Watchdog

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is calling for a special independent team to investigate this week’s “shocking murder” of a Pakistani journalist, saying there is “every reason to doubt” local police claims that it was a so-called honor killing.

The body of Zulfiqar Mandrani, a reporter for the Sindhi-language dailies Kawish and Koshish, was found on May 26 in the town of Dodapur in southeastern Sindh Province with two bullets in the head and marks of torture across his back.

The same day, police in the nearby city of Larkana announced the arrest of two suspects, who allegedly confessed to killing Mandrani for reasons of “honor.”

However, the journalist’s father filed a complaint with the police on May 28 naming several different suspects, including a police officer, said to be linked to a local drug trafficker, RSF said in a statement.

Mandrani, who had been investigating the activities of this drug trafficker, received death threats from the suspects before his murder, the father was quoted as saying.

“The initial findings reported by the local police are clearly unreliable because everything is being done to ensure that those behind Zulfiqar Mandrani’s murder get off scot-free,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that the death of a journalist who was murdered because of his reporting is being passed off as an honor killing,” Bastard said, calling on the chief minister of Sindh, Syed Murad Ali Shah, to send an independent team from Karachi to investigate the case.

RSF said the perpetrators of a murder in Pakistan can escape criminal justice if they can pass it off as an “honor killing” because a village assembly of elders, or panchayat, may then try the case. Then, the perpetrators could avoid punishment if they obtain the family’s forgiveness, by paying financial compensation if necessary, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog added.

Mandrani is the second journalist to be killed in Sindh Province since the beginning of the year.

The body of Aziz Memon, who also worked for Kawish News Network, was found in a canal near his hometown of Mehrabpur with wire tied around his neck in February.

Pakistan is ranked 145th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

MOSCOW -- A Moscow district court has sentenced a prominent Russian journalist to 15 days in jail, while police detained several other journalists who were rallying in his support.

Ilya Azar, a 35-year-old local legislator and journalist for the independent Novaya gazeta newspaper, was sentenced on May 25 after being found guilty of repeatedly violating Russia's strict protest laws.

According to OVD-Info, an independent website tracking detentions at political protests, six journalists who had gathered at Moscow police headquarters in solidarity with Azar were detained.

They were holding single-person pickets, which are allowed under Russian law, reports said.

Those confirmed as being detained by police included Sergei Smirnov, editor in chief of the online news outlet Mediazona, and Tatyana Felgengauer, a journalist with the radio station Ekho Moskvy.

Azar was arrested on May 26 during a one-person protest in support of activist Vladimir Vorontsov, who has worked to expose violations within Russia's law enforcement agencies.

Vorontsov, a former police officer, was arrested in early May on extortion charges. He was later accused of also illegally distributing pornography.

Vorontsov has denied the charges, saying police are seeking to punish him for his activism.

Police said on May 26 that Azar was detained for violating a ban on rallies during Moscow's citywide lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

Azar's arrest sparked outrage among his supporters, who said it would be dangerous to hold the journalist in jail for two weeks during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Azar had every right to hold this rally according to law, the constitution, and common sense," opposition figure Aleksei Navalny wrote on Twitter on May 28.

"None of these three things exists in Russia right now," Navalny added.

Calling Azar’s detention a “cowardly act,” Amnesty International accused the authorities of “crushing activism and impinging on human rights to silence critics.”

“In the midst of a global pandemic, the government is enforcing muzzles instead of protective masks, and solely for its own protection,” Natalia Zviagina, the London-based watchdog's Russia director, said in a statement.

“Not only has Ilya Azar been arrested simply for exercising his right to peaceful assembly, but he has been thrown into a crowded cell where he, and others like him, are at risk of contracting COVID-19," Zviagina said.

The OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Harlem Desir, said he was "alarmed" by the detention of the journalists who were rallying in support of Azar, and called for their immediate release.

With reporting by AFP and Interfax