His Excellency P. V. Narasimha Rao
Prime Minster
Office of the Prime Minister
New Delhi
Republic of India

Vienna, 12 April 1996

Your Excellency,

The International Press Institute (IPI), strongly condemns the killing of Gulam Rasool Sheikh, a Kashmiri newspaper editor.

We are informed that Sheikh, who was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on 20 March 1996, was found dead in a Kashmir river on Wednesday, 10 April. The editor of two Kashmiri newspapers, the Urdu daily Rehnumaye Kashmir and the English-language weekly Saffron Times, he had recently spoken out against an increase in killings and arson incidents in the vicinity of his hometown, Pampur.

Sheikh is the sixth journalist since 1990 to be killed in the strife-torn state, where Kashmiri journalists routinely face harassment, abductions and physical assaults by militant separatists, Indian troops, and India-backed militia. On 7 September 1995, Mushtaq Ali, a Kashmiri photographer for Agence France-Presse, was killed when he opened a parcel bomb addressed to his colleague, Yusuf Jameel, a correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation and Reuters. The attack remains unsolved.

IPI, a global network of editors and media executives from newspapers, magazines, broadcasting organisations and news agencies in 85 countries, strongly urges that you authorize an immediate and thorough investigation into the killing of Sheikh and that those responsible for the crime are brought to justice. We further urge that you disclose any findings with regard to the earlier attack and that all possible steps are taken to protect the safety of journalist working in Kashmir.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director