South Asia Women in Media (SAWM), a network of women journalists across South Asia, condemns the brutal attack on Mina Khairi, a 23-year-old Afghan journalist who was killed in a car bomb attack on June 5; stands in support of Pakistani journalist Asma Shirazi, who has been accused of treason as part of a well-coordinated campaign targeting journalists raising their voices against state excesses and crimes against them; and condemns the recent arrest and jail term of Bangladeshi journalist Rozina Islam, because she was allegedly reporting on corruption in the government’s health department.
The attack on Mina Khairi in Kabul, Afghanistan is only the latest in a string of attacks on media persons in that country. Mina finished her shift in Ariana TV where she worked as head of the news section and as an anchor since 2017, and took her mother and sister to the market, where a bomb blast immediately claimed her and her mother’s life; her sister succumbed three days later.
SAWM believes that these repeated attacks on women across the South Asian region are a concerted move to silence their voices, ensure that they do not dare to speak truth to power and slowly disappear from the news landscape.
In India, social media is often weaponised by the state to prevent journalists from doing their duty — Patricia Mukhim was delivered of the charge of sedition by the Meghalaya government only when her case went right up to the Supreme Court; other journalists are still languishing in jail. The 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru has still not been resolved. Neha Dixit has filed a case of intimidation against people who have used sexually loaded threats to frighten her. Online abuse and rape threats against women journalists by troll armies sympathetic to the government are common.
Across South Asia, the needle of suspicion sometimes points to the State, other times to non-State proxies. The common objective is to brutally stamp out any criticism of the government or powerful groups allied to it.
SAWM calls upon media organizations and watchdogs in the region, indeed across the world, to condemn these often-fatal attacks. It calls for a thorough investigation of these crimes so that the perpetrators as well as forces behind them are exposed and duly punished.
SAWM believes that media solidarity is vital because the bell tolls for the entire profession.
SIGNED : SAWM journalists across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives