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Special Report: A Somali Journalist in Exile

Radio journalist Ahmed Omar Hashi is a survivor, but he has paid dearly. He's been threatened and targeted for death. He's seen his colleagues and friends killed. Now, like other Somali journalists, Hashi struggles in exile and hopes one day he can resume his work. By Karen Phillips. 

Somali editor Ahmed Omar Hashi has survived three attempts on his life. With CPJ's help, he is now living in Uganda. (CPJ/Karen Phillips)

Posted April 13, 2010

KAMPALA, Uganda
As Ahmed Omar Hashi strode toward me, his figure silhouetted in the bright morning light, it was hard to believe this was the same man who left Mogadishu on a stretcher just six months earlier after suffering a near-fatal gunshot wound. As I reached to shake his hand, he pulled me into a bear hug.

Hashi, 43, news editor of Radio Shabelle in Somalia, has survived three attempts on his life. The most recent occurred in June 2009 when hard-line Al-Shabaab insurgents tried to kill him in the Mogadishu hospital where he was recovering from gunshot injuries suffered just days earlier in an attack that left his colleague, Radio Shabelle Director Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe, dead. “I recognized that they wanted to kill me, absolutely,” Hashi told me. “And that’s when CPJ helped.”

Somalia is a focus of CPJ’s Journalist Assistance Program, which has aided dozens of local journalists who have been attacked or threatened during the country’s brutal, ongoing fighting. The conflict in Somalia has claimed the lives of 21 journalists since 2005 and has sent numerous others into exile. Journalists find themselves both literally and figuratively in the crossfire between the U.N.-backed transitional government and militant Islamic groups—most notably Al-Shabaab, which uses threats, attacks, and murder to silence critical voices.

With the help of regional human rights organizations, CPJ got Hashi on a flight out of Mogadishu. His wife and two youngest children joined him soon after, and together they have tried to piece together a new, if precarious, life in exile. I was fortunate to be in Kampala in January 2010 to meet Hashi and his family and learn how they are doing.

Surviving in a foreign country

Hashi insisted on meeting me in downtown Kampala so I wouldn’t get lost on the way to his house—with good reason as it turned out. After exiting the industrial center of the city, we jumped a curb and drove onto a dirt lot that eventually turned into a rugged road lined on either side by pineapple vendors.

The Somali refugee population has been growing in Uganda in recent years. In Kampala, the highest concentration of Somalis is in the poor urban areas of Kisenyi, but Hashi prefers to avoid these neighborhoods for security reasons. Al-Shabaab operatives can enter Uganda through porous borders or simply purchase a visa at the airport on arrival. A well-known refugee like Hashi would not be hard to track down. In order to keep a low profile, Hashi and the 15 other journalists I met live scattered throughout Kampala’s suburbs, avoiding the major diaspora communities.

Hashi’s wife, Fartun, and their daughter Caliya. (CPJ/Karen Phillips)

We entered Hashi’s walled compound through a rusty metal gate. The domestic scene that greeted us in the courtyard—children’s toys scattered beneath the colorful, billowing laundry hung up to dry—was far different from the dangerous circumstances he and his family left behind in Somalia. Hashi’s wife, Fartun, came out to greet me holding their youngest daughter, 1-year-old Caliya. Her older sister, mischievous 2-year-old Nahyan, ran at her father and was swung up in the air. “This one I sometimes call ‘Sherly’ after Sheryl Mendez at CPJ,” he told me smiling. Of his days in the hospital, Hashi recalls, “Sheryl used to call me every night and speak with me for at least two hours. So I never feel alone.”

Hashi’s three other children, the oldest of whom is 10, are living in Somalia with family, and his eyes sadden when I ask about them. “Really, they are too young. They can’t live without me and now I don’t know what to do for them. I hope they will survive and I can bring them here. Life is not easy there for children.”

