A deeper reading: Umar Cheema on the Shahzad report
With the shooting of Mukarram Khan Aatif on Tuesday, the once high-profile case of Saleem Shahzad has almost been overtaken by events. The day before Aatif’s death, Umar Cheema had sent me a link to his analysis of the judicial inquiry into the killing of Saleem Shahzad.
Umar Cheema Award Acceptance Speech
Umar Cheema The News, Pakistan Acceptance Speech CPJ International Press Freedom Award 2011 November 22, 2011 Waldorf-Astoria, 301 Park Avenue, New York City Ladies and gentlemen, This is a great privilege. I feel humbled and honored. There couldn’t be a greater recognition. But it doesn’t mark an end of the troubles. The award is a…
Umar Cheema, Pakistan
2011 CPJ International Press Freedom Awardee Umar Cheema, a reporter with Islamabad’s The News, was abducted in September 2010 by unknown assailants who stripped, beat, and photographed him in humiliating positions. Cheema’s unwillingness to stay silent about his abduction and the abuses he suffered has drawn wide attention to the nationwide issue of anti-press violence…
Umar Cheema: ‘Their efforts to intimidate me backfired’
On September 4, 2010, Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema was abducted as he was going home after a dinner with friends near Islamabad. He was held captive for more than six hours, during which he was tortured by masked individuals. He was told to stop criticizing the government in the articles he wrote for the English-language…
Updates on Wali Khan Babar and Umar Cheema in Pakistan
Here are two quick updates on prominent Pakistani cases we’ve been following: Despite police claims made soon after the assassination-style killing of Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar on January 13, there have been no arrests made in his case, and there is little reason to expect that there will be any. Babar was one…
Movement in Umar Cheema’s case ‘frustratingly slow’
On Wednesday, we identified Pakistan as the country where the most journalists–eight–have been killed for their work in the past year. Six of them were on the job when they were killed in crossfire or a suicide bombing. Two others were assassinated.I’ve been posting reports on one journalist–Umar Cheema–who wasn’t killed, but whose case represents…
Lugar: Umar Cheema case a ‘bellwether’ for Pakistan
Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, wrote to Pakistani Prime Minster Yousuf Raza Gilani on September 22 to express concern about the brutal attack on Umar Cheema. The journalist was abducted on the weekend of September 4-5 by men in black commando-style uniforms, who beat and humiliated him. It’s…
The significance of Umar Cheema’s abduction
With all the problems in Pakistan–the flooding in the country that might be the worst ever; the increasingly devastating sectarian and separatist violence that has taken the lives of hundreds of Pakistanis and at least four journalists–focusing on what happened to Umar Cheema, a reporter for The News, might seem almost a sidebar story. But it’s not. It’s something much larger.
Nothing: What Pakistan is doing to find Cheema’s abductors
Just in case you were one of the few people in Pakistan or any other part of the world, for that matter, who thought that the six-hour abduction of Umar Cheema over the weekend of September 4 and 5 in Islamabad was going to be investigated and the culprits–men “dressed in police uniform”–brought to justice, here is…