Al Jazeera: From destructive raids by officials in Egypt to rejection at a Texas football game

The offices of Al Jazeera were wrecked by “officials” in Egypt the other day because they were showing too much about what was happening there. And in Texas an Al Jazeera reporter was denied the privilege of interviewing patrons at a high-school football game because it was “too dangerous.” Gabriel Elizondo is a reporter for Al Jazeera. Here is what he says about it.

This is what Elizondo has to say about his experience. [Click on the title above for a link to the whole article.]

....
He then said something I could not entirely make out, because his voice sort of quivered from a combination of being obviously furious and nervous at the same time.
But I am pretty sure he said:
“I think it was damn rotten what they did.”
“I am sorry, what who did?” I say, not sure exactly if he was calling me rotten, the terrorists rotten, Al Jazeera rotten, or all of the above.
“The people that did this to us,” he says back to me with a smirk, still glaring uncomfortably straight at my eyes.
“Well, I think it was bad too,” I say. “Well, do you think, sir, we can film a bit of the game and talk to some people here about just that?”
“No. You can’t film, you can’t take pictures, or interview people.”
“OK, can I ask why? And if you allow me can I explain…”
Cut off.
“No, I just expect that you will respect it.”
Clearly he didn’t want to hear anything from me.
Al Jazeera is not welcome here.

Mr Lee’s response:
http://www.bookerisd.net/index.htm

The way Egyptian officials honor Al Jazeera: Raid their offices

Al Jazeera has become one of the most valuable sources of information on what's going on in the Middle East. One wonders if the "Arab Spring" could have taken place without the involvement of the media to broadcast what was going on. Al Jazeera was crucial. But publishing what was happening in the Arab world -- what was really happening -- made Al Jazeera unpopular.

That the Egyptian government has had no use for Al Jazeera is no surprise. New York Times describes Al Jazeera as "known for attentive coverage of street protests" and "known for its attentive, if not sensational, coverage of street protests, including the Israeli Embassy attack on Friday." And for reporting on the attack on the Israeli embassy the other day they were raided by "officials" {not thugs?}. Here is what The Times has to say about this affair:

"The raid also came after a warning last week by Egypt’s minister of media, Osama Heikal, that the government would take legal action against stations that “endanger the stability and security” of the nation, and some analysts said they feared the raid could signal a broader effort to curtail the new freedoms of expression experienced since the uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak this year.

"The network, Al Jazeera Live Egypt, was founded in the aftermath of the uprising and has become known for its attentive, if not sensational, coverage of street protests, including the Israeli Embassy attack on Friday. The raid forced the network to halt its programming for a period before it resumed broadcasting from Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

"Officials of the Interior Ministry said they had raided the network because it lacked a license, and that neighbors had complained about noise. ... But Islam Lotfy, a lawyer for the channel, said the channel had applied for a license in March without a response."

The raid took form as "officers in plain clothes" entering "without showing a warrant or identifying themselves." They "confiscated equipment and arrested an engineer operating it."

But the response of manager of the television channel had an eminently quotable response to all this: “If broadcasting the truth is considered endangering stability,” he said, “then it is an honor for any media outlet to be endangering stability.”

Siddique on the corrosive power of politics on Pakistan's military

Abubakar Siddique of Radio Free Europe has a great statement of the problem with Pakistan's military: It has long been not only rich [holding land, many companies, large trust funds, investment funds, etc.] but also politically entrenched. The combination of wealth and political power is corrosive everywhere. Siddique describes the extant problem [see also Tariq Ali, "The color Khaki"]. RLC

Radio Free Europe: Feature article
Pakistan: Armed With Power, Perks, And Privileges
June 04, 2011
By Abubakar Siddique

It has been a turbulent month for the Pakistani military.

First came the May 2 killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, on Pakistani soil, by American commandos. The raid led to questions of how the Al-Qaeda leader could find a safe haven alongside Pakistan's elite military training academy, and how such a raid could be successfully carried out unbeknownst to the armed forces.

Then came the deadly insurgent attack on a naval base in Karachi on May 22-23, which took 16 hours to contain and which resulted in the death of at least 10 military personnel and four militants. Eyebrows were raised over how the armed services could fail to protect a key military installation.

Capping off the month was the kidnapping on May 29 of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. His abduction in the capital came shortly after he had written an investigative piece alleging that the Karachi attack stemmed from a breakdown in secret negotiations between the navy and Al-Qaeda.

There have been allegations that journalist Syed Salim Shahzad was tortured and killed by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.
Days after Shahzad warned that he had received threats because of his report, his tortured body was discovered far from the capital. Suspicions turned toward the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, considered an integral part of what Pakistanis refer to as the "military establishment."

