Journalist Almeida has been at the centre of a marked increase in attacks on media freedom in the South Asian country.
Pakistani journalist Cyril Almeida, known for his courageous and hard-hitting coverage of civil-military tensions in the South Asian country, has been named as the International Press Institute’s 2019 World Press Freedom Hero, the press freedom watchdog says.
Almeida was awarded for “his tenacious coverage of the Pakistani state’s patronage of militant groups”, the Vienna-based IPI said in a statement released on Wednesday.
The Pakistani journalist has been at the centre of a marked increase in attacks on media freedom in Pakistan, facing treason charges, travel restrictions and other forms of intimidation for his reporting on tensions between Pakistan’s military and its civilian leaders.
In September, the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) said that Pakistan’s military – which has ruled the country for roughly half of its 71-year history – “restricts reporting by barring access, encouraging self-censorship through direct and indirect acts of intimidation, and even allegedly
instigating violence against reporters.”
Since last year, media organisations and newspapers have been subjected to a sustained campaign of outright censorship, financial sanctions, disruptions to their distribution networks and intimidation, journalists and editors have told Al Jazeera.
“The pressures are the worst in decades and unprecedented for an era of civilian governments,” Almeida told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. “There is no indication of a let up anytime soon.”
The editor and columnist for Dawn, Pakistan’s most widely read English language newspaper, was first censured when he was subjected to a government investigation that demanded he expose his sources following a story that revealed differences between civilian and military leaders on
the issue of cracking down on armed groups.
During that investigation, he was placed on the Exit Control List, a legal mechanism that allows the government to bar Pakistani citizens from international travel.
Almeida continued to report on the issue and often tackled the question of the military’s role in politics in his weekly column.
In May, as the country prepared for a general election, he interviewed overthrown two-time Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who implied that fighters from armed groups were “allow[ed]” to cross Pakistan’s border with India.
Sharif, his successor, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, and Almeida were subsequently accused of treason, with a case filed at the Lahore High Court. Hearings in the case are ongoing.
In January, Almeida announced that he was suspending writing his weekly column on Sundays – which has become a staple for readers of Dawn.
IPI said it was Almeida and Dawn’s scrutiny of Pakistan’s military-security complex that “made [them] a target”.
