Brave streets

The renaming of 12 streets in Paris after journalists who were murdered in their countries, and changing the addresses of the embassies of these nations as a way to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, carried out by the organisation Reporters Without Borders is a constant reminder to these countries of the crimes committed and left unpunished against their own journalists. The sign reading Rue de Saleem Shahzad placed outside the Pakistan Embassy is in many ways an indictment of a state that has failed to solve the brutal murder of the journalist killed in 2011. His tortured, mutilated body was discovered that year. The perpetrators have never been found. Other similar signs went up on other streets. One for Lebanon’s journalist Samir Kassir outside his country’s embassy; others for Tunisian journalists Sofiane Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari and more elsewhere in Paris. Reporters without Borders, which works for media freedom, says that 800 journalists have been murdered around the world over the last decade. Unesco puts the figure at 700. Whatever the case may be, the number is too high.
Countries around the world need to be doing far more to protect the professionals who bring them information, often putting their own lives and safety at risk as they do so. Last month, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists released its annual list of nations where journalists have been killed and the killers left free. The list of 14 nations was headed by Somalia. Pakistan figured at 9th place and India at 14th. All these nations need to redeem themselves. Pakistan in particular needs to examine why those who put Saleem Shahzad, and others both before and after him, to death have been able to escape without penalty. This is not a sign of a good democracy at work. There are quite obviously deliberate efforts in the country to prevent people from gaining access to information. This of course denies citizens a basic constitutional right. There are many groups and interests who would prefer a closed state; one where freedom to access information and to exert the right to express oneself freely are curtailed. It is time the state acted against them. The action taken in Paris, so many miles away from home, is a reminder that the world has not forgotten Saleem Shahzad and others like him. We should not forget them either.