Human rights campaigners and journalists are clamoring for investigations into Shahzad's death as well as reports he had been threatened by the ISI, which the intelligence agency denies.

An Old Debate Rekindled

It is far from open season on the military, which takes the lion's share of foreign aid, possesses enormous wealth, and has dominated political and economic life in Pakistan for decades.

But lawmakers, the media, and the public have now become emboldened enough to rekindle an old debate about the considerable perks and privileges enjoyed by the country's powerful military.

Why, they ask, are immense resources being used to prop up bloated security institutions while a growing and impoverished population is left wanting?

The grumbling can be expected to get louder in the coming days.

"There are a lot of questions about where the resources are going," says Islamabad-based author and journalist Zahid Hussain, who asks "whether the huge military budgets are properly utilized?

"There are also questions about the…military's own professionalism," he says. "Professionalism in dealing with this kind of situation. Particularly, there are questions about the army running other businesses and not concentrating on their professional duties."

These are the type of questions that Hussain has suffered personally for asking in the past.

In a 2002 article for "Newsweek" magazine, he documented how the Pakistani military had carved out a corporate and real-estate empire that gave the then-ruling generals enormous wealth, power, and advantages.

'Military Generals Play Golf All The Time'

In response, Hussain was banned for years from covering the press conferences of President General Pervez Musharraf, who held office from 1999-2008.

Others have suffered more for going against the grain in the nuclear-armed Islamic nation, which has been ruled by military dictators -- Musharraf being the last -- for more than 30 of the years since its founding in 1947.

Sixty-year-old Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir has spent most of her life campaigning for the rights of religious minorities and landless farm workers effectively bound to a life of modern-day slavery.

Her work has placed her in direct opposition to the military's dominance of the Pakistan's decision-making process. For this she has been imprisoned and placed under house arrest.

Peaceful demonstrations she has orchestrated have been met with harsh police violence, and her family's businesses have suffered as her patriotism has been questioned.

Nevertheless, Jahangir continues to be one of the most vocal public voices questioning the perks enjoyed by the military.

"These military generals play golf all the time," she said on a popular night-time talk show on May 26. "And then they talk about where they will get plots [of land]. Please tell me how a marriage hall can operate in a sensitive [military] installation such as the [naval base] that was attacked in Karachi recently. Have you heard this happening anywhere else?"

An Immense Economic Machine

Jahangir's comments have attracted angry press statements and letters to the editor from former senior military officers, as have more subdued criticisms lodged on other TV talk shows and newspaper columns.

It will take a lot more than public questioning to put a dent in the military's immense economic machine, however.

Under the country's annual budget released on June 3, the military gets a major slice of the pie -- about 25 percent. Healthcare and education, by contrast, receive only a sliver -- less than 5 percent combined.

. . . [For more, click on the title above]

The ISI had been threatening the journalist that turned up dead and mutilated

Now it comes out that the ISI had threatened Saleem Shahzad, bureau chief of Asia Times Online, several times. He disappeared and his body showed up on May 31 badly mutilated. He was not only killed but tortured. Shahzad was of course a Pakistani citizen who of course should have been protected by the ISI; that the organization threatened him was reason for him to share some of the evidence with others who now have brought it into the open. Would we expect whoever did this to admit to have brutalized a journalist for not revealing his sources? It is no surprise that the ISI has denied it. RLC

04 Jun 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com
Why the ISI is Lying By Hameed Haroon
It has come to my notice that a spokesman of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) while speaking to the official national news agency in Islamabad yesterday has questioned the “baseless allegations” levelled by Human Rights Watch on the basis of an email from Saleem Shahzad, the bureau chief of the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online, in their possession. Shahzad was murdered three days ago near Islamabad after being abducted by unknown persons.
I wish to state on record that the email in the possession of Mr Ali Dayan, the monitor for Human Rights Watch (HRW) stationed in, Lahore Pakistan, is indeed one of the three identical emails sent by Mr Shahzad to HRW, his employers (Asia Times Online) and to his former employer, myself. I also wish to verify that allegations levied by HRW at the ISI are essentially in complete consonance with the contents of the slain journalist’s email.
In their denial issued Wednesday, an anonymous spokesman from the ISI has questioned the “baseless allegation” levelled against ISI by Mr Dayan of HRW. I wish to state on the record for the information of the officers involved in investigating journalist Saleem Shahzad’s gruesome murder that the late journalist confided to me and several others that he had received death threats from various officers of the ISI on at least three occasions in the past five years. Whatever the substance of these allegations, they form an integral part of Mr Shahzad’s last testimony. Mr Shahzad’s purpose in transmitting this information to three concerned colleagues in the media was not to defame the ISI but to avert a possible fulfillment of what he clearly perceived to be a death threat. The last threat which I refer to was recorded by Mr Shahzad by email with me, tersely phrased as “for the record”, at precisely 4:11am on October 18, 2010, wherein he recounted the details of his meetings at the ISI headquarters in Islamabad between the director general-media wing (ISI), Rear-Admiral Adnan Nazir, with the deputy director general of the media wing, Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, also being present.
The ostensible agenda for this meeting was the subject of Mr Shahzads’s story in Asia Times Online with respect to the Pakistan government freeing of senior Afghan Taliban commander, Mullah Baraadar. Mr Shahzad informed the senior officials that the story was leaked by an intelligence channel in Pakistan, and confirmed thereafter by the “most credible Taliban source”. The senior officials present suggested to Mr Shahzad that he officially deny the story, which he refused to do, terming the official’s demand as “impractical”.
The senior intelligence official was “curious” to identify the source of Mr Shahzad’s story claiming it to be a “shame” that such a leak should occur from the offices of a high profile intelligence service. Mr Shahzad additionally stated that the rear-admiral offered him some information, ostensibly “as a favour “ in the following words: “We have recently arrested a terrorist and have recovered a lot of data, diaries and other materials 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.” Mr Shahzad subsequently confirmed to me in a conversation that he not only interpreted this conversation as a veiled threat to his person, he also informed me that he let an official from the ISI know soon thereafter that he intended to share the content of this threat with his colleagues. ....
Source: The Indian Express URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamWarOnTerror_1.aspx?ArticleID=4774

