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Pakistan deadliest place for press in South Asia: Report | Pakistan is the deadliest place for press in South Asia, with seven of 12 journalists having been killed here in the conflict zones in 2009, according to a new report. The figures revealed
by the South Asia Media Commission (SAMC) indicated that in Pakistan, "some zealots
in the profession have used their new freedoms to scandalise and destabilise a
fragile democracy, ignoring media norms quite frequently". The report underlines
that the year began with the detention of a journalist in a raid conducted by
the Sindh Nationalist Front activists on January 3, 2009. On January 4, Muhammad
Imran, cameraman of a private TV channel and Saleem Tahir Awan, a freelance reporter,
rushed to the site of a gas cylinder blast in Dera Ismail Khan only to be killed
in a suicide attack along with seven others. On January 24, Amir Wakeel, editor
of a newspaper, was gunned down in Rawalpindi. Another TV channel's employee Noor
Hassan was abducted from Swat on February 8. South Asian Free Media Association
(SAFMA) Secretary General Imtiaz Alam was attacked with hockey sticks by four
men when he was driving back home on February 18. Another journalist Khawar Shafiq
was abducted from Faisalabad by a state agency. Wasi Ahmed, a local journalist
from Khuzdar, succumbed in Karachi after he was badly injured during an attack
in his home district. Janullah Hashimzada, an Afghan journalist, was shot down
in Khyber Agency on August 24. The report said two journalists were killed in
Afghanistan, one each in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka and seven in Pakistan. The
report noted that the on-going conflict in Pakistan's tribal areas and the surge
of terrorism had brought tremendous pressure on journalists and reporting the
truth had become "a hazardous affair". |
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