IFJ Condemns Failure to Protect Journalists in Pakistan

IFJ Condemns Failure to Protect Journalists in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its affiliate the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) in strongly condemning the killing of another journalist, Abdul Qadir Hajizai, in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on May 28, 2012.

Abdul Qadir Hajizai, who had been working with a private Balochi language TV channel, WASH
TV, for the last two years, was reportedly heading home when armed men on a motorcycle opened fire on him in the Basima area of Washik district in Balochistan. He was taken to a local hospital where he died.

In another incident, the house of the President of the Turbat Press Club, Irshad Akhtar was fired upon the same day. No one was injured in the attack.

Earlier in the month, on May 18, Razzaq Gul, a senior journalist and reporter with Express News in Turbat City in the Kech district of Balochistan province was also killed.

"The situation for journalists in Balochistan is worsening each day”, the IFJ Asia-Pacific said.

“It is crucial that the provincial government take immediate action to ensure that journalists are kept safe and their killers apprehended and charged”.

“The IFJ supports the PFUJ in its country-wide protest against the Balochistan government for its failure to control the rising incidents of journalists' killing."

A recent estimate by the Balochistan Union of Journalists, a constituent unit of the PFUJ, suggests that Hajizai is the twenty-second journalist killed in the province in the last three years.

The PFUJ/IFJ report on the State of Journalism in Balochistan Province, released on World Press Freedom Day 2012, is available on the IFJ website here.

ENDS

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