Terrible price
- 9 Jun 08, 10:50 AM
This weekend, colleagues on two continents paid a terrible price for telling stories they wanted the world to know about.
In Somalia on Saturday, Nasteh Dahir Faraah was shot dead in the southern port city of Kismayu. Dahir was 28 and a freelance journalist working for the and the أغر؟´«أ½ Somali service.
Yesterday, we got the shocking news that Abdul Samad Rohani had been murdered in Helmand province in Afghanistan. For the past couple of years Rohani had been our fixer in Helmand, working with Kabul correspondent Alastair Leithead and reporting for the أغر؟´«أ½ Pashto service. His bravery had allowed us to tell a key story for audiences in the UK, in Afghanistan and around the world.
Rohani was just 25 years old; he was married with two children. He was found with his hands tied behind his back - he'd been shot in the head. Early this morning he was buried at the family cemetery in his home district of Marja, near the provincial capital Lashkar Gar.
Of course, yesterday, there was further grim news from Afghanistan. Three soldiers from the 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment were killed in a suicide attack in Helmand, bringing to 100 the number of British servicemen and women killed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Each death is a tragedy - today we're experiencing some of the pain 100 families have been through in the last six and a half years in Afghanistan.
Around the world, every day, journalists risk their lives to help us understand the world and what's going on a little better. Last year, the reported that two journalists had been killed every week over the past ten years - a thousand media workers lost their lives between 1996 and 2006. But even by that grim standard, two in a weekend is hard to bear.
It's a terrible reminder of the dangers we face. But it's vital that stories like those in Afghanistan and Somalia are told to a wider audience. It's thanks to the courage and sacrifice of people like Rohani and Nasteh that we're able to do so.
Jon Williams is the أغر؟´«أ½'s world news editor