[For more click on the title above]

I realize that Manvendra Singh is an Indian criticizing a Pakistani organization, but he has described the real reason for this crime well:
Last Updated : 05 Jun 2011 10:53:28 AM IST

Saleem Shahzad was killed because his writings affected the image-building of an institution that is being devoured from within. His writings didn’t affect the image of the militants of Al-Qaeda or the various shades of the Taliban. The truth didn’t hurt them one bit. Rather it only exposed their infiltration of the armed forces, for which the militants groups are not in the least bit sorry. His writings irritated only the image-makers of the Pakistani military ‘establishment’. For their well-cultivated image of being in control of the destinies of the institutions as well as that of the country has taken a serious beating. . . . Establishments and governments don’t like the truth as news items, discussion points, power presentations etc. They know the truth well, but like it concealed from the public conversations.

[For the source, go to Establishment paranoia and Shahzad’s murder
http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/establishment-paranoia-and-shahzad%E2%80%99s-murder/281206.html

Some significant voices defending Greg Mortensen

The problem with all the discussion about Greg Mortensen’s failures has been the eagerness with which his work has been debunked whereas the picture seems not to be as black and white as it was portrayed in the “60 Minutes” exposé. Evidently some schools were built as Mortensen claims.
Radio Free Europe found

“some surprising backers who have come forward to praise Mortenson. One of them is a local politician in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan region who originally fiercely opposed Mortenson's work.

In "Three Cups of Tea," Imran Nadim Shigri is described as an influential political figure who backed a conservative Shi'ite cleric's religious decree against the CAI's school-building.

Shigri has confirmed that Mortenson did build schools in the remote valleys of his native Baltistan. He could not recall the exact number of schools built by the CAI but said that in the remote Braldu Valley he had personally supervised the handover of five of Mortenson's school buildings to the government, which is now providing teachers and funds to run them.

Shigri says Mortenson's heart was in the right place but that the main problem was his lack of management skills, because Mortenson trusted some local people who misguided him and overinflated building costs.

Shigri also faults Mortenson for focusing largely on building infrastructure without concentrating on the education that would be provided in these buildings. "He only focused on constructing schools. He failed to ensure their sustainability and [proper] management," he says. "He also failed to ensure a high quality of education in these institutions." …

Across the border in Afghanistan, Gul Zaman, governor of the remote Naray district in insurgency-plagued eastern Konar Province, says that three of Mortenson's schools are already working in his district while one more is being built.
In the settlement of Saw alone, Zaman says, "around 700 to 800 boys and girls benefit" from the local school and there are also "200 to 300" pupils enrolled at each of the schools in Samarak and Suna Gala.

On its website, the CAI lists eight schools in Konar and in a recent U.S. television interview, Mortenson claimed to have built 11 schools in the province.
But Zaman says that two of the schools named by the CAI were actually built by a NATO provincial reconstruction team. Zaman's statement was verified by Syed Jamaluddin Hassani, head of Konar's education department.
…

That the schools are not all being used should surprise no one.

This is not to say that Mortensen's evident distortions of truth should be condoned, merely that some honest achievements did take place even as some embarrassing distortions of truth were used to attract funds. It was a betrayal of all the interested parties -- of Mortensen himself, even, as well as all the rest.

