Published Photographs Lead to Death Threats in Pakistan

6 minute read

With the rise of extremist movements around the world, journalists have become prime targets in a war of communication both in the field and back at home, once their images have been published, as photographer Alixandra Fazzina learned this week.

After five years of working in Pakistan documenting the intimate daily lives of women and children, the London-based NOOR photographer has now become the target of death threats after her work was published in a national British newspaper. “This weekend, some of these stories were published for the first time in The Guardian magazine and online. I received a lot of hate mail and I’ve seen a lot of people erode my credibility on social media. They were intent on trying to destroy me.”

Fazzina was due to travel to Pakistan on Nov. 20, but she has since received warnings from diplomatic sources about “a credible and direct threat against my life,” she says. “I’ve taken risks in Pakistan, but they were very weighted up risks,” she says. “I don’t want to kill myself for a story.” Now, she feels, fear has caught up to her in London.

Fazzina started her career as a frontline photographer covering under reported conflicts in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Northern Uganda. “Over the years, my work has changed” she says, “It’s gone on instead to look at the consequences and fallout of wars.”

In 2008, after working on a long-term project in Somalia, she moved to Pakistan. “When I arrived, the effects of extremism were really starting to hit home,” she says. “One of the first things I did was to cover what was essentially Pakistan’s first frontline in the tribal areas. It was the first time that Pakistan’s military had engaged and began an operation against the Taliban there.”

Pakistan has been facing conflicts on multiple fronts – from separatist movements in Balochistan to homegrown Pakistani Taliban factions spreading violence across the country and all the way to Karachi – in June, 28 people were killed in a coordinated attack at Jinnah International Airport in the country’s economic capital.

Fazzina’s ambition was to document the consequences of these conflicts. “What I want to get across is how much civilians suffer and to try and tell their stories, to show what the real effects of war are away from the frontlines,” she says. “Millions of people in Pakistan are still suffering now, and they’re not getting any assistance.”

In her photographs, Fazzina has tried to avoid pointing the finger at one particular culprit, instead putting the blame on all participants. “I’ve covered victims of collateral damage, victims of airstrikes, victims of drone strikes. I covered people suffering from the military, from foreign intervention in region and also from the Taliban. I’ve tried to cover victims of war from all sides because I believe that in any theater of war, all players are responsible.”

After diplomatic sources in Islamabad warned her of the threat on her life from local extremist groups, Fazzina has been forced to cancel a planned trip to Pakistan where she was to report on maternal health. “I take this threat very seriously. There is a strong possibility if I return I will be killed simply for having documented what are realities on the ground” she says. “But, I won’t be silenced by this threat.”

Fazzina’s situation isn’t unique, she explains, as Pakistani journalists and photographers constantly risk their lives to document their country. “It’s extremely difficult for journalists to report without facing some kind of a risk – be it threats, harassment, or even expulsion from the country by the state,” says Mustafa Qadri, a researcher at Amnesty International. “We’ve certainly seen this year a number of high-profile attacks on journalists, which seems to be in response to their work being critical of the government, Taliban, or political parties. What brings all of these cases together is the fact that there’s no justice, there’s no accountability. That basically sends a signal that if you’re not happy with what journalists are reporting, you can literally get away with murder.”

Since 2008, Amnesty International has documented 36 cases of journalists who were killed in response to their work, with many more cases of harassment remaining undocumented. The Committee to Protect Journalists has been trying to fight this problem, says Bob Dietz, the Asian program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Everyone feels that they have total impunity to direct a threat towards a journalist. Foreign journalists aren’t the largest targets for these things; it’s really the local Pakistani journalists who bear the brunt of it. A Pakistani journalist awakes in the morning, opens his phone and check for messages and there might well be a string of threats in there. It’s a way of life. It’s a reality that people are dealing with.”

“We’ve tried to combat it,” Dietz adds. “[We’ve asked] journalists not to hide these threats, and instead to bring them out in public as a way to disarm them.” Yet, the CPJ and Amnesty International don’t expect such menaces to subside, including those against Fazzina. “We really welcome the work that she did,” says Qadri. “We feel that not enough is done to expose the condition of women and girls in Pakistan; what ordinary life is for them. It’s really sad that in trying to do that, she’s now facing these kinds of threats.”

