Today is the first death anniversary of Saleem Shahzad: a time for collective recollection of his life, work and death. Mr Shahzad, an Islamabad based investigative journalist working for a Hong Kong-centred online news service, was tortured and then murdered on May 29 2011.
Since Oct 2010, Saleem Shahzad was being pressurized by ISI to name the source of a story that said that Mullah Barader has been freed, or to retract his claim. Mullah Barader, a high-ranking commander of Afghan Taliban, was captured from the outskirts of Karachi. The way the above question was put signified that the Taliban had actually been freed.
This was not an isolated incident of harassment of Saleem Shahzad. During the previous five years, he had been questioned by ISI a number of times about his writings on terrorism on Oct 17th 2010 he was called to ISI headquarters in Islamabad for a meeting with DG Media Wing Rear Admiral Adnan Naseer. At the end of the meeting, the admiral made the following comment, which Mr Shahzad considered a death threat: “I must give your a favour. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a hit list with him. If I find your name on the list I will certainly let you know.”
This information was emailed by Mr Shahzad to President APNS Hameed Haroon and Ali Dayan of Human Rights Watch. Sometime before his death, he had again sent emails to them that he was being threatened by ISI. A high-powered committee, headed by a judge of the Supreme Court, inquired into the killing, but failed to fix responsibility. However, it did recommend that ISI should be made answerable to the government.
Targeted killing of newspersons has become commonplace in Pakistan: during the last ten years, forty-five newspersons have met a violent end in the line of duty. Only in one case have the killers been caught, that of Daniel Pearl. The hatchet men may be privately employed, or more horrifyingly, may be agents of the State. What makes the demise of Saleem Shahzad so horrifying is that a lot of evidence points towards the State’s involvement in it. There are at least three more documented incidents which show the State acting violently against the press.
On 4 September 2010, Umer Cheema, an investigative reporter for The News was tortured and then dumped outside Islamabad. He was told by his tormentors that his reporting had upset the government. In mid-2011, Waqar Kiani of The Guardian was beaten black and blue for publishing an account of his kidnapping by an intelligence agency of the country two years back. In Nov 2011, a warning was sent by Baloch Musallah Defa Army to the president of Khuzdar Press Club against using the club for “negative activities”. BMDA is a grouping of goons raised by the State to do to death marked Baloch nationalists, generally struggling peacefully for their rights.
So instead of catching the perpetrators of violence against reporters, the state itself has become a party to such brutality. The nation, the press and the media have to fight back. Their battle-cry should be “Remember Saleem Shahzad!” Their main ammunition, the ballot paper which means that they would not vote for the PPP in the next elections, if the PPP government did not stop killing of journalists or could not punish their murderers.”
JAVED ASGHAR
Lahore