Silenced: Prominent journalist gunned down in Kalat

President Kalat Press Club Lal Mohammad shot multiple times in broad daylight.

QUETTA:

The Kalat Press Club president was murdered in cold blood near the main bus stop in Kalat, Balochistan on Friday, two days after tribal journalist Malik Mumtaz Khan was killed in North Waziristan.

Kalat police station head constable Lal Mohammad told The Express Tribune that Mehmood Ahmed Afridi was sitting in his public call office shop close to the bus stop when unidentified armed men on a motorcycle sprayed him with bullets. Lal Mohammad added that Afridi was killed on the spot.

His body was shifted to the district headquarters hospital in Kalat for an autopsy.

Afridi was a journalist at the local Urdu newspaper Daily Intekhab and President of the Mir Ahmed Yar Khan Kalat Press Club.

Afridi is the sixth journalist killed in Pakistan in 2013 so far. Four of them, including him, hailed from Balochistan.

Saifur Rehman, a reporter of Samaa TV, Mohammad Imran Sheikh, a Samaa TV cameraman and Mohammad Iqbal, a NNI cameraman were killed in the Alamdar Road bomb blast in Quetta on January 10.

Afridi was the bureau chief of Daily Intekhab for the past 20 years, and President of Kalat Press Club for 14 years. He is survived by a wife and two sons.

President Balochistan Union of Journalists Essa Tareen condemned the murder and said that “we are feeling shame to demand from the administration through protests and statements to protect journalists and arrest the culprits who are behind their killings.

Tareen claimed that around 30 journalists were killed in Balochistan over the past decade but the government had not taken any measures to protect journalists.

President Quetta Press Club Saleem Shahid also mourned the death of Afridi. He called the killing an act of silencing those who spoke the truth.

“Not a single murder case is investigated and no one has been arrested in the killing of journalists.”

Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ) also condemned the murder in a statement.

Announcing a three-day-mourning period, BUJ hailed Afridi’s professionalism and contribution to the field of journalism. “The murder of Mehmood Ahmed Afridi in broad daylight is a slap on the face of the provincial and federal administration,” the statement said.

It also announced protests in Quetta on Saturday (today).

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2013.