The tragedy for all of us is that we fail more often than we want anyone else to know. Mortensen's failures are now hung out for all to see. We can all be glad "60 Minutes" doesn't think our lies are worth exposing. Sometimes telling the truth can be costly, but in the end the price of not telling the truth can surpass all attempts at restitution.

Radio Free Europe's attempt to reach the Pashto speaking world

Journalism is one of the most dangerous professions on the planet, but one of the most important. Here is a link RFE's project to report on affairs to the Pashto audience in "The world's deadliest country for the press."
[Click on the title for the link, or directly link to this site:.]
http://www.rferl.org/content/in_the_news_prague_post_radio_mashaal_anniversary_pakistan/2281949.html

The terrifying threat of authenticity

Those in power would like everyone to hold ideas that they hold -- or at least claim to hold them. It is commonplace for governments to speak as if their representations of truth are indeed unproblematic. In fact, they fear and resent authentic witnessing and authentic expressions of opinion that conflict with those they promote. They are so terrified of it that they have often taken extreme measures to control it.

Clifford Levy reports that a Russian editor who was pressed to affirm that a beating he received by the police when caught participating in a demonstration was his own fault. That his beating was publicly reported was hugely threatening to the Russian establishment. Or so we surmise, for after being beaten the committee formed to investigate [only after the New York Times reported the beating] pressed him to take the blame for it. The only problem was that he recorded the six hour interrogation by the committee. See the whole article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/europe/18interrogate.html?ref=europe

Good journalistic reporting -- which like all human endeavors can never be perfect or complete -- is costly and precious. Without it there can be no just society, no serious democracy. It will always be threatened.

Public claims contrary to those promoted by the power elite have always been a threat, and suppressed brutally. It goes back even to biblical times. This was Jeremiah's problem: For opposing the policies of the rulers of his time, advocating conciliation with the Babylonians rather than rebellion, he was threatened, put in stocks, and imprisoned in a well; and his book was burned.

It's an old game.

Superior journalism as Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel do it.

Journalism is the profession that is supposed to keep us abreast of what is going on in the world, so its reports become an archive of events and activities as they transpire. But good journalism needs also to be examining the claims of officials, to see how they match with the public record. Good journalism has to be more than, as someone has said, a stenographer; it should be reminding us, the public, of things we tend to forget, matching official statements against events and statements in the past. In fact, the public has a short memory, and some of us have a notably short memory, a problem I have had since …, well, as long as I can remember [!] . So journalists need to help us remember what officials have done and said that bear upon what they are doing and saying in the present.

Officials need to be scrutinized -- what they say about themselves and the world – for how accurately they represent the truth, at least as it can be known, a process that entails matching their public affirmations with the available public record. This professional service is necessary because officials have agendas of their own; they want the public to understand situations as they do, in order to justify their perspectives, their past decisions, and their projects. Politics is a continuing debate about how situations should be defined and so is often, by implication, about the past as well as the present. And because definitions of situations affect the interests of public officials, the public statements of officials can be contorted by their interests. The interested viewpoint of officials and the professional obligation of journalists to examine the statements and activities of officials in the light of the public record places journalists and officials on opposing sides. The interests of one clash with the interests of the other.

So a common device of politicians is to dismiss those to bring up embarrassing details as already biased "on the left" or "on the right."

We have recently heard a speech by former Vice President Dick Cheney that has been available for the scrutiny of journalists. As the speech rehearses policies of the Bush administration, it invites such scrutiny. I wonder how many journalists have examined his speech in light of the public record, to see how faithfully the Vice President represented the past. Certainly a fine example of good journalistic practice was the work of Washington DC McClatchy journalists Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, who went through the Cheney speech and found as many as ten “omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.” [Click on the title for a link to their article.]

I wonder how many other journalists have provided this service to their readers? I don’t remember seeing anything like it elsewhere, except for Frank Rich’s statement in the New York Times today.

Dictators in many countries simply control the news by abusing journalists, intimidating, imprisoning, even assassinating those who stubbornly insist on presenting embarrassing and “inconvenient” truths as they know them. In our country we hope our journalists will avoid censoring themselves. When they become reluctant to point out the failures of leaders we all lose, no matter which side we are on in a specific debate.

We now have a new administration. They will have their own perspective, policies, and projects, like the previous one. Lets hope the journalist profession does a better job with this adminstration than they did with the past.

