Focus on killings of journalists in Sindh

The murder of a journalist, reportedly killed by unidentified men in a rural town in the southern province of Sindh because of his consistent exposes of human rights abuses by local chieftains, is still shrouded in mystery, more than a month after he was shot.

Ameer Bux Brohi, a reporter for the Sindhi language newspaper, Kawish, was killed on the evening of 3 October. Newspaper reports said the murder was committed very close to the local police station in Shikarpur by three men who stopped him as he was about to drive to work and shot him at close range before disappearing.

Brohi had built a reputation over the last decade, according to colleagues and friends, of being a fearless and independent reporter, and speculation centred around the possibility that he might have been murdered because of his writings on Karo-Kari, or honour killings. A centuries-old custom prevalent in rural Sindh, it calls for the execution of women - and men - who violate sacred tribal traditions by marrying partners of their own choice, thus bringing "shame" upon their tribal peers.

"We condemn this incident very strongly. This is barbaric. We are not living in a prehistoric era," Salahuddin Haider, the information adviser to the Sindh government, told IRIN from the port city of Karachi. "This has happened in the contemporary world and in Pakistan, which is a
part of the civilised world, and there is no place in our society for acts like these," he stressed.

Brohi is also said to have campaigned relentlessly, through his writings, against human rights excesses committed by local police, as well as "agents" of local, influential landlords. His family and friends told reporters he had been threatened many times of "dire consequences", but that he had been undeterred by the threats.

OTHER CASES

In October 2002, Shahid Soomro, another correspondent for Kawish, was shot at close range by three men who turned up at his door one evening and tried to kidnap him, according to a case filed by the slain journalist's younger brother, who said he had witnessed the murder. The newspaper's editor later said Soomro, who had died instantly, received at least nine bullet wounds.

And, in September this year, just weeks before Brohi's death, Mohammed Akbar, a journalist for a local Urdu daily, was murdered in Karachi by armed gangsters. No arrests have been made.

Alarmed by the reports of Brohi's brutal death, the journalists' rights organisation, Reporters Sans Frontieres, dashed off a letter to Faisal Saleh Hayat, Pakistan's interior minister. "We would be concerned if those who planned and carried out this crime were not punished, or were simply tried by a tribal assembly, as were the October 2002 killers of Shahid Soomro, also of the daily Kawish, who were let off with just a fine," the letter said.

"The police and courts must prosecute and punish those who endanger press freedom in this way," it added.

AGITATION

"The Sindh chief minister had promised that the journalist's [Brohi's] killers would be apprehended within four days," Haider said, adding that he did not know if any arrests had been made yet.

Angered journalists staged demonstrations across the province, calling for the assailants to be arrested. In a convention held at the end of October in the Sindhi town of Sukkur, which was attended by over 500 journalists, speakers said they were concerned about "certain pressure groups" and "agencies" that were harassing journalists, naming two of the latter, both from Sindhi rural towns, who had recently been threatened.

The influential All Pakistan Newspapers Society and the Council of Newspaper Editors said they were concerned that incidents in which journalists were pressured through harassment and threats to their lives had become rampant in Sindh, especially in the rural areas, Dawn, a leading English-language broadsheet reported.

THE "FAMILY FEUD" MOTIVE

But Brohi's case, as did Soomro's before him, might have certain other implications.

A leading human-rights activist associated with the respected Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said he did not believe Brohi's death had been the result of attempts to muzzle the press. "While HRCP condemns every such killing, I don't think this was an attempt to curtail the freedom of the press. I don't consider this to be a killing on those grounds," Ali Hassan, HRCP's vice-chairman for the province, told IRIN from the southern Sindhi city of Hyderabad.

"Brohi wasn't killed on the basis of his writings. His death occurred as the result of a family feud," he maintained.

At the end of October, Brohi's father had petitioned a local court, asking that the police be directed to file a new First Information Report (FIR) for his son's death, describing the original one, filed by his brother, as having been "incomplete and false", Dawn reported.

One of the people he named in his application is said to have had a feud with Brohi, something also alluded to by Hassan, who wrote an article in the November edition of the respected English-language monthly, The Herald, questioning whether Brohi was really killed in the line of duty.

"The killing has led to a sense of fear amongst reporters in the interior of Sindh and, to an extent, a split in the journalist community," he wrote, adding that whereas some saw the incident as an attack on the freedom of the press, others believed it was in no way connected to the media.

According to Hassan's article, the District Police Officer said the police were working on several theories and looking into Brohi's personal and social life, with other police sources claiming that "a staggering sum of nearly 10 million rupees" had been found in bank accounts held by Brohi and a close associate - who has since been detained by the police, who suspected that a huge withdrawal from the bank on the day of Brohi's death may have been used to hire assassins.

Even the murder of Shahid Soomro last year is thrown into doubt by Hassan's assertion in the article that "it later transpired that Soomro was killed in a dispute over a woman".

CALLS FOR POLICE TRANSPARENCY

But others, such as Mazhar Abbas, a senior Karachi-based journalist and former president of the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ), feel that the local police should be more forthcoming about the outcome of their investigations before a judgement can be laid to rest. "The case is still under investigation, so we can't say at this point whether he was killed on the basis of his writings, or some other reason," he told IRIN from Karachi.

One demand journalists across the province had made was that the police should come out with their version, he said. "So far, they have not come out with the motives for why he was killed. Our basic demand is the arrest of the attackers and we want to know the exact motive," he stressed.

Qamarullah Chaudri, the incumbent head of the KUJ, told IRIN from Karachi that his organisation was also waiting for the somewhat murky situation to become clear.

"We are waiting for an official version of events, for the police investigation to reveal what the exact details are behind Brohi's death," he stressed.