Media

(Reuters) - A Pakistani journalist, known for criticizing his country's military establishment, says he had narrowly escaped being kidnapped by armed men on January 10.

Taha Siddiqui, who reports for France 24 and is the Pakistan bureau chief of Indian television channel WION, said the attempted abduction took place while he was being driven by taxi to the airport serving the capital Islamabad and the neighboring, larger garrison city of Rawalpindi.

"I was on my way to airport today at 8:20 a.m local time when 10-12 armed men stopped my cab and forcibly tried to abduct me. I managed to escape. Safe and with police now," Siddiqui tweeted from a friend's Twitter account early in the morning.

"Looking for support in any way possible #StopEnforcedDisappearances," he added in the same tweet.

Rights groups have denounced the kidnappings of several social media activists over the past year as attempts to intimidate and silence critics of the Pakistan's security establishment.

Last year, five Pakistani bloggers went missing for several weeks before four of them were released. All four fled abroad and two afterwards told media that they were tortured by a state intelligence agency during their disappearance.

The military has staunchly denied playing a role in any enforced disappearances, as has the civilian government. In the past, militants have also targeted journalists.

Siddiqui spoke to Reuters from a police station where he was filing a report on the incident, and described how his taxi was stopped on the highway when another vehicle swerved, and braked suddenly in front of it.

About a dozen men armed with rifles and revolvers pulled him out of the cab, beat him and "threatened to kill" him.

"They threw me in the back of the vehicle in which I had been traveling, but the door on the other side was open," Siddiqui said.

"I jumped out and ran and was able to get into a taxi that was nearby, whose driver then floored it."

When the taxi stopped, Siddiqui hid in a ditch for a while, he added.

Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists said "Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency should stop harassing Taha Siddiqui", referring to the civilian agency that last year began a crackdown on online criticism of the powerful military.

Siddiqui last year filed a court petition to stop the agency from harassing him.

Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer who works with Human Rights Watch, said Siddiqui's kidnap attempt was worrying development and added that "violence and the threat of it are not legitimate means to deal with dissenting voices" in the country.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says 65 professional journalists, citizen-journalists, and media workers were killed across the world in 2017, representing an 18 percent fall from last year’s figure.

Among them were 50 professional reporters, the lowest toll in 14 years, according to annual figures published by the Paris-based media watchdog on December 19.

RSF says that the downward trend may be because journalists are being better trained and protected for war zones.

The drop is also due to reporters “abandoning countries that have become too dangerous" or “choosing to switch to a less dangerous profession,” it adds.

Of the 65 slain journalists, the report says 39 were murdered and deliberately targeted, while the others were “collateral victims of a deadly situation such as an air strike, an artillery bombardment, or a suicide bombing.”

War-torn Syria remains the most dangerous country for journalists, with 12 reporters killed in 2017. In neighboring Iraq, eight journalists were killed.

With 11 journalists assassinated this year, Mexico is the deadliest country not at war. RSF says that those who cover political corruption or organized crime there are “often systemically targeted, threatened, and gunned down."

In Afghanistan, two professional journalists and seven media workers were killed in three separate attacks. One attack targeted the local headquarters of the national radio and TV broadcaster in the eastern city of Jalalabad in May. The two other attacks occurred in the capital, Kabul, in May and November.

RSF says a total of 326 professional journalists, citizen-journalists, and media workers were detained worldwide in connection with the provision of news and information as of December 1. That is fewer than in 2016, when 348 journalists were detained.

Outside the Middle East, the only country with hostages is Ukraine, where RSF says Russia-backed separatists “tend to regard the few remaining critical journalists as spies.”

The group says China remains the world’s biggest prison for journalists, all categories combined, as the government “continues to improve its arsenal of measures for persecuting journalists and bloggers.”

However, Turkey is the world's biggest prison for professional journalists, with 42 reporters and one media worker behind bars, according to RSF.

"Criticizing the government, working for a 'suspect' media outlet, contacting a sensitive source or even just using an encrypted messaging service all constitute grounds for jailing journalists on terrorism charges," the report says.

Syria and Iran were the other top jailers of journalists, with 24 and 23 of them languishing in prison, respectively.

In a survey published last week, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the number of journalists in government custody on December 1 hit another new record.

The census, which did not account journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year, found 262 journalists behind bars worldwide in relation to their work.

According to RSF, a total of 54 professional journalists, citizen-journalists, and media workers are held hostage worldwide.

In Syria and Iraq, 40 of them continue to be held by the Islamic State and other extremist Islamist groups. In Yemen, Huthi rebels are holding 11 journalists and media workers.

Outside the Middle East, the only country with hostages is Ukraine, where RSF says Russia-backed separatists “tend to regard the few remaining critical journalists as spies.”

Two journalists are currently behind bars in the separatist-held parts of eastern Ukraine, the report says.

“This is far fewer than at the peak near the start of the conflict in 2014, a year when more than 30 journalists were kidnapped,” RSF says. “The decline in the intensity of the fighting, the fact that the front line is now stationary, and the almost complete absence of critical or foreign reporters in the separatist areas have all helped to reduce the practice of hostage-taking.”

RSF says that two journalists who disappeared in Pakistan and Bangladesh during 2017 are still missing.

Pakistani blogger Samar Abbas was abducted in January 2017 and never reappeared, while his family has received no news of him.

Based in Karachi, Abbas founded the Civil Progressive Alliance Pakistan, a group that defends human rights and posts independently reported information on its website.