be next. (AFP/Arif Ali)

micdotcom:

Pakistan’s International New York Times really didn’t want its readers to see the global cover photo. So much so, that they went with a blank space instead. LGBT advocates are likely going to be furious considering the photo they omitted.

Islamic State Wilayah Khurasan claims responsibility for attack on Pakistani broadcaster today

A video editor, Umar Hayat, was wounded in the attack, and windows at the front of the building were damaged when two men on motorcycles threw a grenade at the offices, Ammad Yousaf, senior vice president of the privately owned station, told CPJ.

The militant group Islamic State Wilayah Khurasan, which claims allegiance to Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the attack in pamphlets thrown outside the office, according to reports. Copies of the pamphlets, written in English and Urdu and shared with CPJ, warned the broadcaster about its coverage of the Pakistani military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region, and accused it of covering up “destruction and massacres” allegedly by the army. Police said they are investigating. Attacks of this nature in the capital, Islamabad, are less common compared to many other Pakistani cities, CPJ research shows.

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

Getting away with murder

A CPJ report on impunity.

Reporter killed in third attack on Pakistani journalists in 24 hours

The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the violence against journalists and media workers in Pakistan after three separate attacks in 24 hours. Former Geo News business reporter Aftab Alam was killed outside his home in Karachi today by two gunmen, according to media reports. The shooting came less than 24 hours after a Geo News technician was killed in Karachi when gunmen opened fire on a broadcast van belonging to the privately owned station. No group has claimed responsibility for either attack.

Within the same time period Abdul Azam, a journalist for the state-run broadcaster Pakistan Television, was shot three times in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the border with Afghanistan, according to a local media report and messages to CPJ from Pakistani journalists. Azam survived but remains hospitalized, the report said.

Image: REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

yahoonewsphotos:

Makeshift amusement parks by photographer Muhammed Muheisen
This collection of photos of makeshift amusement parks in Pakistan was taken in Islamabad and Rawalpindi by Muhammed Muheisen, the Associated Press photographer. Muheisen won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2013, one of several photographers honored that year for their coverage of the civil war in Syria under extremely hazardous conditions. (AP)
Photography by Muhammed Muheisen of the Associated Press
See more Makeshift amusement parks and our other slideshows on Yahoo News.
See more photos by photographer Muhammed Muheisen and his bio on AP Staff Photographers.

reportagebygettyimages:

‘In October 2012, a drone strike in northeast Pakistan killed a 67-year-old woman picking okra outside her house. At a briefing held in 2013 in Washington, DC, the woman’s 13-year-old grandson, Zubair Rehman, spoke to a group of five lawmakers. “I no longer love blue skies,” said Rehman, who was injured by shrapnel in the attack. “In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.”’
America’s drone war has killed thousands of people over the last ten years, but the visual record of it is miniscule. After receiving a Getty Images Editorial Grant in 2013, photographer Tomas Van Houtryve set out across the United States to create images that would bring light to the circumstances under which drones operate. He attached his camera to a small drone and aerially photographed the types of targets that drones strike: weddings, funerals, public gatherings.
See more from the project, In Drones We Trust, here.

gettyimagesnews:

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