Tribal area TV reporter becomes fourth journalist to be killed this year in Pakistan
The gunmen who killed a Pakistani TV reporter last week in a tribal area of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province – the fourth journalist to be murdered this year in Pakistan – must be brought to justice quickly, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF), calling for urgent measures to protect media personnel from a shocking surge in targeted attacks.
Khalil Jibran, a reporter who covered Pakistan’s Taliban armed militancy for the Pashto-language Khyber News TV channel, was ambushed and killed on the evening of 18 June in Landi Kotal, a town near the Afghan border that is the capital of Khyber District. Jibran’s killers riddled him with bullets after making him get out of the car in which he was driving home. Colleagues said he had reported receiving threats from Taliban militants. An experienced journalist in his early 50s, he left a wife and six children.
“This journalist’s murder, the fourth in the space of five weeks, highlights the climate of extreme danger to which media personnel are exposed in Pakistan, especially in tribal areas. Pakistan continues to be one of the world’s deadliest countries for journalists, and the near-systematic impunity for crimes of violence against them is appalling. We call on the authorities to investigate Khalil Jibran’s murder thoroughly and to bring the perpetrators to justice as quickly as possible. The government must also take urgent measures to protect journalists, especially those who have reported threats to their lives.
Jibran’s death has stunned the media community in the tribal areas. “He was killed to silence us all,” said a journalist from Landi Kotal who asked not to be identified. “Many journalists, including myself, work under threat from both state and non-state actors," journalist Wali Khan Shinwari told RSF.
The Khyber District tribal area is a dangerous place for its journalists, who are often threatened. After the Taliban retook power in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021, the Pakistani Taliban resurfaced in their former strongholds along the border with Afghanistan, including the Waziristan and Khyber districts.
Deadly year
The first of the four journalists to be killed this year in Pakistan was Ashfaq Hussain Sial, a reporter for the Daily Khabrain newspaper, who was gunned down on 15 May by men on a motorcycle in Muzaffargarh, in the east-central province of Punjab. He covered crime and politics in a district controlled by tribal chiefs and powerful feudal lords with support from the authorities.
Freelance journalist Kamran Dawar was killed by unidentified gunmen in North Waziristan, another district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on 21 May, just weeks after telling colleagues he feared for his safety. Nasrullah Gadani, a reporter for the Awami Awaz newspaper in the southern province of Sindh who criticised the feudal system in his region, died on 24 May from the gunshots injuries he had received from motorcycle assailants three days before.
The measures that RSF urged Pakistan’s new prime minister to adopt in March included finally creating the security commission envisaged in the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act, 2021.
Pakistan is ranked 152nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2024 World Press Freedom Index.