Hashi and his family share a three-bedroom home with four other Somali refugees, three of them journalists and one a journalist’s wife. There is a strong sense of solidarity among the exile Somali journalist community, even though most live far from one another and the cost and risk of getting together can be prohibitive. (While I was visiting with Hashi, though, 10 other exiled Somali journalists stopped in to tell me their stories and say thank you to CPJ.) Hashi benefited from this support network when he arrived in Kampala still nursing his wounds. Three of his former Radio Shabelle colleagues helped him navigate life in Kampala and get to the hospital to receive medical care.

Hashi is taken to a hospital after being shot by Al-Shabaab militants in June 2009. His colleague Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe was killed in the attack. (AP)

Today, aside from the scars from two bullet wounds and some continuing chest pain, Hashi appears to have recovered from his attack. His emotional wounds, however, run much deeper and put a strain on his daily life. “Sometimes, when I’m walking, I dream,” he tells me. Referring to his slain colleague Hirabe, he adds, “I see my friend being shot in the head.” In these moments he has to sit down to avoid stumbling or being hit by a car, he says. Hashi can’t know for sure what prompted the Al-Shabaab attack as he and Hirabe were walking through Mogadishu’s Bakara Market last June: Was it the station’s decision to air interviews with two moderate Islamic groups? Or was it simply an attempt to complete a job begun four months earlier when Hashi and Hirabe escaped an Al-Shabaab ambush that killed Said Tahlil, director of HornAfrik radio?

Whatever the reason, it was enough for someone to fire a gunshot into Hashi’s hospital room (it missed him because he was lying down) and for two Al-Shabaab operatives armed with explosives and pistols to return to the hospital the next day to ask about his whereabouts (the two were arrested by government forces).

The memories of the trauma Hashi endured in Mogadishu are intensified by the ongoing threat he perceives in Uganda, where low-security borders and a growing Somali refugee population make it possible for Al-Shabaab operatives to enter unnoticed. In December, he and many of his exiled colleagues received the same text message threat on their cell phones: They would never be safe in Uganda. The journalists alerted local authorities, who said they tried unsuccessfully to trace the sender. His biggest fear is that insurgents might try to hurt his children back in Somalia. “Al-Shabaab can kill even a small child,” he says quietly.

For full article see http://cpj.org/reports/2010/04/exiled-somali-editor-family-make-new-life.php

Karen Phillips is a freelance writer and consultant for CPJ’s Journalist Assistance Program.

Editor’s Note: The situation for Hashi and his family is not unique. CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program helps journalists at risk by advocating with the United Nations and foreign embassies for resettlement and offering limited financial assistance for these journalists’ material needs. We can’t do it alone. Visit our Journalist Assistance (www.cpj.org) program and see how you can help.

CPJ Blog

Press Freedom News and Views

Living in limbo: The ongoing wait of journalists in exile

By Sheryl A. Mendez/Journalist Assistance Program Associate

A supporter of former presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi holds an anti-Ahmadinejad newspaper during a Tehran rally in June 2009. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)

The e-mails started on July 15, 2009, and have continued ever since—pleas for help from Iranian journalists who fled their country often with little money and scarce provisions to northern Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and a host of other locales around the world. Many lived in hiding throughout Iran for weeks or months before crossing perilous borders when it soon became apparent that their homes and country were no longer safe havens for their return.

One veteran journalist and blogger (whose name I’m withholding for his protection) was on the run with his family for nearly six months coping with diabetes, hypertension, heart failure and fear before with the help of CPJ being evacuated to Europe. He went underground shortly after the June 12 elections and continued to provide some of the most disarming, disquieting and personal accounts of the post-election atmosphere and events. On June 16, as a wave of arrests swept up journalists, photographers, and bloggers, a neighbor warned him that security agents had stormed his apartment and searched the premises. He received warnings and threats in response to his work as he continued to report on his blog about human rights issues, such as the treatment and rape of detainees in Iran’s prisons:

“I was traced many times. Each time we quickly left our residence and ran away. Once we were forced to leave the remainder of our personal effects in our rented room and to avoid the agents who had followed us we had to leave for another city overnight. During this time, we stayed in 70 different houses, rented rooms or camping sites. Changing our names and appearances we avoided places where police or Basij might be present. On September 21, after I ran out of money and energy, we left Iran through the Kurdistan border, arriving Iraq. We lost our home and belongings during our escape and the last thing we lost was our car. I gave up my entire belongings in return for a few days of freedom so that I could defend my people's rights without suppression. What I had anticipated to be a few days turned into 105 days.”

