Pakistan’s Hamid Mir publicizes a death threat

Sadly, for the second year in a row, Pakistan has been rated the most dangerous country in the world for journalists. Bob Dietz at the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Geo TV's most prominent television anchor, and one of the most prominent journalists in Pakistan, has just circulated a detailed email message of threats he has been receiving. Hamid Mir's open, public response to the threats is a textbook case of how to handle the steady stream of intimidation that journalists face, not just in Pakistan but in other parts of the world as well. His entire message is reproduced at the end of this post.

There is an additional sense of urgency in this case: Umar Cheema, The News reporter who was abducted and beaten in 2010, and who is no stranger to threats himself, told me in an email: “The reason for taking the latest threat [to Mir] seriously is that I have faced the trouble in same manner, so we suspect the same mastermind.”

CPJ has written a lot about threats in Pakistan, and their debilitating effect. At this moment CPJ's Journalists Assistance program is working with a few other Pakistani journalists who are under threat for specific reporting, but I do not have their permission to publicize the details of their cases.

While the threat to Mir appears to be from supporters of the military/security establishment, if not officials within the government itself, threats to journalists come from everywhere. Pakistani reporters are targeted by all sides to the country's conflicts — religious militants, political factions fighting turf battles in violent cities like Karachi, competing secessionist groups in Baluchistan, and all the militarily active parties along the border with Afghanistan, as well as drug runners and gun dealers.

More here.