South Asia: A Living Hell for Journalists
By Dr Qaisar Abbas
Dallas, TX
Strong and independent media are the backbone of modern democratic societies that allow a smooth political process identifying immoralities of political leaders, and revealing corruption, injustice and inequalities in society. However, when it comes to South Asia, it might be a different story.
A recent report of Reporters without Borders has identified South Asia as one of the most dangerous places for journalists. It reviews restrictions and horrendous incidents of violence against reporters, journalists and media personnel all over the world in 2013.
According to the report, violence against journalists has been on the rise in the region from India to Pakistan and Sri Lanka to Nepal. “The most disturbing development is the increasingly targeted nature of the violence” says the report entitled World Press Freedom Index 2014.
The report notes under the section Violence and Impunity in Indian Sub-continent: “A record number of eight journalists and one media worker were killed in India in 2013. Half of these deaths were premeditated reprisals. This was twice the 2012 death toll and more than the death toll in Pakistan, long the world’s deadliest country for media personnel.”
These journalists have been target of violence by security personnel and armed groups in India and local authorities seem to be indifferent in saving the reporters’ life and property.
Violent attacks are conducted to impose censorships on media channels and most of the time attackers achieve their goals as the targeted media, realizing they are unprotected, avoid analyzing sensitive issues in their societies.
Pakistan continues to be a highly volatile country for journalists who are target of drive by shootings, bomb explosions in media offices and terrorist attacks. The report notices growing negligence on the part of authorities in saving lives of the media personnel. “The government seems powerless against not only the Taliban, Jihadis and other armed groups but also the military apparatus, which international observers describe as a 'state within the state,' ” the report laments.
Grim details of the report specifically identify journalists who were killed as part of their professional duties in Pakistan last year. “ Four of them – Mohammad Iqbal of News Network International, Saifur Rehman and Imran Shaikh of Samaa News, and Mehmood Ahmed Afridi – were killed in Balochistan, Pakistan’s deadliest province.”
The report reveals some shocking trends that reporters, media personnel and journalists in Pakistan are not only being targeted by terrorists but they are also being kidnapped, tortured and killed by security agencies and military intelligence agencies.
While armed groups have been mentioned as the biggest threat to Pakistani journalists, the report says, “The intelligence agencies, especially Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continue to represent a danger.”
The military establishment and its intelligence agencies continue to harass reporters who boldly write on their atrocities toward their own civilians torturing, abducting and even murdering them.
Bangladesh has also been cited as a country where freedom of expression seems to be a remote concept as journalists are becoming target of both mass protestors and police personnel on a daily basis.
This censorship through violent means has also been extended to online activists in Bangladesh as bloggers, including those covering trials of former political leaders for war crimes committed in 1971, are becoming target of violent attacks.
Citing examples, the report mentions, “One, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death. Another, Asif Mohiuddin, was stabbed by Islamist activists who accused him of blasphemy and insulting the Prophet.”
We already know that intercultural and religious harmony are now part of the long forgotten history of South Asia but targeting media organizations and journalists by not only violent groups but intelligence agencies and security organizations, who are supposed to protect them, are the new shocking trends in the region.
We South Asians are used to state-sponsored censorship on news media using legal structures, security institutions and unwritten censorship in the case of Pakistan. This new wave of more blatant and more brutal methods of censorship, however, has added all kinds of ideological and militant groups to the list of oppressors who intend to mold media messages in their favor or silence their voices through intimidation and aggression.
These trends not only pose a threat to freedom of expression, they also expose increasing intolerance in the society that erodes the very foundation of democratic norms and traditions. The fourth pillar of democracy has never been so vulnerable in South Asia!
(Dr Qaisar Abbas is a freelance journalist, university administrator and media analyst based in Dallas. He is also a published Urdu poet and writer. Before coming to the US he was news producer in Pakistan TV and information officer in the province of Punjab)
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