Journalists protest at killing of colleague

Journalists’ bodies across Pakistan held protest demonstrations on Monday against the killing of a reporter in the restive North Waziristan agency of the western tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. The handcuffed body of 30-year-old Hayatullah Khan was discovered on Friday outside the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan tribal agency. He had been shot in the back of the head, local media reported. Khan had been missing since last year December, after he reported on the killing of a senior Al-Qaeda operative in a US air strike. His reporting contradicted the official account of the death of Egyptian, Hamza Rabia: that he had died while constructing a bomb. On Sunday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz ordered a judicial inquiry into Khan’s killing. Media activists say the decision has come too late. “National and international media bodies, including Reporters Without Borders and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been asking the government to investigate Khan’s disappearance for the last six months, but the authorities constantly turned a deaf ear,” Owais Aslam Ali, Secretary-General of the Karachi-based Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) said in the capital, Islamabad, on Monday. Khan had been a correspondent for the English language daily newspaper The Nation since 1999. He also worked for the Urdu daily Ausaf, and recently became a photographer for the European Press Agency, covering the tribal region. There has been no claim of responsibility for abducting Khan, but his brother Ehsanullah Khan has said that the country’s security agencies were involved in the kidnapping and murder. Authorities have reportedly blamed Islamic militants for Khan’s killing. Meanwhile, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed “distress” at the killing of Khan and demanded that the government act against those responsible for the murder. “The abduction and killing of Hayatullah must be fully explained. This is a Pakistani journalist murdered in Pakistan and we hold the Pakistani authorities fully responsible for carrying out a vigorous investigation,” Ann Cooper, CPJ Executive Director, said in a statement. “This is a tragic loss, and our hearts go out to Hayatullah’s family and friends.” Khan is the fourth journalist to be killed in the tribal region in less than two years, since Pakistani security forces intensified military operations against alleged Islamic militants in the volatile tribal area in early 2004. He is the second journalist to be killed in Pakistan in a month. A cameraman from a private TV channel was shot dead in the southern Sindh province in May.