Declan Walsh (journalist)

Declan Walsh is an Irish journalist who is the Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times. He used to be the Pakistan bureau chief for The New York Times. He has worked for The Guardian. Walsh was expelled from Pakistan in May 2013 but continued covering the country from London.^[1]

Educated in Dublin, Walsh started his career at The Sunday Business Post in 1998. A year later he won an Irish national media award for Social and Campaigning Journalism and moved to Kenya to work as a freelance journalist. Based in Nairobi, Walsh travelled widely across sub-Saharan Africa to report for The Independent of London and The Irish Times. In 2004 he joined The Guardian as the paper's correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and moved to Islamabad, Pakistan. In January 2012 he moved to The New York Times as its Pakistan bureau chief.

On May 9, 2013, Walsh learned by letter that the Pakistan Ministry of Interior, citing "undesirable activities", cancelled his visas that had been valid until January 2014 and he had 72 hours to leave the country. On May 11, 2013, while he was in public reporting on Pakistan's general election and voting behavior in Lahore, state security officials detained him in a hotel and escorted him to the airport the following morning.

The New York Times and other international media organizations protested his expulsion,^[2] which was seen as counter to Pakistan's current policy on democracy and freedom of the press.^[3] Pakistani news media later reported that Walsh had been placed on Pakistan's official "blacklist" and had been declared "persona non grata".^[4]

In March 2014 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif assured a visiting delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists that an "immediate review" of incident would be conducted.^[5] The Sharif statement was an encouragement to the editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson.^[6]

Walsh's case was outlined in detail in "A Bullet has been chosen for you: Attacks on journalists in Pakistan", a report by Amnesty International on declining media freedom in Pakistan, which was published in April 2014.^[7]

Over the past decade Walsh has written extensively on Pakistani culture, society, politics and militancy. Shortly after his expulsion he wrote a detailed account of the crumbling state of Pakistan Railways.^[8] He has contributed to Granta magazine and been shortlisted for several journalism prizes including the British Press Awards and the Orwell Prize.^[9]

On 17 May 2015 Walsh published a New York Times story about large-scale international diploma mill scams perpetrated by the Pakistani company Axact.^[10] Following the publication of the New York Times article, Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan directed the country's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to begin inquiry into whether the company was involved in any illegal business. Following the interior minister’s order, cyber crime team of FIA raided Axact’s office in Karachi and Islamabad and seized computers, recorded statements of employees as well taking into custody several company employees. The FIA team found and seized several blank degrees as well as fake letterhead of the US State Department. The issue was also taken up in Senate of Pakistan where Chairman of the Senate Raza Rabbani constituted a committee to probe into the issue. Pakistan's tax authorities and the SECP also initiated investigations into the company.

References