Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009asia: analysisIrish-British national Stephen Farrell. A Canadian reporter, Michelle Lang, embeddedwith troops from that country, was killed by a roadside bomb near Kandahar.Conditions did not deteriorate to the same levels faced by the press in Iraq,where 140 journalists and51 media support workerswere killed and dozensmore were abducted, mostof them between 2003 andInternational news outletstake heightened precautions inAfghanistan, Pakistan.the end of 2008. Yet some parallels exist. As in Iraq, conflict pitted a range ofinsurgent and criminal groups against well-equipped military forces and weakcentral governments. Local journalists in Pakistan and Afghanistan providedmuch of the front-line coverage and were often exposed to great risk, a situationthat existed in Iraq.International news organizations took heightened precautions in the twocountries but had not yet established the sort of armed, fortified compounds thathoused their operations in Baghdad. International news coverage, particularly inAfghanistan, increased along with the level of fighting. U.S.-based news outletsdevoted greater staffing, more airtime, and more print space to the conflict inAfghanistan, making it, by late year, the top news story in the United States forthe first time as judged by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence inJournalism.As in Iraq, increasing risk brought with it greater limitations on access. WhilePakistani reporters could embed with the nation’s military to cover the fighting,military rules prevented them from reporting everything they saw. While journalistsin Afghanistan could still move relatively freely in Kabul, reporting trips toplaces such as Kandahar and Kunduz now had to be weighed against the increasingrisks there.The Pakistani government launched two major military offensives in 2009,one into the Swat Valley and surrounding areas beginning in April, and then apush into the heart of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in October, aimedat the core of the Taliban’s Pakistan-based leadership. In the provincial capital ofPeshawar in the midst of the conflict zones, many local reporters from the surroundingtowns under attack told CPJ that both the militants and the militaryhad made it more difficult than ever to report independently.During the Swat Valley offensive, as many as 260 local reporters wound upjoining the general population in fleeing the all-out attacks by the Pakistani military,according to the Khyber Union of Journalists. Some stayed behind to taketheir chances, but their coverage was severely limited by the threat of retaliation.Sher Khan Afridi, president of the Khyber Union of Journalists, said the homesof at least six journalists had been targeted and destroyed by militants angeredby news coverage.One home belonged to Rahman Bunairee, a popular reporter for KhyberTV, a national, privately owned broadcaster, and the U.S. government-fundedVoice of America’s Deewa service, which targets the Pashto-speaking audiencein the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area. Militants told Bunairee’s family theywere retaliating for his reporting. “They had come to destroy our house, and theytold us so. They told my father, ‘We have orders to blow up the house because ofyour son’s criticism of the Taliban,’” Bunairee told CPJ. In the face of continuingthreats he fled the country to live in the United States.Because of the dangers faced by local reporters, much of the coverage wasprovided by Pakistani journalists from outside the region who embedded withthe military. Shamsul Islam Naz, secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Unionof Journalists, told CPJ that the military routinely suppressed stories about theimpact of the fighting on the local populace. Other journalists interviewed byCPJ also noted the military’s tight restrictions on embedded reporting.Muhammad Arshad Sharif, a correspondent for Dawn TV News who embeddedwith the military during the Swat offensive, acknowledged that some eventswere not disclosed in news reports from embedded reporters. “For example,” hesaid, “you can’t show the damage and dead bodies if it’s bad for the military.“But at least you’re part of history as it is happening, even if you can’t tell thewhole story,” added Sharif, who offered hope that “we can show all our footagelater, to show the violation of human rights of war.” For Sharif, embedding wasa necessary tactic in a situation that offered few attractive options. “Either youcover it from the side of the militants or go over and cover it from the side of thegovernment. Cover it independently and your life is at risk. Your life can be takenaway because you could be a target of either of the two sides,” Sharif said.Between 2001 and 2009, at least 22 journalists were killed in connection totheir work in Pakistan, all but two of them local reporters and photographers.The Pakistani militaryallows reporters to embedbut censors the coverage.Three of the four deaths in 2009came at the hands of militants, butthe Pakistani army also came undercriticism for recklessly endangeringreporters. In June, troops manninga checkpoint in Malakand fired on AVT Khyber cameraman Malik Imran andthe crew’s driver. The journalists said their car was hit after it had cleared thecheckpoint. The army never issued a statement or clarification, but an angeredPakistan Federal Union of Journalists did, saying that “such incidents have becomethe order of the day in conflict areas.” When CPJ met with reporters in1081 0 9