‘New Normal’: Reporter on the run from gunmen
ISLAMABAD — Fearing that his attackers would spot him from a distance, the investigative journalist Taha Siddiqui threw off his bright red sweater as he jumped into a ditch and crawled through mud and shrubs to reach a highway in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.
Just minutes earlier, the private taxi that had been taking Siddiqui, the Pakistan bureau chief of Indian television channel WION, to the airport on Wednesday morning was stopped by around a dozen armed men in plainclothes who had spilled out of a car and pickup truck, he said.
The men dragged him from the cab, hitting and kicking him and threatening to shoot him. They ordered the taxi driver out and threw Siddiqui back into the car.
Before the car could move, the journalist jumped out into incoming traffic and got into a yellow cab, he said. But the driver went only a few hundred yards, saying he didn’t want to be involved in “trouble” and asking Siddiqui to get out.
Then it was time to crawl, staying low across a large, muddy lot until he found a worker who agreed to drive him the 10 miles back to Islamabad.
The attackers got Siddiqui’s laptop, data drives, phone, passport and luggage. He got away with his life. But not everyone has.
It has been open season on journalists and critics of Pakistan’s military for years now. Disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture, intimidation — all have been brought to bear, and in the vast majority of cases, no one has ever been brought to justice.
Siddiqui is a prominent critic of the country’s powerful military establishment, and on Wednesday he said he believed that “state agencies” were behind the attack. Human rights investigators frequently accuse the military’s spy agency, InterServices Intelligence, or ISI, of being behind attacks or threats against journalists. Often, especially in cases of intimidation, security officers make no attempt to hide who they are.
The threats to journalists and dissidents do not end with the security agencies. Militants on both sides of the insurgency in Baluchistan province, for instance, including sectarian groups who mainly fight on the military’s side of the conflict, are known for some of the most brazen attacks.
Siddiqui said that after reaching the police station on Wednesday, he asked the investigating officer to let him know as soon as anyone was arrested.
“When I said that, he just looked right at me and laughed out loud,” Siddiqui said. “Right to my face.”