For the 40-year-old photographer, these threats are indicative of a massive shift in war reporting. “The landscape has really changed from fundamentalist groups wanting to tell their stories to journalists becoming actual targets of these groups,” says Fazzina. “In some way, the voices that can speak out against human rights abuses are slowly being silenced. And people would rather shoot the messenger than acknowledged the actual state of [affairs].”

Alixandra Fazzina is a London-based photographer represented by NOOR.

Olivier Laurent is the editor of TIME LightBox. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @olivierclaurent

Behind Marked Doors
MATTA THASIL, PAKISTAN- JUNE 2010 Twenty year old Sana is on the run from the Taliban. Three hours drive distant, Sana’s home lies in the steep forested hills of the Piochar Valley, a militant stronghold, providing cover for training camps and back bases. As the Taliban moved their insurgency from Pakistan’s tribal areas into the government administered regions of Swat and Buner in 2007, one of their key tactics was the abduction or forced indoctrination of children. The Taliban also actively sought out unmarried girls.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Bajaur
LOI SAM, PAKISTAN- DECEMBER 2008 Arriving on the scene of an artillery strike by security forces, an armed soldier from the Bajaur Scouts climbs over the burning remains as a patrol search the ruins for bodies, weapons and evidence of miscreant activity in Loi Sam village. Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Bajaur
JALOZAI, PAKISTAN- MARCH 2011 Sitting in the shade of a mud built shelter, 45 year old Sabira holds back tears as she gently handles the headscarf that her eldest daughter Shughla was wearing when she was killed during heavy fighting between the Pakistan Army and Taliban insurgents in Bajaur. Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Bajaur, IDPs
SADBARKALAI, PAKISTAN- FEBRUARY 2011 Shielding her eyes from the sun as it sets behind the mountains of Afghanistan, 11 year old Shaheeda stands outside her family’s tent in an IDP camp at Sadbarkalai.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
KUZA BANDAI, PAKISTAN- JUNE 2010 Sixty six year old mother of seven Gul Mina sits with her granddaughter in their small mud built home in the former Taliban stronghold of Derakai on the west bank of the Swat Valley. Along with her husband and five sons, Gul Mina, like the majority of women in her village, were ardent Taliban supporters. While the male members of her household attended the notorious madrassa at Dera Imam, she looked forward to Maulana Faizullah’s evening broadcasts on his FM radio station; especially the segment where the men were told to leave the room and he spoke softly to female listeners. “He told us to wear burqas, that men should refrain from meeting with their brother’s wives and gave us guidance. He was such a good, pious man- I followed his beliefs along with my husband”. While her boys were ready to join the insurgents, Gul Mina became doubtful when the assassinations and beheadings began but it was hard to change sides within such a hardcore, close-knit community. As army operations commenced in the spring of 2009, she persuaded her family to flee the valley in search of refuge.These days Gul Mina is stressed and fearful and spends her time worrying about her extended family’s future. The military have arrested thousands in Swat that were linked to Faizullah’s Taliban, destroying their homes and forcing others out of the valley. “We loved the Taliban but nobody in this house committed any crime. Now when I think of these times, I feel so stupid”.
KUZA BANDAI, PAKISTAN- JUNE 2010 66 year old mother of seven Gul Mina sits with her granddaughter in their small mud built home in the former Taliban stronghold of Derakai on the west bank of the Swat Valley. Along with her husband and five sons, Gul Mina, like the majority of women in her village, were ardent Taliban supporters. While her boys were ready to join the insurgents, Gul Mina became doubtful when the assassinations and beheadings began but it was hard to change sides within such a hardcore, close-knit community. As army operations commenced in the spring of 2009, she persuaded her family to flee the valley in search of refuge.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Bajaur, IDPs
SADBARKALAI, PAKISTAN- FEBRUARY 2011 Shrouded in smoke from a mud built tandoor, 12 year old Tayeeba holds her 18 month old baby brother Abbas as she helps her mother to prepare rotis for an evening meal in the cold winter’s air outside their tent in Sadbarkalai. Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
