South Asia Terrorism Portal

PAKISTAN

Muzzled Media
Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management

Independent voices of journalists, reporters and media personnel continued to be trampled across Pakistan, with the state, its proxies and extremist elements resorting to violence and intimidation.

On August 12, 2023, Jan Muhammad Mahar, a reporter of a Sindhi-language cable television network KTN News, was shot dead in an armed attack by unidentified assailants in the Sukkur District of Sindh. Mahar was in his car when he was attacked, close to his office. According to Media sources, Mahar fearlessly reported on diverse subjects, shedding light on matters of societal and political significance.

On August 7, 2023, Ghulam Asghar Khand, a journalist working for Sobh, a Pakistani daily newspaper in the Sindhi language, was killed by an unidentified assailant in the Ahmedpur area of the Khairpur District of Sindh. Police said that one unidentified assailant opened fire on Khand when he was going to the Press Club, from his home. Various reports indicate that Khand had reported on illegal activities in Amedpur before his death.

On April 28, 2022, 7 News channel reporter Zia-Ur-Rehman Farooqi succumbed to his bullet wounds in Khanewal District of Punjab province. Several assailants stopped and threatened a car carrying media reporters, including Zia-Ur-Rehman Farooqi. Armed individuals opened fire on the journalists, hitting Zia-Ur-Rehman in the head. The other journalists in the car managed to escape unharmed, while the assailants fled the scene. He was suspectedly attacked for his critical reporting on land grabbing schemes in the area.

On February 18, 2022, private TV channel Samaa's Senior Producer Athar Mateen was shot dead in an armed attack on his car in the North Nazimabad area of Karachi. Two robbers were looting a local at gunpoint when, in an attempt to prevent the robbery, Athar Mateen was killed.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) database, the first incident of killing of journalist inside Pakistan after March 2000, was recorded on September 1, 2001, when Asadullah Khan, a reporter for the Kashmir Press International (KPI) news agency, was shot dead at Shahrah-e-Faisal in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh. Asad was on his way by his motorcycle and, near the Pir Bukhari Mazar, unknown armed men intercepted and shot him dead. Since then, according to partial data collated by SATP, at least 69 journalists have been killed and another 28 injured in Pakistan, in 91 incidents (data till August 27, 2023). These numbers are probable underestimations. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists 90 journalists and media workers killed in Pakistan between 2000 and 2021.

Worryingly, the violence towards journalists has been projected beyond Pakistan’s borders.

On October 23, 2022, Arshad Sharif, who was critical of Pakistan’s Army, was killed when Police shot at his car on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Subsequently, on December 7, 2022, a team of Pakistani investigators stated in a report that Arshad’s killing was a “planned assassination”. The 49-year-old journalist was living in exile after he fled Pakistan in August 2022, to avoid arrest in the wake of numerous cases, including sedition charges, slapped against him for making comments on his Talk Show – Power Play, aired on ARY News channel, deemed offensive to the military. Earlier, Sajid Hussain, a Baloch rights activist and journalist from Pakistan, living under political asylum in Sweden, was found ‘missing’ on March 2, 2020, from Sweden. As he had been forced to flee Pakistan in 2012, after his investigative journalism attracted frequent death threats, Hussain travelled from Oman to Dubai, to Uganda, finally settling in Sweden. His body was later found in the Fyris River in Uppsala on April 23, 2020. Hussain, was working part-time as a professor in Uppsala University, and was also the Chief Editor of Balochistan Times, an online magazine he had set up, in which he wrote about abductions, drug trafficking and the long-running insurgency in Balochistan.

Meanwhile, apart from these killings, the abduction, torture and intimidation of journalists in Pakistan have also broken the spirit of media professionals. Some of the recent incidents of abduction include:

The detentions of journalists often go unexplained, leaving the families of the victims wondering for months or even years whether their loved one was killed in something as commonplace as a hit-and-run accident or secretly detained by the security forces.

