PAKISTAN: Bakhsheesh Elahi was waiting for the morning bus when a lone gunman on a motorcycle pulled up beside him and shot him dead. Rana Tanveer had just taken his family to safety after radical Islamists spray-painted death threats on his door, when a car smashed into his motorcycle and sped away.
Taha Siddiqui answered his phone to hear a menacing voice from a government agency telling him he needed to come in for questioning, without saying why.
The three men are journalists in Pakistan, considered one of the most dangerous places in the world for this profession. But even by Pakistan’s standards, things have gotten worse, according to journalists, Pakistani and international human rights activists, and advocacy groups.
In addition to attacks from militants or criminals, Pakistani journalists are also facing threats from government agencies or the military itself.
“Journalists are not threatened from one side alone, they are threatened by drug mafia, they are threatened by political gangs. They are also threatened by religious extremists,” said Asma Jehangir, a human rights lawyer and the director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “They are threatened by the military. They are also threatened by people who are deeply (involved) in corruption, but when it comes to the extremist elements, governments are very reluctant to move because they themselves are afraid of them.”
Elahi, a determined investigative reporter in northwestern Pakistan’s Haripur, is just the latest example. The father of five, including a daughter born just 20 days earlier, was killed on June 11 while waiting for a bus a few hundred meters from his home.
Local journalists turned Elahi’s funeral into a protest, carrying his body through the streets and stopping traffic to demand that the killers be brought to justice, according to Zakir Hussain Tandi, president of the Haripur Press Club.
But impunity and a lack of prosecution has characterized many of the attacks on journalists in Pakistan. Elahi, who was bureau chief of an Urdu language newspaper and sister television station, was the fourth journalist killed in Haripur district in the last three years. All but one of the murders has gone unsolved.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 60 journalists and 10 media workers have been killed in Pakistan since 1992.
Elahi’s Facebook page featured his relentless reporting against political corruption. One of the country’s largest television news channels to feature one of his stories.
“We think his death is probably related to journalism,” said Tandi of the press club. “Lots of people didn’t like his investigations, the drug mafia, corrupt politicians, car thieves. He wrote about them all.”
Pakistani journalists and social media activists have been detained, often by intelligence agencies, tortured according to some who were released, and threatened with blasphemy charges, which carry the death penalty and routinely incite mobs of radical extremists to violence.
Last week, a social media activist was sentenced to death for allegedly posting an item deemed insulting to Islam.
That sentence “sends a threatening message to all ... causing fear and leading to self-censorship,” Steven Butler, Asia director of the CPJ, said in an e-mail. “It’s clear that authorities — including investigative authorities, prosecutors, and the military — are keeping a close eye on journalists and ready to act when red lines are crossed.”
Last month, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan ordered a crackdown on “those ridiculing the Pakistan Army on social media (to protect) the prestige, reputation and goodwill” of the armed forces.
On May 18, Taha Siddiqui, Pakistan’s correspondent for France 24 TV, received a threatening call from someone claiming to represent the counter-terrorism wing of the Federal Investigation Agency , ordering him to come in for questioning. Siddiqui, who is also bureau chief of the World Is One News website, is an outspoken critic of Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies.
“My work is in the public domain,” Siddiqui asked. “What does counter-terrorism have to do with journalism, with free speech?“
Siddiqui phoned colleagues for advice and stopped answering his door. He eventually spoke to Jehangir, the human rights lawyer, who advised him to file a petition demanding to know why he was being investigated. Siddiqui, who didn’t go in for questioning, has already made at least one court appearance and was told by the FIA that he was being investigated because of his critical stories about the military.
On May 30, Rana Tanveer, a correspondent for the English-language daily newspaper, The Express Tribune, found death threats spray painted on his home in eastern Lahore saying he would die for writing stories about the plight of minorities in Pakistan — particularly Ahmedis, reviled by mainstream Muslims who label them as heretics because they believe in a messiah who arrived after the Prophet Muhammad.
Pakistan has officially declared them non-Muslims, making it a crime for Ahmedis to identify themselves as Muslims. Dozens are facing charges.
