OME voices concern over a deteriorating media freedom environment in Pakistan after Saturday’s killing of a Punjab reporter who was a senior leader at his local press club.
Muhammad Younis, a correspondent for the Urdu newspaper Express, was motorcycling home when two men hiding near his farm opened fire, leaving him dead.
Police have been given orders to find and arrest the journalist’s killers, whose crime leads to the continued erosion of Pakistan’s place in the global press freedom index.
This South Asian nation is ranked 157th out of 180 countries, standing even below neighboring Afghanistan.
Younis’s death comes less than a month after authorities took the widely watched TV channel ARY News off the air and arrested news director Ammad Yousaf.
Since Shehbaz Sharif was elected prime minister in April, Reporters Without Borders has registered nine cases of intimidation of journalists by army-related agencies.
OME joins local journalists and the global human rights community in protest against the army’s high command harassment of the media, which seriously undermines Pakistani democracy.
