LAHORE – The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Friday expressed it concern and sorrow over killing of private TV channel reporter Wali Khan Babar in Karachi and demanded a full investigation in order to bring his killers to justice. The HRCP said that it was grieved at murder of yet another journalist in Pakistan and expressed sympathies and conveyed condolences to Babar’s family and colleagues. The fact that Babar was the second Pakistan journalist killed in 2011 underlines the great challenges and perils Pakistani journalists continue to face on a daily basis, the HRCP said. Pakistan was declared as the world’s deadliest country for journalists in 2010 by International Media Advocacy Group Committee to Protect Journalists. All indicators suggest that the dismal trend of killing journalists will continue, the commission said.
The human rights watchdog said that while motives for Babar’s murder are yet to be established, any hope of finding and bringing to justice his killers depends entirely on importance the federal and provincial governments attach to investigating the murder. Otherwise, the long record of impunity for those killing and assaulting journalists in Pakistan seems set to continue, the commission lamented.
This recurring pattern of death is a stark negation of the most basic of rights that the state is under an obligation to protect, the HRCP said. The commission said that the state needs to take a long, hard look at its shortcomings in crucial areas even in the country’s main cities, particularly in Karachi, and share with people its plan to improve the situation, the human rights watchdog demanded. The task of the law enforcement agencies should be more than merely delivering dead bodies and injured to hospitals and claiming to be on high security alerts after the fact, the HRCP said.