The sense of insecurity in the lives of Iran’s journalists and their families is omnipresent. Whether at home or abroad one waits; in Iran you’re waiting in a cell or in the prison your home has become for you. Waiting in a second country for resettlement out of the region is no easier.

A female Iranian journalist fearing retaliation for her work arrived in India in October 2009 seeking protection. Less than five months later the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs ordered her deportation to Iran. The order was in response to the February bombing of a popular German bakery in Pune City, which ushered in a heightened atmosphere of suspicion of foreigners living in the area. Fearing return to Iran, she contacted CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program to help cancel the order. In collaboration with the Media Legal Defence Initiative based in the U.K., CPJ contacted Indian authorities in Pune who agreed to grant a stay of deportation. The order, to date, however, has not been fully cancelled.

One primary exit route for Iranians is through Turkey, where they are not required to obtain a visa prior to entering the country. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at present, 1,356 Iranian refugees and asylum seekers have fled to Turkey since June 2009. Although the U.N. agency says that there is not a significant increase in the numbers of Iranians entering, there is a telling shift in the profiles of those who fled. “Many of the newcomers are journalists, academics and/or perceived by the regime to be supporting the opposition,” said Metin Corabatir, UNHCR’s spokesman in Turkey, in an interview in May 2010 with Agence France-Presse.

One Iranian journalist waiting in Turkey for settlement in a third country is freelance journalist and human rights activist Aida Sadat. She was repeatedly harassed, interrogated, and physically assaulted in Iran and eventually fled in the aftermath of the June 2009 elections. She said she had been told by her attackers several times that next time she would be killed, but her attempts to find protection in Iran were futile. “I could not find any organization to defend me as a journalist,” Sadat said. “They had been silenced.”

Scores of other journalists fled Iran before the 2009 elections, under similar crackdowns no less threatening than those of the present day. In fact, July 2009 marked the 10th anniversary of another siege on the media when government authorities tried to muzzle free speech.

Assigned to one of the 32 Turkish cities accommodating asylum seekers, Iranian refugees wait for UNHCR to arrange third-country resettlement which except for the most vulnerable cases may take years. For nearly two years, veteran Iranian editor and publisher Ali Vahid has been waiting in Turkey; threats against his life have followed him throughout.

For photojournalist Javad Moghimi Parsa, whose symbolic photograph of post-election demonstrations appeared on the June 29, 2009, cover of Time magazine, his crime was sending photographs to enemy agencies—in this case, news agencies—a charge which saw many of his colleagues detained in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. He too, like Vahid, has received ongoing threats via e-mail and SMS to his mobile phone. Parsa, like many of his colleagues, told CPJ that just as Iranian refugees do not require a visa to enter Turkey, neither do Iran’s state agents who, they all believe, operate clandestinely within Turkey’s borders.

CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program continues to receive e-mails on a daily basis from Iranian journalists fleeing their homeland, their homes, and families due to false accusations of spying for a foreign government, acting against national security, having relations with foreigners, and propagating against the regime.

To date, Journalist Assistance has helped Iranian journalists resettle to Europe and North America by providing letters of support for their cases before the UNHCR and foreign embassies. We have provided emergency evacuation, airline tickets, and organized legal counsel and much needed financial aide, and, where necessary, medical assistance.

CPJ Blog

Press Freedom News and Views

With 145 journalists behind bars, what's in a number?