How to be a great journalist the Nicholas Kristof way

Many of us have admired the reports of Nicholas D. Kristof. He has reported on many of the regions of great suffering among human beings around the world. He has faithfully humanized what it’s like to be a slave, a woman trafficked in the sex trade, children forced into war. What we don’t get to see much is what is entailed in telling the world about the human condition in its most tragic forms. Today’s report, though, reveals some dimensions of what it is like to be a great reporter of human suffering. You will have to read it yourself to see what he says, but there is a subtext in what he says worth putting into words. This is what I surmise from today’s op-ed piece about what one has to do to be a great reporter of the human condition:

• Live out of a back pack.
• Hide your valued possessions on your person at all times.
• Travel in the scrawniest taxis available.
• Watch out for bed bugs.
• Block your hotel room door so intruders cannot sneak in on you when you are sleeping.
• Be prepared to fight pickpockets -- and to lose the fight.
• Be prepared to charm bandits who are equipped kill you on the spot.
• Know how to deal with those who might poison you.
• Watch out for robbers who carry machetes.
• Know how to manage corrupt police and fake police.
• Be prepared for a bus crash when almost everyone is injured.
• If you get malaria, shrug it off.

[Click on the title to see the original article.]

Brother of Afghanistan's President threatens a reporter for enquiring into drug connections

Several sources on the drug industry in Afghanistan have accused the brother of Hamed Karzai, President of Afghanistan, of being a major figure in the illicit drug industry in southern Afghanistan where more than 90% of all the opium in the world is produced. Tom Lasseter of the McClatchy newspapers went looking into the question and directly confronted Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of Kandahar's provincial council. The reaction was to threaten him.

Karzai grabbed my hand and used it to give me a bit of a push into the next room. He followed me, and his voice rose until it was a scream of curse words and threats.

I managed to record just one full sentence: "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)."

I won't describe the rest, because it involves the Afghans I was working with, none of whom wants to risk revenge in a country where feuds often end in blood.

Lasseter got out and can now tell the story, but I wonder about his assistants. One of the people who had informed on Ahmad Wali Karzi had subsequently been killed; perhaps there was no connection but one wonders . . . . In any case, if Lasseter was threatened, then the Afghans who work with him, who cannot leave, are still threatened.

The search for the truth is a more risky game than most us think about. But it turns out that in the modern world the truth is precious, for [to quote again from the wisdom of the ancients] "men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed." Afghanistan's drug industry has to be one of the most critical elements of the insurgency problem in the region, and discovering and revealing how it operates will be a perilous venture. [Click on the title for the original article.]

Hands "smeared with the blood of their own people"

Despite Omar Hassan al-Bashir's involvement in the killings and abuses of thousands of people in Darfur he has been welcomed and feted by the leaders of the Arab world. What must not be said in that group is that none of them holds power by popular suffrage. The former Kuwaiti minister of information said it well. Referring to the one thing that the Arab leadership can agree on -- that is, to support Sudan dictator al-Bashir in the face of indictment by the International Criminal Court -- he put the issue succinctly:

“The leaders’ position is their own self-defense, because they don’t want to open the door to an international tribunal of any kind that will open the file of any crimes they committed against humanity or against their own people. Most of those regimes are actually dictatorships, and most of them have their hands smeared with the blood of their own people.”

It's refreshing to see someone in the Middle East call a spade a spade. What I wonder now is, what kind of future does this guy have if he plans to live in the Arab world?

[Click on the title for a link to the source.]

Will the real Killers of Anna Politkovskaya Ever be Found?

In a country where "nothing works," especially when "the system" has its reasons for hating those who publish information unvetted by the system, justice is scarcely impartial and the truth is hard to come by. The loss of Politkovskaya was a loss to the world because she so fearlessly declared the abuses of the highest officials as well as the tragic personal costs of those abuses. She was an example to journalists around the world -- of how to sniff out details the authorities are trying to hide, and also of what happens when the venality of authorities is shouted out to the world. [Thanks, by the way, to Registan for keeping a list of journalists murdered.
http://www.registan.net/index.php/the-murdered-journalists-of-central-asia/]
Some selections from the NYTimes are below.

New York Times February 20, 2009
Jury Acquits 3 in Killing of a Russian Journalist
By ELLEN BARRY and MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW — A jury here ruled unanimously on Thursday to acquit three low-level suspects in the murder of a prominent investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, frustrating hopes for bringing to justice those responsible for ordering the killing.

. . . Coming exactly a month after the killing in broad daylight of a human rights lawyer and a 25-year-old reporter, the verdict was more cause for pessimism in human rights circles about political violence.

“The fact that no one at all has been held accountable for this murder sends a very clear message to potential perpetrators: You can do it, and you can get away with it,” said Tatyana Lokshina, deputy director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow bureau. “Brazen killings have become almost routine in the Russian Federation.”

. . . But two and a half years later, the three men who were tried on murder charges were peripheral figures: . . . the suspected triggerman, . . . has never been found. Sergei M. Sokolov, deputy editor of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, where Ms. Politkovskaya worked, attributed the result to “resistance from the whole system,” in particular the refusal to prosecute members of law enforcement and special forces.

