New Delhi: Geo TV reporter Musa Khan was reporting about a peace rally in the Swat Province of Pakistan. Just minutes later, he is killed by unidentified men. His murderers shoot him thrice and attempt to slit his throat, the motive is still not known.
Close on the heels of Musa Khan's murder, another journalist was attacked in Pakistan .
Some unidentified men attacked South Asian Free Media Association Secretary General Imtiaz Aalam outside his residence in Lahore on Wednesday night.
According to Imtiaz Alam, four men-- armed with hockey sticks --- smashed the windows of his car. The men also made a telephone call after the incident and threatened him with dire consequences if he informed the media about the attack.
Imtiaz Alam told DawnNews that he was receiving threatening calls and hate-mails for quite some time but he did not take them seriously.
Not a first in the history of conflict-ridden Pakistan where media persons have often been killed or kidnapped in circumstances that are rarely investigated.
In 2009 alone, Pakistan has witnessed three deaths of journalists in two separate incidents. In January, Dr Tahir Awan, a freelance journalist, and Mohammad Imran, a trainee cameraperson, are killed in a blast that followed a suicide attack.
In Rawalpindi Punjab, unknown assailants gun down Dr Aamer Wakil in January. He worked for a local daily.
As per the records of Paris-based World Association of Newspapers, seventy media persons were killed world-wide in 2008, because of their professional activities.
Of these, seven were killed in Pakistan which this organisation ranks the second deadly assignment for journalists, the first being Iraq.
On November 3rd, Abdul Razzak Johra, a journalist with Royal TV is shot dead. Abdul Aziz Shaheen, who worked for local newspapers, is killed in the Swat Valley on August 27th. Barely two weeks earlier a journalist for a local television channel was also murdered.
In May, an Express TV journalist is gunned down and on April 14th, the bureau chief of Urdu daily Khabrein is shot dead.
In February, a local journalist Sirajuddin, is killed in a suicide bomb attack in Swat province just 20 days earlier, a renowned columnist of the weekly Akhbar-e-Jehan, is shot dead.
These lives lost only goes to show that the Pak government has no control over the resurgent Taliban.
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