By Sheryl A. Mendez/Journalist Assistance Program Associate

Five of 17 journalists released from Cuban prisons give a press conference on their arrival in Madrid in July. They have since told CPJ they suffered torture in jail. (AP/Paul White)

Today we released our annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world, citing 145 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars on December 1, an increase of nine from 2009 figures. The tally begs the question, What's in a number?

Cuban journalists Normando Hernández González and José Luis Garcia Paneque know all too well the significance and weight of this number. On March 18, 2003, Cuba's state security forces carried out a three-day countrywide raid and arrested 29 journalists in the crackdown, González and Paneque were among those detained. Cuba's so-called "Black Spring" had begun. Their crime was practicing independent journalism in a country where control of the media and brutal enforcement of censorship are absolute.

In response, CPJ obtained a license from the U.S. Treasury allowing us to provide urgent financial assistance to the imprisoned journalists' families to help them pay for food, medicine and travel expenses to visit the remote locations of the prisons where their loved ones were held. CPJ also provided a list of imprisoned journalists to the Spanish Foreign Ministry to ensure that those named would be part of any negotiations for the release of jailed Cuban dissidents. In 2010, the Spanish government and the Cuban Catholic Church negotiated a deal with Cuba, which agreed to release all imprisoned journalists rounded up in 2003. To date, 17 have been released, with the majority resettled in Spain.

Three from the 2003 crackdown remain behind bars, as does one other Cuban journalist.

In an ongoing CPJ series of first-person stories by freed Cuban journalists, Normando Hernández González gives a graphic account of the horrors of his experience behind bars: "I long to forget, but cannot, to erase from my memory the murmurs of suffering, the plaintive screams of torture, the screeching bars," he writes. "I detest having my hands handcuffed behind my back and attached to my feet, also handcuffed, and lying for hours on my side on the cold, damp cell floor while insects and rodents walk all over my garroted body being tortured with the technique known in prison slang as 'Little Chair.' I want to sleep without enduring the pain caused by a rubber cane or tonfa used to bruise or break my skin."

Maziar Bahari (Newsweek)

Again, what's in a number? In the case of Canadian-Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari, one of dozens of journalists imprisoned in Iran, there was arbitrary arrest then 118 days of incommunicado detention and torture. His crime? Simply being a journalist. Without the efforts of CPJ and other press freedom organizations, Bahari may well have served out a 13-year sentence handed down by a Teheran Revolutionary Court delivered to the journalist in absentia in May 2010. "I know my jailers in Iran were aware of the depths of international concern," said Bahari.

International attention has an impact both in pressuring governments to release journalists imprisoned around the world and in providing direct assistance to families that are often impoverished with the loss of the sole breadwinner's income. CPJ provides assistance for food and medicine, as well as resources for legal counsel, appeals, and petitions for amnesty.

In Azerbaijan, Emin Fatullayev, the father of imprisoned Azerbaijani journalist Eynulla Fatullayev, says he has been threatened with death if he does not stop speaking out about his son. An anonymous caller telephoned his Baku home on March 17 and said he and his son must "shut up once and for all," or "the entire family will be destroyed." Eynulla Fatullayev and his family have endured harassment, physical attacks, and death threats, none of which have been adequately investigated by the police.

Iran and China, with 34 imprisoned journalists apiece, tie for the world's worst jailers of the press. CPJ is working to win the release of each journalist that is part of the outrageous number that is 145. Where that is not yet possible, we are seeking to provide urgent care and support for the families of imprisoned journalists.

In 2010, CPJ helped to secure the release of at least 46 imprisoned journalists around the world. Please give your support to journalists and their families by ensuring that they receive adequate medical, legal, and financial assistance to meet their needs while unjustly behind bars. In the words of Maziar Bahari, "raise an outcry" for the release of journalists in Iran and worldwide.

