Posts Tagged ‘impunity’
July 18th, 2011
Rana Yaseen and Ch Khalid Sardar claim they were “tortured and harassed” on the night of 16 July in the Bahalwapur region of
Pakistan. Local journalists have since
staged a protest outside the regional Press Club and are demanding immediate investigation. The Abbas Nagar Police have “registered a case” against 10 men accused of taking part in the attack but their names have not been released.
June 30th, 2011
Tear gas was
fired at protesters in Tahrir Square this week as hundreds of Egyptians demanded faster action against former senior officials who are currently awaiting trial. On Tuesday evening, families of the 840 people killed in
February’s mass protests had gathered to honour the dead. When police arrived and violence erupted, the crowds moved towards Tahrir to speak out for the “martyrs” who had been killed in the uprising.
June 21st, 2011
Guardian journalist Waqar Kiani
has claimed that he was abducted and tortured by
Pakistani intelligence agents on Saturday night. The alleged attack followed a television appearance where he discussed a previous assault which took place in 2008,
the details of which had only just been released. Kiani has been working on a story about the illegal detention and torture of Islamist militants by Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence . The 32-year-old claims that he was stopped, dragged from his car and attacked with wooden batons and a rubber whip. He is currently being treated in the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
June 13th, 2011
Jyotirmoy Dey, the investigations editor for the daily paper Mid day based in Mumbai was
shot dead by four men on 11 June. He had recently written a piece on an oil mafia that had been selling tainted fuel. Dey was cremated on Sunday 12 June and police are currently investigating the incident.
June 13th, 2011
A radio journalist for DWEB, a private station based in Manila, was
shot twice in the back on his way to work. Romeo Olea’s wife said that he had received death threats and police believe the murder is linked to Olea’s recent stories criticising a city government in the east Philippines.
June 1st, 2011
Russian authorities
arrested Rustam Makhmudov in Chechyna on Tuesday (31 May). He is suspected of shooting Russian journalist
Anna Politkovskaya to death in 2006. Politkovskaya was one of the fiercest critics of now Chechyan President Ramzan Kadyrov, having accused him of torture and corruption. Makmudov’s arrest follows the acquittal of his two brothers and a former police investigator who were tried as accompli to the Politkovskaya murder in 2009. It is now claimed that Makmudov could be the
missing link in the murder conspiracy.
May 31st, 2011
According to Pakistani news sources, the body of the Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online, has been
found. He had been
missing since Sunday. Previous reports said that he was under the custody of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. Human rights groups
claim that the agency has abused and tortured journalists in the past. Saleem Shahzad’s disappearence followed after warnings from Pakistani security agencies over articles that seemed damaging to Pakistan’s national interest and image. Shahza recently covered the Pakistan Taliban’s
attack of a naval air force base in Karachi on May 23.
April 6th, 2011
The chief crime reporter for the Urdu-language daily Extra New was
gunned down in Karachi on 2 April. Zaman Ali was the 14th Pakistani journalist to be killed in the last 13 months.
Witnesses claimed that he was murdered shortly after attending a gathering of Benazir Bhutto supporters, his assailants have not been caught. Pakistan’s Crime Reporters Association condemned his murder, calling for greater protection for working journalists.