LAHORE, PAKISTAN- NOVEMBER 2009 A few days ahead of her wedding, 14 year old Afghan refugee Zeenat Gul is helped by her mother as she tries on her hand made red beaded wedding dress at their one room home in the slums of Sagiam Pull. One of ten siblings, Zeenat was born at the refugee camp of Kohart in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province after her family fled fighting in Kunduz. Zeenat Gul has yet to meet her fiance but has been busy making her in-laws to be gifts of beaded combs, mirrors and jewelry. Now liberated from her work in the dump, her mother Barangul has been advising her teenage daughter about marriage. The sensitive topic of sex will not be raised until the wedding night, "When a girl marries, then she will become a woman".Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Running From The Taliban
CHARSADDA, PAKISTAN- JUNE 2009 Under the arc of a rainbow, a girl makes her way through a tented camp in Charsadda located in the grounds of a technical college. Home to nearly 25,000 refugees from Bajaur, the camp was one of the first to be established as conflict in Pakistan's tribal areas began nearly a year ago.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
SADBARKALAI, PAKISTAN- FEBRUARY 2011 Nine year old Ikram lies on a char poi (rope bed) in his family’s tent at Sadbarkalai’s Kuz Camp. Displaced by fighting in Bajaur for the past three years, Ikram’s parents and five siblings moved their weather beaten tent to the camp six months ago after being moved on by the government. Home to more than two-hundred Bajauri families who have been displaced by the continued conflict in Pakistan’s most troublesome tribal region, residents of the remote camp receive are spending another bitter winter under canvas as the war against the Taliban continues.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
Only Outside Sometimes- A Family on the Frontier
Treading carefully across the pebbles in bare feet, Quaim crosses a stretch of the Swat River as she goes to make target practice with her brother's pistol.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
SE011 Bajaur
MAJOGI, PAKISTAN- JANUARY 2011 Having just received a month's ration of food aid from USAID, exhausted father of five Shaukat Khan rests on a charpoi in the family's rented flood damaged house in the Charsadda having been displaced for a third time in two years.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN; FEBRUARY 2104 Holding her twenty-five day old grandson Ziaullah, elderly Bacha Hilal squats down in the mud hut that has become home since escaping conflict in Bajaur. “The first time the Taliban came our life became limited only to our house. They didn’t let us go to our fields or collect wood from the mountains and we weren’t even allowed to go to the river for water. They demanded that no child should go to school and anyone working for the government should abandon their jobs. They even banned dogs, cockerels and donkeys and instructed the men to start cultivating poppy. After Eid in 2008 the army came. They started shelling and their tanks began to flatten the houses… There was a big ditch in the land by our home and there were times we would spend two or three nights there taking shelter with the children. A lot of people were killed; the Taliban were slaughtering on the ground and the army was bombing from above. One day a mortar landed very close to us; the shrapnel hit my husband in the eye. At 4am the next morning we left. We were all so scared as there were landmines all around. Nobody stayed behind; our whole village fled”. Surrounded by a population from Pakistan’s tribal areas at a sprawling, illegal settlement near Islamabad, the sanctuary that Bacha Hilal found is one she fears will become her grave. “In Islamabad we live in poverty. We can’t even afford the smallest of things and don’t know if we will eat one day or the next. We’ve borrowed all we can against our lands but no longer have any money. We are still IDPs. Because of the fighting, we are in this condition”.
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN; FEBRUARY 2104 Holding her 25 day old grandson Ziaullah, elderly Bacha Hilal squats down in the mud hut that has become home since escaping conflict in Bajaur. Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR
MINGORA, PAKISTAN- AUGUST 2009 Two year old Muhammad stands in a daze as he makes his way down the blackened stairs in his family's fire damaged house in Mingora. Commandeered as a base by Taliban fighters after the family fled the city's siege, their home was subsequently targeted in an air strike that nearly burnt it to the ground.
MINGORA, PAKISTAN- AUGUST 2009 Two year old Muhammad stands in a daze as he makes his way down the blackened stairs in his family's fire damaged house in Mingora. Commandeered as a base by Taliban fighters after the family fled the city's siege, their home was subsequently targeted in an air strike that nearly burnt it to the ground.Alixandra Fazzina–NOOR

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