No arrests after shooting attack on TV crew covering Sindh flooding

Reporters Without Borders deplores the lack of any significant police response to an incident in which snipers allegedly in the pay of an influential landowner fired on reporter Talat Hussain (picture) and cameraman Haider Ali of the DawnNews TV channel when they were doing a story about the social impact of recent flooding in Thatta, in the southern province of Sindh, on 4 February. No one was fortunately injured. The press freedom organization calls on the provincial authorities to lose no time in carrying out an exhaustive investigation into this shooting attack on journalists, which could have been fatal. No attempt has been made to identify and arrest those responsible although the incident was condemned by Sindh’s chief minister, Qaim Ali Shah, and its governor, Ishratul Ebad Khan. “The crew was fired on and luckily they escaped unhurt,” DawnNews editor Mubashar Zaidi told Reporters Without Borders by telephone from Karachi. The shots were fired by men using submachine guns and other high-calibre firearms who apparently saw the journalists as troublemakers because they were talking to local residents. Villagers said the gunmen were in the pay of Ghulam Qadir Malkani, a former adviser to the Sindh chief minister and they accused Malkani of taking advantage of the flooding to expel them from the land they were occupying. The incident took place when one of the villagers led the TV crew to the area from which they had been evicted. According to Ali, the villager stopped some distance away, saying he could not go any further because armed guards would detain and beat him. Ali and Hussain then walked ahead. Hussain identified himself in a loud voice and called out but no one replied. Suddenly, snipers opened fire on Ali and Hussain and then several gunmen pursued them as they fled. They finally managed to escape to a safe area. Ali had meanwhile not turned off his camera and was able to record the incident. Ranked 151st out of 178 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, Pakistan is Asia’s most dangerous country for journalists, with 11 killed in 2010. This year got off to a bad start with the murder of Salman Taseer, the governor of the northeastern province of Punjab and owner of the English-language Daily Times, the Urdu-language daily Aaj Kal and the TV station B-Plus, on 4 January was because of his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Wali Khan Babar, a Geo News TV reporter, was gunned down nine days later while out reporting in Karachi. The Pakistani government must make every effort to end the impunity for crimes of violence against journalists and to prevent a climate of terror from taking permanent hold within the media.