“There were two verdicts delivered today,” he said. “One, de jure, was the acquittal of the defendants. But a guilty verdict was leveled against the corrupt system that exists here. Nothing works, not one governmental institution works.”

. . . “Russia is a country where for years and years now, journalists who cover human rights issues and corruption are being murdered and assaulted,” . . . “It has to be admitted, at the highest level of the country, that there can be no free speech in a country where the best journalists are afraid for their lives for doing their jobs.”

. . . Ms. Politkovskaya, 48, distinguished herself covering Moscow’s war in Chechnya, which she characterized as “state versus group terrorism.” She documented torture, mass executions, kidnapping and the sale by Russian soldiers of Chechen corpses to their families for proper Islamic burial, concluding, “What response could one expect but more terrorism, and the recruitment of more resistance fighters?”

Another journalist murdered, another murderer escapes. The ugly face of power in Swat

The murder of Musa KhanKhel, a TV journalist, in Swat yesterday sadly awakens all the fears we have had about the deal the army and the Taliban have just made there. Posted a few minutes ago on Earth Times Online the article reveals how little has changed: In fact, KhanKhel had been threatened by Pakistani officials. It makes us wonder how to distinguish between "officials" and criminals.

KhanKhel had reported being threatened by "a powerful force ... they want to kill me" and that he had repeatedly refused to "report what the army wanted him to report." Someone didn't want him to report on what he was learning: Who? The Army?. Of course the intent of the murder was not merely to silence this voice but also the voices of those who are left alive. Someone wanted to ensure that journalists avoid revealing things those with the weapons of power want hidden. Again the ancient wisdom: "Men loved darkness rather than light; they would not come into the light lest their deeds be exposed." And they would take a life rather than have the truth revealed. How precious does that make the truth?

The one thing we can confidently affirm is that the killer will go free. A chilling fact of life in Pakistan is that murderers of journalists get away with it. Of the two dozen journalists killed in the last two years, virtually none of their killers has been found. I have the highest respect and admiration for those now who have the courage to demonstrate publicly against the government -- the army, essentially, which owns most of the country -- in the face of the terrifying impunity enjoyed by criminals. Thank God for the Pakistani journalists who persist in exposing the truth as they know it at the risk of their lives.

Here is the article from The Earth Times.

Pakistani journalists protest colleague's killing
Posted : Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:48:08 GMT
Author : DPA

Islamabad - Pakistani journalists on Thursday held rallies across the country to protest the overnight killing of a local reporter in the troubled Swat district of North Western Frontier Province (NWFP). Musa Khankhel, a correspondent for the Geo TV and English-language daily The News, was seized by gunmen in the Matta area on Wednesday when he was covering a peace rally by Islamic cleric Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah.

Khankhel's bullet-riddled body was found few hours later in Detpani village, some 4 kilometers from Matta. "He received 30 bullets," said Fayyaz Zafar, a local journalist.

Around 200 journalists held a protest rally in Islamabad, chanting slogans in support of press freedom and demanding protection for media persons working in conflict areas like Swat and the tribal region, where the government forces are fighting Islamist insurgents.

"The situation in Swat is very dangerous, but we will continue to report from there. We will not bow to the extremists and the armed militias," said Ihsan Haqqani, a journalist from Swat.

Tariq Chaudhry, president of the National Press Club, told the rally that 24 journalists had lost their lives in the line of duty during the last two years in Pakistan, while dozens more were injured or harassed.

"The killers of none of these 24 were ever arrested and brought to justice," he told the rally.

Similar protest demonstrations were also held in several other cities, media reports said.

Scores of journalists gathered outside the press club in Mingora, the main town of Swat, and demanded the arrest of the murderers and an enquiry into the incident, which was the first violation of the 10-day ceasefire announced by the militants.

Hundreds of people attended Khankhel's funeral on Thursday.

The slain journalist was trying to get the details of the ongoing negotiations in Matta where the cleric Mohammad is trying to convince his son-in-law to join the peace deal he has signed with the regional government in NWFP to end the conflict in Swat.

Fazlullah has been fighting the security forces since late 2007 in a campaign for the enforcement of Islamic sharia law in the region. The rebellion has left hundreds of militants, security personnel and civilians dead, and caused a mass exodus from the war-torn district.

Under the peace accord signed with Mohammad, the NWFP government agreed to establish Islamic courts in Swat and six other districts in the Malakand region.

No group has claimed responsibility for Khankhel's murder, but his media organization reported that he was also receiving threats from the authorities.

"I have been receiving death threats from a powerful force. They are after me. They want to kill me," Khankhel was cited as saying by The News. The daily said his organization took up the issue with the authorities.

A journalist in Swat who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Khankhel had repeatedly refused to "report what the army wanted him to report."

An international organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the murder of the journalist.

