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RSF condemns murder, kidnapping of journalists

Staff Report

PESHAWAR: Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders) has voiced “revulsion” at the murder of Noor Ahmed Solangi, correspondent for the Sindhi-language newspaper Khabroon, in Kingri, Sindh.

Solangi, 34, died in a hail of nine bullets after he was ambushed by six people on motorbikes and armed with Kalashnikovs, who shot him at point blank range as he was distributing newspapers on June 17.

“We are shocked by the murder of Noor Ahmed Solangi, less than three weeks after the killing of Noor Hakim, in the tribal areas on June 2,” the international press freedom organisation said in a press statement on Wednesday.

“The deteriorating working conditions and the insecurity facing journalists in the rural areas of the country are extremely worrying. It is crucial both that the local authorities find and punish the killers of Noor Ahmed Solangi and that the Pakistani authorities put an end to this lawlessness,” the Paris-based organisation said.

A friend of the reporter, Khan Muhammad, told Reporters Without Borders, “Solangi received death threats two days previously, from the Junejo tribe, which was unhappy about his reports.”

The killed journalist had written an article contesting allegations by Junejo members that a rival clan had killed some of its members in a recent clash. The journalist asserted that they had been killed by police officers.

The family of the murdered journalist has begun legal proceedings against members of the Junejo clan: Hadu Junejo, Makal, Nazir, Ghulam Qaiser, Siddiq and Nural.

A reporter on Sindh TV News, Abdul Khaliq, dismissed a theory that Noor Ahmed Solangi had been killed for ethnic reasons. “He was killed because of his profession,” he said.

PPI adds: RSF has also called for the release of Abdul Latif Gola, the Urdu-language daily Jang’s correspondent in Jafarabad, Balochistan, who was arrested on June 17 by police saying they were acting on the orders of an army officer identified as Major Ali.

“Gola’s arrest is totally arbitrary and unjustified,” RSF said in a statement Wednesday. “No one should ever be arrested without grounds and without a charge. We call on the Pakistani authorities to do everything possible to ensure that Major Ali releases Gola quickly.” Police officers and soldiers went to Gola’s home at around 1:00am on June17. Malik Allah Bakhsh, a police officer, ordered Gola to go with them because “Major Ali” wanted to question him.

“We are very worried about Gola,” his wife told Reporters Without Borders.

“He has done nothing and we do not know why they took him away.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a journalist based in Quetta told Reporters Without Borders that Gola’s arrest was probably linked to his coverage of recent clashes between the security forces and Baloch nationalists. Gola is himself a member of the Baloch ethnic group.

In a separate development, BBC correspondent Nisar Khokhar and a local journalist were denied entry on June 15 to Dera Bugti. Khokhar had gone there to investigate the reported detention of seven women in a military camp for three weeks. He and the journalist with him were detained for two hours by frontier police.

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