New York, November 7, 2011–The body of missing Pakistani journalist Javed Naseer Rind was found on Saturday morning in Khuzdar, 186 miles (300 kilometers) south of the city of Quetta, local and international news reports said. The journalist had been shot multiple times in the head and chest, and his body showed multiple signs of torture, the local media reported.
On September 11, Rind, an editor and columnist with the Urdu-language daily Daily Tawar, was kidnapped in his hometown of Hub in southern Baluchistan province. The Daily Tawar is known for its regular coverage of the abuses stemming from the region’s many conflicts between rival groups and the government. Rind was also an active member of the separatist Baluch National Movement, news reports said.
The Baluchistan Union of Journalists condemned Rind’s kidnapping and murder and demanded that the government put together a high-level committee to probe the incident. “On several occasions, journalists demanded Rind’s safe release but it fell on deaf ears,” the organization said in a press release. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the killing.
“Rind’s brutal death is another indicator of the extreme danger journalists face from all parties in the province’s unrest,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “CPJ joins with the Baluchistan Union of Journalists in condemning the kidnapping and murder of Javed Naseer Rind and calls for his journalism to be investigated as a motive for his murder.”
The discovery of Rind’s body marks the seventh death of a Pakistani journalist in 2011, putting the country on pace to rank as the world’s deadliest place for journalists for the second consecutive year, CPJ research showed.