Daily Times

On Monday, a Kenyan court concluded a long-winding battle for justice and ruled in favour of renowned journalist Arshad Sharif, assassinated by Kenyan police in 2022. Ordering the state to pay 10 million shillings as compensation, it called out, in unmincing terms, an “unlawful” and “unconstitutional” violation of Sharif’s rights.

While his family still awaits a similar closure from authorities in Pakistan, which can only happen through a comprehensive, all-encompassing investigation of him being shot point-blank in the dead of night, thousands of miles away from his own country, it cannot be denied that even this respite is not available to many others from his fraternity. In a world where journalists are continually under fire for their pursuit of truth, Arshad Sharif’s murder raised critical questions about the state of press freedom.

Tragically, he was neither the first nor the last to pay for his courage and refusal to be silenced with his blood. From targeted attacks to arbitrary arrests, journalists face myriad threats to their safety and well-being as they strive to uphold their duty to inform the public and hold power to account in a country repeatedly criticised as one of the deadliest.

At least 64 members of the press have been killed because of their work in the past two decades, most of which remained unsolvable crimes: their killers free to roam around and unleash their fury on others. A month after Khalil Jibran, a reporter from Landi Kotal, was gunned down, his family members are hesitantly complaining about attacks on their livelihoods and threats to their lives.

There’s no shortage of condemnations against these episodes of targetted journalists as an affront to the principles of democracy and human rights but successive governments have failed to put an end to the impunity enjoyed by those who routinely harass them, institutionally censor them or attack them. For the better part of the last decade, we have been calling on the authorities to take meaningful action to ensure the safety and security of those who seek to shine a light on the abuse of power. After all, without a free and independent press, democracy itself stands at risk of crumbling. *