Critical
journalist murdered in Sindh province Reporters
Without
Borders (Reporters sans frontières)
said today it was appalled at the
3 October murder of Pakistani journalist Amir
Bux Brohi, who reported
on human rights violations by police and powerful
local figures in
Sindh province. He was correspondent for the
Sindhi-language Daily
Kawish and the TV station KTN.
"We would 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
press freedom organisation
said in a letter to federal interior minister
Makhdoom Syed Faisal
Saleh. "The police and courts must prosecute
and punish those who
endanger press freedom in this way."
Brohi, 30, was shot dead in Shikarpur, in
Sindh province, by three
gunmen who stopped him as he was driving to
work after dark, shot him
at close range and then fled. Police had no
information on why he was
killed, but Ahmed Raza, a journalist with
the Daily Times, noted that
Brohi, who had worked in Shikarpur for the
past 12 years, had written
a lot about abuses by local police and agents
of landowners. Friends
said he had also been threatened several times.
His murder set off demonstrations by journalists
in several cities in
Sindh province to demand the arrest of the
killers and official
protection for journalists, some of them also
staged a symbolic
hunger-strike as a mark of respect.
6 October 2003
Vincent Brossel
Asia - Pacific Desk, Reporters Sans Frontières
www.rsf.org
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