PEC condoles demise of Hedayat Abdel Nabi, demands justice to India’s murdered scribe

NJ THAKURIA, 8 March 2022.

Geneva: Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), the global media safety and rights body, has mourned the death of its president Hedayat Abdel Nabi (73) who passed away on Monday in Cairo.  Meanwhile, the international media forum expressed shock over the murder of another Indian scribe named Juned Khan Pathan (37) from Surat locality of Gujarat recently and it demanded justice for the bereaved family.

“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.”

The Gujarati scribe was stabbed to death by four miscreants on 13 February. Working for a local weekly newspaper, Pathan was killed in front of his wife and three minor daughters at Jilani bridge area in broad daylight. He was riding a two-wheeler with family members and had a collision with a car where the culprits were traveling. They stabbed him to death with a sharp knife and fled from the spot.

PEC’s India representative Nava Thakuria reveals that 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.