Here are some ways you can get involved:

• Donate to CPJ's distress fund for journalists. The fund provides emergency grants to journalists facing persecution for their work.
• Help sponsor the family of a journalist imprisoned for his work. When a journalist is jailed, his or her family is often left destitute. A little support can have a large impact on these shattered lives.
• Let us know if you have pro-bono services you can offer.
• Contact us if you plan to travel to countries where journalists are imprisoned or attacked. You can volunteer to help local journalists.
• Publicize the plights of journalists facing persecution around the world. If you would like to interview, book a speaking engagement, or publish work by a journalist assisted by CPJ, contact the Journalist Assistance program.

CPJ is grateful to the Ford Foundation and to Molly Bingham for supporting our campaign to win the release of journalists imprisoned around the world.

CPJ Blog

Press Freedom News and Views

Quantifying the threat to journalists in Pakistan

By Sheryl A. Mendez/CPJ Journalist Assistance Program Associate and Bob Dietz/CPJ Asia Program Coordinator

Pakistani journalists offer funeral prayers for their slain colleague Saleem Shahzad in June. (AP/B.K.Bangash)

For many journalists working in Pakistan, death threats and menacing messages are simply seen as part of their job. But since December 2010, CPJ's Journalist Assistance Program (JA) has processed requests for help from 16 journalists in Pakistan who are dealing with threats. Others have told us of threats they have received in the event that they are attacked.

Outside of JA's caseload, we are aware of nine other journalists who have received death threats or menacing messages, usually by text message. These threats went beyond the usual level and were bad enough for the journalists to tell us about them. We have three "in case I am killed" messages in Bob's e-mail inbox, set aside if the worst-case scenario actually comes about for these people.
Most of those threatened are men, but a few of them are women. Most work for Pakistani media, but some work for international news organizations. One is an Afghan journalist working in Pakistan. Since the brutal murder of Saleem Shahzad at the end of May, the rate of applications for assistance seems to have accelerated, but it is too early to tell if there is a real spike or just part of the rise in the Pakistan caseload we have seen in the past year or two.
Remember: The cases we are talking about are not all the journalists who have received threats in Pakistan. Our data largely reflects journalists who have reached out to us. In a few cases, we were told of a situation and we reached out to the person being threatened.
CPJ has assisted or is aware of Pakistani journalists living in other South Asian countries, Sweden, the UAE, and the United States, and we can't help but believe that there are many more journalists outside the country that we or our international sister organizations don't know about.
The journalists we have worked with say the threats have come from many quarters: the government's military, paramilitary, and intelligence groups; both sides in the brutal escalating ethnic strife in Balochistan; militant groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, some of which operate on both sides of the border with Afghanistan; political factions and criminal groups fighting turf wars in urban areas, notably Karachi; powerful feudal leaders  who still predominate in rural areas; and, at times, the figures involved in bitter local disputes over land, water rights, political patronage, corruption, and even marital conflicts that a journalist has covered.
CPJ and other local and international groups doing similar work have developed an approach to this problem: We counsel journalists to make the threats they are receiving public, or at least to alert their employers and colleagues. We encourage them to register a case with the local police. If the situation seems dire enough, we tell them to consider relocating to another city for a while, and at times we offer them financial assistance to do that. We discourage them from viewing asylum in another country as the only solution, though have gotten some of them into three- to six-month training or professional development programs. Those who do find asylum somewhere often wind up marginalized, no longer able to pursue their careers in a foreign country. We have seen oppressive media environments in other countries drain them of their intelligentsia and don't want to see that happen in Pakistan.
Some of the more accomplished journalists have been able to get into significant academic programs in Europe or the U.S., though for most of the people we're dealing with, such programs are out of reach. Others, with the financial means, are able to move in and out of Pakistan as they perceive the threat level rising and falling.
Increasingly, we find it difficult for journalists to be issued visas into European, Scandinavian, or North American countries. For those who insist on leaving Pakistan, we find ourselves directing them toward countries that do not require visas for Pakistanis. CPJ and other groups have little influence over immigration authorities, though we do write letters of support for some of their applications.
With the government unwilling or unable to address the near-perfect level of impunity for those who kill or attack journalists in Pakistan, CPJ encourages our colleagues there to do more to organize to protect themselves. Media companies should continue to devise strategies of dealing with threats as well as attacks. Journalist trade organizations should ramp up their safety training for those who don't have the benefit of being on the staff of a larger organization. And, in my meetings with the younger generation of journalists coming up, we are learning that many feel alienated from the established media houses and journalist organizations. These younger people will need protection as well. If they haven't already, they will soon feel the same pressure their more established colleagues are struggling to cope with. The intimidation journalists face in Pakistan does not look set to end any time soon.

