By Nava Thakuria*
PEC mourns demise of its president Hedayat Abdel Nabi
The Geneva-based global media safety and rights body, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), today expressed shock over the murder of another Indian scribe named Juned Khan Pathan (37) from Surat, Gujarat recently and it demanded justice for the bereaved family.
The Gujarati scribe was stabbed to death by four miscreants in front of his wife and three minor daughters at Jilani bridge area in broad daylight. Working for a local weekly newspaper, Pathan was riding a two-wheeler with family members on 13 February and had a collision with a car where the culprits were traveling. They swiftly attacked and stabbed him to death with a sharp knife and fled from the spot.
Pathan is the third Indian scribes, who has been murdered this year. Earlier Odisha’s Kalahandi-based journalist Rohit Kumar Biswal and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur-based journalist Sudhir Saini lost their lives to assailants. South Indian photojournalist T Kumar killed himself after the employer news agency (UNI) denied him full salaries for the last consecutive five years.
Meanwhile, PEC, has mourned the death of its president Hedayat Abdel Nabi (73) who passed away on March 7, 2022 in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo.
“We extend our most sincere condolences to Hedayat Abdel Nabi’s family, her friends and colleagues who appreciated her availability, dynamism and convictions. Born on 10 November 1948 in Cairo, Hedayat co-founded PEC in 2004 with other correspondents at the United Nations Office in Geneva. Indefatigable, she supported the struggle for better protection of journalists when covering conflicts and crises,” said Blaise Lempen, secretary-general of PEC.
He also added, “Our struggle continues, beyond our sorrow after her sudden death. The greatest tribute that we can pay to her is to show that the cause she defended with passion survives and that we are ready and willing to pursue it as long as necessary so that impartial, independent and dispassionate information may emerge in all circumstances and that the machinations of dictators and criminal gangs will never muzzle the press.”
*Senior journalist and PEC’s India representative