“That was shocking for me,” Tanveer said of the spray-painted threats. He went to the police, which didn’t register a case but instead advised him against filing a formal complaint, saying it would enrage the radicals who had threatened him.
Tanveer has received several such threats over the years; even his landlord had been warned against renting to him because of his coverage of religious minorities
On June 9, Tanveer was riding his motorcycle after meeting a colleague from the Pakistan Union of Journalists to decide how to deal with the threats when a speeding car slammed into him and sent him crashing to the pavement. He suffered a fractured leg and believes it was no accident.
Today, he is in hiding with his family, unprotected by police and unsure when he can return to his job.
Jehangir said she believes the government crackdown is being done at least partially at the behest of Pakistan’s military.
“They think that the image of Pakistan is being destroyed by the word getting out of here,” she said. “Now, if you stop picking up people, stop torturing people, the image will improve, but don’t shoot the messenger.”
Journalists in Pakistan under fire from many sides
Journalists in Pakistan under fire from many sides
‘A den of bandits’: Rwanda closes thousands of evangelical churches
- A 2018 law introduced new rules on health, safety, and financial disclosures, and requires all preachers to have theological training
- Observers say the real reason for the closures comes down to control, noting that even those who complied with the law had been shut down
- President Kagame has described the church as a relic of the colonial period, a chapter of its history with which the country is still grappling
KIGALI: Grace Room Ministries once filled giant stadiums in Rwanda three times a week before the evangelical organization was shut down in May.
It is one of the 10,000 churches reportedly closed by the government for failing to comply with a 2018 law designed to regulate places of worship.
The law introduced new rules on health, safety, and financial disclosures, and requires all preachers to have theological training.
President Paul Kagame has been vocal in his criticisms of the evangelical churches that have sprouted across the small country in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
“If it were up to me I wouldn’t even reopen a single church,” Kagame told a news briefing last month.
“In all the development challenges we are dealing with, the wars... our country’s survival — what is the role of these churches? Are they also providing jobs? Many are just thieving... some churches are just a den of bandits,” he said.
The vast majority of Rwandans are Christian according to a 2024 census, with many now traveling long and costly distances to find places to pray.
Observers say the real reason for the closures comes down to control.
Kagame’s government is saying “there’s no rival in terms of influence,” Louis Gitinywa, a lawyer and political analyst based in Kigali, told AFP.
The ruling party “bristles when an organization or individual gains influence,” he said, a view also expressed to AFP by an anonymous government official.
‘Deceived’
The 2018 law requires churches to submit annual action plans stating how they align with “national values.” All donations must be channelled through registered accounts.
Pastor Sam Rugira, whose two church branches were shut down last year for failing to meet fire safety regulations, said the rules mostly affected new evangelical churches that have “mushroomed” in recent years.
But Kagame has described the church as a relic of the colonial period, a chapter of its history with which the country is still grappling.
“You have been deceived by the colonizers and you let yourself be deceived,” he said in November.
The closure of Grace Room Ministries came as a shock to many across the country.
Pastor Julienne Kabanda, had been drawing massive crowds to the shiny new BK Arena in Kigali when the church’s license was revoked.
The government had cited unauthorized evangelical activities and a failure to submit “annual activity and financial reports.”
AFP was unable to reach Kabanda for comment.
‘Open disdain, disgust’
A church leader in Kigali, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the president’s “open disdain and disgust” for churches “spells tough times ahead.”
“It is unfair that even those that fulfilled all requirements are still closed,” he added.
But some say the clampdown on places of worship is linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which around 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were slaughtered.
Ismael Buchanan a political science lecturer at the National University of Rwanda, told AFP the church could sometimes act as “a conduit of recruitment” for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the Hutu militia formed in exile in DR Congo by those who committed the genocide.
“I agree religion and faith have played a key role in healing Rwandans from the emotional and psychological wounds after the genocide, but it also makes no sense to have a church every two kilometers instead of hospitals and schools,” he said.
Pastor Rugira meanwhile suggested the government is “regulating what it doesn’t understand.”
It should instead work with churches to weed out “bad apples” and help them meet requirements, especially when it comes to the donations they rely on to survive, he said.