CPJ Blog

Press Freedom News and Views

Evacuating Somali reporters who face unrelenting violence

By Sheryl A. Mendez/Journalist Assistance Program Associate

Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe was killed in 2009. (NUSOJ)

Somalia was among the world's deadliest countries for journalists in 2009, the year I began working with CPJ's Journalist Assistance program. On June 7, two gunmen shot Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe and Ahmed Omar Hashi, the director and news editor of the country's leading independent station, Radio Shabelle. Hirabe died at the scene. Hashi barely survived and was hospitalized with wounds to the abdomen and right hand.

The following day, JA received an email from Radio Shabelle's former web editor, Baabul Noor Mohamed, who was living in Uganda. Due to continued threats, Baabul and three colleagues had been evacuated out of Mogadishu in 2007 by JA's then-coordinator, Elisabeth Witchel. In his email, Baabul asked CPJ to contact his colleague Ahmed Tajir, who had been injured in the recent attack. On establishing contact with Tajir, CPJ learned that doctors believed Hashi needed to leave Somalia for further treatment, and that there had been a second attack on his life inside the hospital. CPJ evacuated Hashi on an African Airways flight to Uganda, where he received medical care and treatment for ongoing trauma.
Over the course of 2009, dozens more journalists fled Somalia. In October, while trying to stay abreast of Somalia's ever-changing political landscape, I read an online article on Somali journalists Hasan Ali Gesey, Abdul Hakim Omar Jimale,and Mohamed Shidane Daban, who were living in Nairobi. All had survived near-death at home. Ali Gesey, a former editor at Somaliweyn Radio, fled following repeated death threats. Jimale, a veteran reporter for the government-run Radio Voice of Peace, was left for dead after in 2007, after gunmen forced their way into his Mogadishu home and shot him five times. The third, Shidane, survived multiple attempts on his life during his 15 years as a reporter. In 2003, armed men raided his house, spraying it with bullets. Shidane lost his right arm, and his 18-month-old daughter was killed.
A year later, an Al-Shabaab leader threatened to kill him. Shidane went into hiding in Mogadishu and then fled to South Africa. Having returned home, in January 2008, he was arrested by government agents and held without charge for 115 days. This time, a target for both sides of the conflict, Shidane fled to Kenya.
In Kenya, however, Shidane found no reprieve from the threat of violence. In 2010, he produced a series of controversial stories for the German Radio Service ARD and the Kenyan daily The Standard. He uncovered evidence of Al-Shabaab fighters receiving medical treatment in Kenya and reported on the story of a Somali child soldier who escaped a militia training camp. Both stories were immediately followed by renewed death threats. Fearing for Shidane's safety, ARD staff took him to Nairobi's Kangethe Rehabilitation Center. There, CPJ covered the cost of his stay as well as medical exams for ongoing pain in the arm Shidane had lost in 2003. Doctors removed a bullet found in what remained of his right arm.
Though Kangethe proved to be a temporary haven, it was not equipped to handle such a high-risk case. All those working on Shidane's behalf feared that his assailants would soon find him. After discussions with ARD and Kangethe, we agreed that Shidane should be relocated. CPJ's East Africa consultant, Tom Rhodes, worked his contacts on the ground in Nairobi, while from New York I contacted Amnesty International, the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Finally, the U.N. agreed to transfer Shidane to a GTZ facility with 24/7 protection for refugees at high risk.
In the meantime, CPJ pressed the UNHCR for Shidane's resettlement out of the region, and today, he is living in Sweden. CPJ also supported Jimale's resettlement to the United States, where he lives near Boston. Ali Gesey was initially turned down for resettlement, but while his case is pending on appeal, CPJ continues to support him.
Shidane recently spoke with CPJ, updating us on his life in Sweden. "I still can't forget my past," he wrote. "But here I started to catch up with the life, there is no stress. I can sleep well, there is no fear, no threat. Thank you, you saved my life."