"We mourn the tragic death of Musa Khankhel and send our condolences to his family and colleagues," said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia programme coordinator.

"But grief and condolences are not enough - the government must act swiftly to bring his killers to justice and protect journalists working in this volatile region."

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, NWFP's information minister, condemned the killing and termed it "an attack on the (provincial) government."

Copyright, respective author or news agency

A fine for reporting the story

Good News? No jail time for journalists who reported things the government didn't want reported, but instead a fine. It's better than jail time, but the fine has the impact of chilling any further reporting of that kind. For those who seek to report on the world as they find it, it is a dangerous neighborhood.

NYTimes: February 1, 2009
Egypt Court Says No Jail for 4 Editors
By REUTERS

CAIRO (Reuters) — An Egyptian appeals court on Saturday overturned prison sentences given to four editors in 2007 for defaming senior members of Egypt’s ruling party, including the president and his son, judiciary officials said.

But the court in Cairo ruled that each newspaper editor must pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds, or almost $3,600, the officials said.

A lower court had sentenced the editors to a year in prison for publishing several articles that it thought damaged the reputations of the president and members of the governing National Democratic Party.

That decision was one of several in recent years that have come close to putting prominent journalists behind bars on publishing offenses.

The 2007 convictions also signaled an escalation of what political analysts describe as a campaign by the National Democratic Party against independent newspapers that have reported that President Hosni Mubarak is grooming his son Gamal to succeed him. Both father and son deny that.

The editors in this case — Ibrahim Issa, Adel Hammouda, Wael el-Ebrashi and Abdel-Halim Qandil — had remained free on bail pending their appeals.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

A Murder to Silence Exposure of Chechnyan Government Brutality

Today's report in the New York Times on the murder of Umar S. Israilov, who had revealed how brutally prisoners are treated by President Kadyrov of Chechnya, himself a creation of the Russians, reveals much that both the Russians and the Chechnyans would not want known. For this kind of journalism, in which those who tell the truth are at risk, we can all be thankful.

Kadyrov needs to present an image of legitimacy, as if his government were duly elected but in practice they were simply using the same old time tested means, torture and murder.

This is why the legitimation of physical brutality by an American government is a shame and an embarrassment; we cannot feign horror at such behavior and practice ourselves. Thankfully, this administration is taking the right measures to extricate our country from a reputation for such practice.

[Click on the title for the link to this important article.]

Arming journalists --- a strange idea

This is from RT news. Journalists who are armed? In Russia perhaps it is conceivable.


Pen and sword: is it time to arm journalists? January 22, 2009, 19:18

The co-owner of a leading independent newspaper in Russia is considering asking the authorities to provide guns for his journalists. It follows the assassination of a Novaya Gazeta reporter by an unknown man on Monday.

Aleksandr Lebedev said on Thursday that his employees at the paper need to be armed for personal security, since ‘the FSB cannot protect them’.

He added that he is considering sending a letter to the Security Services asking them to provide small arms for the journalists, even though a similar request was earlier denied.

The sale of guns is strictly regulated in Russia. But some people, like State Duma deputies, are allowed to carry personal weapons to protect themselves.

Lebedev’s comment comes after Anastasiya Baburova, a journalist who worked for Novaya Gazeta, was killed by an unknown assassin along with the prominent lawyer Stanislav Markelov.

The double murder took place in a small street in central Moscow. Investigators said they had neither eyewitness to the attack nor a clear picture of the suspect.

Meanwhile, a Russian tabloid has published a CCTV image from a security camera at a metro station close to the scene of the shooting. The paper claims it shows the alleged assassin after he shot the pair.

The authorities have yet to comment on the publication of the photograph.

However, Russia’s “For Human Rights” organization says the image has all the hallmarks of a ‘leak’. One of the group’s leaders, Lev Ponomarev, says it’s still unclear whether the CCTV image was leaked for cash, or whether the leak was authorized from above, “aimed at saving the murderer”.

How dangerous, and precious, is the truth: worth two more lives

Another two lives are taken lest the truth be known and promoted, one a lawyer the other a journalist working for a Russian newspaper who had already lost three journalists, including Anna Politkovskaia, since 2000. Another indicator of how costly -- how precious -- the truth is. Or, saying it the other ways, how dangerous, to some, the truth would be if it were known.
[Click on the title to link to the source.]

NYTimes January 20, 2009
Leading Russian Rights Lawyer Is Shot to Death in Moscow, Along With Journalist
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

MOSCOW — A prominent Russian lawyer who spent the better part of a decade pursuing contentious human rights and social justice cases was killed on Monday in a brazen daylight assassination in central Moscow, officials said.

The lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, had just left a news conference where he announced that he would continue to fight against the early release from jail of Yuri D. Budanov, a former Russian tank commander imprisoned for murdering a young Chechen woman.

Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old journalist who was with Mr. Markelov, was also killed, according to a spokeswoman for a newspaper where she worked as a freelancer, Novaya Gazeta, which is highly critical of the government. The two were shot.

Officials said they believed that Mr. Markelov, 34, was the primary target, having brought cases against the Russian military, Chechen warlords and murderous neo-fascists. With a laundry list of his potential enemies, authorities refrained from naming any suspects.

“Investigators are looking into various theories, including that the murder was linked to the victim’s professional activities,” Vladimir I. Markin, a spokesman for the investigative wing of the Prosecutor General’s Office, said of Mr. Markelov.

The murder bore the characteristics of a contract killing, a not-uncommon phenomenon in Russia. Even so, the audacity of Mr. Markelov’s murder surprised some commentators.

“Even when organized crime in the 1990s was rampant, such a killing would have been considered bold and horrific,” said a correspondent from Vesti television.

Mr. Markelov, who was the director of the Rule of Law Institute, a civil liberties group, gained prominence recently representing the family of Elza Kungayeva. She was an 18-year-old Chechen whom Mr. Budanov, the former tank commander, admitted strangling in his quarters in March 2000, just as the second post-Soviet war in Chechnya was beginning to rage.

Mr. Budanov was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was given early parole for good behavior.

Mr. Markelov, at the news conference just before his death, told reporters that he might file an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the early release of Mr. Budanov, who was a decorated colonel of the Russian Army before he was stripped of his rank. In an interview last week with The New York Times, Mr. Markelov said he might also file a lawsuit against the administration of the prison that released Mr. Budanov last Thursday.

The decision to free Mr. Budanov set off street protests and outraged some human rights groups and Chechen officials. It reignited long-simmering tensions years after a decade of intermittent war in Chechnya, a southern Russian republic, was replaced by tenuous stability.

But Mr. Budanov was also revered by nationalists as a valiant fighter who helped wage a bloody but necessary war against separatist rebels in Chechnya. Some now see Mr. Markelov’s murder as revenge for his efforts against a Russian hero.

“The murder of Markelov, I consider a bold open warning by the ‘party of war’ to democratic Russia,” Nudri S. Nukhazhiev, Chechnya’s human rights ombudsman, said in a statement. “Today, there are no facts or evidence of the direct participation of Budanov in this crime, but I am more than certain that it was committed by his supporters with his consent.”

Mr. Markelov phoned the father of Ms. Kungayeva, the slain teenager, a few days ago to complain that he had received death threats, the father told the Interfax news agency.

Lela Khamzayeva, another lawyer for Ms. Kungayeva’s family, was adamant, however, that the killing of Mr. Markelov could not be linked to his connection with Mr. Budanov, because his role during the actual proceedings against the former colonel was, as she put it, “insignificant.”

“If someone is trying to link this murder with Markelov’s participation in the Budanov case, well, that’s just ridiculous,” she said.

Given Mr. Markelov’s propensity for challenging the Russian authorities and others known to settle scores violently, the list of potential suspects is lengthy.

He worked closely with Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist with Novaya Gazeta and strong critic of Russia’s Chechnya policies, who was murdered in Moscow in 2006.

He often defended the interests of those, like Ms. Kungayeva, who became ensnared in the violent and often arbitrary military justice of the Chechen conflict or the tyrannical rule of Chechnya’s violence-prone leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, in the war’s aftermath.

“He handled almost every case opened as a result of the work of Anna Politkovskaya,” said Nadezhda Prusenkova, a spokeswoman for Novaya Gazeta.

While he was not involved in the current trial of three men accused in the murder of Ms. Politkovskaya, Mr. Markelov did work on the case of another murdered Novaya Gazeta journalist, Igor Domnikov, who died in 2000 from wounds caused by a hammer blow to the head.

Mr. Markelov has also represented victims of neo-fascist and xenophobic violence, a phenomenon that has been expanding annually both in frequency and intensity, according to experts.

At least 10 people were killed and 9 others injured in racist attacks in Russia in the first two weeks of 2009, said Aleksandr Brod, the head of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, Interfax reported.

Ms. Baburova, the freelancer who was killed Monday, began working for Novaya Gazeta last October. She cited Mr. Markelov in her most recent article about fascist groups, published on Saturday.

In it, the lawyer criticized the authorities for their handling of a case against the leader of a violent nationalist group, who was sentenced to three years in prison for arranging the murder of a man from Tajikistan and putting video of the killing on the Internet.

With Ms. Baburova’s death, Novaya Gazeta has lost four reporters to murder or other mysterious circumstances since 2000.

Michael Schwirtz reported from Moscow, and Graham Bowley from New York.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company