Over the past two decades, Pakistan has produced a moderately vibrant media sector that represents a diversity of political views and opinions. Nevertheless, in recent years, successive governments and the military establishment alike have curtailed media freedom in ways that threaten pluralism and journalistic independence in the country. Over the past decade, the Press has been progressively restrained by different means: new legal mechanisms; physical coercion and violence against journalists; and media blackouts.

Freedom Network, a Pakistan-based media watchdog, recorded at least 140 cases of threats and attacks against journalists, media professionals and media organisations between May 2022 and March 2023. The data shows that violations jumped to 140 in 2022-23 from 86 in 2021-22, indicating an annual increase of around 63 per cent. Freedom Network further noted,

Journalists and media personnel faced a fresh spate of attack during the political turmoil surrounding former Prime Minister and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan’s arrest. Amid widespread protests and political instability, Pakistani authorities imposed internet shutdowns and blocked social media platforms, while protestors and Khan’s supporters targeted journalists in violent attacks. Khan was arrested on May 9, 2023, by paramilitary troops on corruption charges. A day after, on May 10, about 200 demonstrators stormed the building housing Radio Pakistan, the state-owned radio station in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They ransacked the reception area and smashed furniture in several studios. The mob later set fire to the building, destroying computer equipment and the station’s historical recordings and three vehicles in the compound. The day before, reporters trying to cover the protests in Peshawar were also attacked by demonstrators. Khan was released by the Supreme Court on May 11, but was re-arrested again on August 5, 2023, and is currently serving a three-year jail sentence for asset concealment.

Pakistani journalists have long faced serious obstacles to their work, including abduction, harassment, intimidation, assault, arbitrary arrest and detention, and death. Moreover, security forces regularly pressure editors to fire or muzzle reporters, while the government starves critical news outlets of advertising funds, and even refuses to settle previous bills. Anchors have frequently seen their newscasts or programmes cut off in the middle of a broadcast.

The state of affairs in Pakistan has consistently prevented free information from flowing via the media. The risk of being recognised, identified, and assassinated as a free-thinking and fearless journalist is extremely high. Additionally, the fear of complicated governmental rules creates a climate of constant danger for both media outlets and journalists, particularly when covering critical political or anti-establishment stories, or terrorism-related incidents in the country.

INDIA

LWE: Impenitent Killers
Deepak Kumar Nayak
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

On August 22, 2023, a villager, Supai Murkan (48), was killed by cadres of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) on suspicion of being a ‘police informer’, near Rengrahatu village under Tonto Police Station limits in West Singhbhum District, Jharkhand. Superintendent of Police (SP) Ashutosh Shekhar stated that a group of Maoists killed Supai, though he had nothing to do with the Police. 

On August 19, 2023, Maoists killed a 65-year-old man by slitting his throat, and dumped his body near Gitilipi village under the Goilkera Police Station area in West Singhbhum District, Jharkhand. A couple of leaflets were found beside the body that stated that the man was killed as he was a ‘police informer’.

On August 12, 2023, a village officer, identified as Dharamdas Baghel, was abducted and killed by the CPI-Maoist cadres in Rengagondi village under Bayanar Police Station limits in Kondagaon District, Chhattisgarh. Police received information that about 20 Maoists reached the village in the night of August 12 and took Kotwar with them. Kotwar’s body was recovered from a field outside the village the next morning. Police found a pamphlet near the body in which Kotwar was accused of being a ‘police informer’.  

According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), at least 21 civilians (15 in Chhattisgarh; three in Jharkhand, one each in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha) have been killed by the Naxalites [Left Wing Extremists] after being accused, branded, or suspected of being ‘police informers’, since the beginning of the current year (till August 27, 2023). During the corresponding period in 2022, at least 27 civilians (18 in Chhattisgarh; three in Maharashtra; two each in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha; one each in Andhra Pradesh, and Jharkhand) were killed, while another at least eight civilians (four in Chhattisgarh; two each in Odisha and Telangana) were killed, on the same pretext, in the remaining period of 2022.  