CPJ Blog

Press Freedom News and Views

A killing field: The targeting of journalists in Pakistan

By Sheryl Mendez/Journalist Assistance Program Associate

A journalist hangs a lock across his lips during a protest in response to the death of journalist Saleem Shahzad. (AFP)

For the past several weeks, CPJ's Asia and Journalist Assistance programs have been in regular contact with local and international organizations who are concerned about the rising number of journalists and media workers at risk in Pakistan. CPJ and several other groups are working together on viable, in-country solutions: Journalists in Pakistan are in need of trauma counseling, urgent relocation, or support so that they may remain in hiding and avoid threats or physical attacks.

Pakistani journalists have faced threats, abduction, assault, censorship, displacement, torture, and murder in increasing numbers in recent years, CPJ research shows. One of the most alarming cases was the September 2010 attack on columnist Umar Cheema, who had reported critically on civilian and military authorities. Cheema was abducted, tortured, and then dumped with a warning: "If you tell the media about this, you'll be abducted again--and won't ever be returned." If you cover politics, corruption, or war, you're more likely than any of your colleagues to be victimized at the hands of the military or paramilitary or intelligence groups. You may also become a victim of one of the two sides of Baluchistan's escalating ethnic strife, or of militants operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or of political factions, criminal groups, or feudal leaders vying for power. If threats and harassment don't force you to quit journalism, then perhaps you'll flee your home. If this fails, you may be killed. And if you're killed in the line of duty, it is likely that those who perpetrated the crime will walk away, given Pakistan's near-perfect level of impunity.
CPJ research shows that at least 39 journalists have been killed in direct relation to their work since 1992, with the fatality rate increasing dramatically in the past five years. Last year, CPJ ranked Pakistan the deadliest country for journalists in the world, with nine media deaths. Print journalists have suffered the highest loss, but broadcast journalists are not lagging far behind. The majority of victims, 95 percent, are local journalists, a pattern seen around the world.

Relatives and colleagues carry journalist Saleem Shahzad's casket. (Reuters)

With five journalists killed so far this year, 2011 seems set to be another deadly year for Pakistan's press. Three of those five deaths were targeted killings. Geo TV's Wali Khan Babar was gunned down after his story aired on gang violence in Karachi. Babar had been threatened in the past, according to CPJ research. On World Press Freedom Day (May 3), Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari told a CPJ delegation that he would pursue justice for all journalists killed on the job. A week later, reporter Nasrullah Afridi from the northwestern Khyber Agency died when his car exploded in Peshawar. According to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Afridi was in Peshawar fleeing threats from militant groups. And then Saleem Shahzad's tortured body was found on May 31. He had been abducted and murdered after reporting on ties between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan's navy, news reports said. For months, the reporter had been telling friends that he had been warned by intelligence agents to stop reporting on sensitive security matters. In late June, a government-established commission was formed to look into the Shahzad killing.
On August 5, Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz and I wrote a blog post headlined Quantifying the threat to journalists in Pakistan, which began: "For many journalists working in Pakistan, death threats and menacing messages are simply seen as part of their job." But now the real question seems to be whether the threat of death--either from a targeted killing or being caught in the country's mounting violence--has become a routine part of working as a journalist in Pakistan.