New York, February 18, 2009–The Pakistani government should immediately investigate today’s shooting murder of Geo TV and The News daily correspondent Musa Khankhel in the country’s northwest Swat valley, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
According to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Noorul Hasan, Royal TV’s Peshawar bureau chief, was kidnapped on February 8, when a group of armed men in two cars stopped his car while he and his crew were returning from Swat in North West Frontier Province. The others were not harmed, but Hasan said he…
Military leader Pervez Musharraf resigned as president in August under threat of impeachment, leaving a decidedly mixed legacy on press freedom. As his power waned in late 2007, Musharraf shut down all independent broadcasters for a time and then tried to impose a rigid “code of conduct” on the stations.
Dear President-elect Obama: I am writing as chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists to seek your leadership in reaffirming America’s role as a staunch defender of press freedom throughout the world. Journalists in many countries who risk their lives and liberty upholding the values of free expression look to the United States for support.
CPJ’s Joel Simon, Robert Mahoney, and Nina Ognianova pay tribute to journalists who died in 2008. The toll was highest in Iraq, but conflicts in South Asia and the Caucasus were deadly as well. Impunity in journalist murders in Russia, Philippines, and Mexico were top issues.
New York, December 18, 2008—For the sixth consecutive year, Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its end-of-year analysis. The 11 deaths recorded in Iraq in 2008, while a sharp drop from prior years, remained among the highest annual tolls in CPJ history.
New York, November 14, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned about the deteriorating security situation in the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the most recent incident, two journalists were shot and wounded today in Peshawar.
New York, November 13, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by media reports in Pakistan and Canada that Khadija Abdul Qahaar, publisher of the Web site Jihad Unspun, was kidnapped Tuesday while traveling in the Bannu district in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, on the border with Afghanistan.