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Qazi Mansoor Hassan 
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Press freedom roundup
By: Mansoor Hassan
Updated on Friday, August 10, 2007 - 6:05:11 PM
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Press freedom roundup
A glance at media threat around the world.
In Afghanistan, 35 year-old Zakia Zaki, a reporter and presenter at a private radio station funded by the US Media Group, was murdered in her own home while her 18 month-old son slept by her side. She was killed on 6 June in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo two unidentified armed men in plain-clothes killed Serge Maheshe, the head of UN funded Radio Okapi based in the town of Bukavu, on the south coast of Lake Kivu. The street killing happened on 13 June.
The death toll has been rising relentlessly in Iraq. Unidentified gunmen killed Raad Mutashar, a 43-year-old journalist, writer and a poet on 9 May, outside the northern city of Kirkuk. Mutashar was also director of a company that publishes the weekly newspaper Al-Iraq Ghadan.
Two journalists working for ABC News in Iraq were killed by gunmen on 17 May. Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, a cameraman, and Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, a soundman, were killed on their way home from work in Baghdad. Aziz is survived by his wife and two young daughters, while Yousaf was just about to get married.
Journalist Nazar Abdulwahid al-Radhi, 38, who was working for an independent news agency Aswat al-Iraq and Radio Free Iraq, was murdered in southern city of Al-Amarah on 30 May. Meanwhile, 44 year-old Sahar Hussein Ali al-Haydari, a reporter for the National Iraqi News Agency and Aswat al-Iraq was shot dead on 7 June in Mosul. She had been abducted in 2006 and was rescued. This was followed by another failed attempt to abduct her. In August 2006 gunmen killed her daughter’s fiancé. Another employee of Aswat al-Iraq, 32 year-old Aref Ali Filaih was killed by a bomb during an assignment on 11 June in Diyala province.
Filaih Wuday Mijthab, 53, who worked for the government-run daily Al-Sabah was abducted and killed. His body was found on 17 June in Baghdad.
In the Philippines, Vicente Sumalpong was killed on 25 June in the southern town of Bongao. He was an announcer at Government-run Radyo ng Bayan.
Mansoor Hassan(August2007)