Since March 6, 2000, when SATP started documenting Left-Wing Extremism (LWE)-linked violence in the country, the Naxalites have killed at least 3,980 civilians across the country (till August 27, 2023). According to SATP, of these, as many as 845 civilians were killed after being labeled as ‘police informers’. The first such incident was recorded on the SATP database was on March 28, 2000, when the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) killed a former activist of the Radical Youth League in the Nizamabad District of Andhra Pradesh, suspecting him to be a ‘police informer’. Significantly, in 2010, a maximum of 76 such killings were reported from the country.

An analysis of Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) statistics indicates that the Maoists have killed civilians for a variety of reasons. In the first instance, they kill those who do not subscribe to their ideology, in their areas of dominance; such targets they are usually branded as ‘police informers’. They also target individuals to create a power and governance vacuum in rural areas. So-called ‘class enemies’ are also selectively killed. All these murders result in a chain of circumstances within which the kin of the victims can potentially turn against the Maoists.

The Maoists believe that their ‘movement’ has been compromised by the leakage of information by ‘police informers’, and that this has resulted in an increased number of deaths among their leaders/cadres over the years. Through punitive killings, the Naxalites seek to instill a sense of fear among civilians, to strengthen their position against the Security Forces (SFs) on the ground, to eliminate important sources, which the state has sometimes painstakingly cultured, and effectively stop entire villages from communicating with the state authorities.

Not surprisingly, in most of the civilian killings, the Maoists leave a letter/leaflet/pamphlet, warning villagers not to help the Police, or face death.

For instance, in the killing incident in Gitilata Chowk in the West Singhbhum District of Jharkhand on August 19, 2023, the Maoists left a poster near the body, warning that this would be the fate of people who work as "police informers and special police officers (SPOs)". The poster read,

Further, the posters conveyed that 'police informers' had a possibility of redemption only if they surrendered to the CPI-Maoist group.

According to an earlier report on December 10, 2020, intelligence reports suggested that, at the Maoists’ tactical counter-offensive campaign (TCOC) meeting, the general consensus was to come down heavily on ‘police informers’. The top Maoist leaders came to the conclusion that they were unable to carry out effective operations against the forces because their cadre had been infiltrated. A zero-tolerance policy was adopted, after which death penalties were handed out even for small infractions.

Indeed, on November 28, 2022, Madvi Muya (20), a Dalam (armed squad) member of the Chadranna Dalam from Chhattisgarh, and Ravva Deva (22), Kovasi Ganga (25), and Vando Dule (20), all 'Jan Militia' (people's army of the Maoists) members from Cherla Mandal (administrative sub division) of Telangana’s Bhadrachalam Agency, who surrendered before SP G. Vineeth in the Bhadradri Kothagudem District of Telangana, disclosed that they all were distressed at the ill-treatment of innocent tribals by Maoist leaders and decided to come out of the party and distance themselves from their violent acts. The Naxalite leaders were extorting INR 500 from each family of hardworking adivasis and forcibly collecting essential commodities. When the tribals failed to attend Maoist meetings, they were compelled to pay fines. If the adivasis refused to cooperate with the Maoists, they were branded as ‘police informers’ and killed.

Interestingly, however, on May 6, 2022, in Andhra Pradesh, the Director General of Police (DGP), K.V. Rajendranath Reddy, asserted that the killing of tribal people after branding them as ‘police informers’ and the harassment and suppression of Dalam members hailing from various tribal groups, are the prime reasons behind the CPI-Maoist losing their base in Andhra Pradesh and the neighboring States.

As Maoists face the heat of SF consolidation in their erstwhile strongholds, they have increased their crusade against assumed ‘police informers’, and have acted harshly to eliminate purported ‘infiltrators’ or ‘emissaries’. Further SF consolidation on the ground is needed to create a secure security environment for civilians.