Pieter Wessels, president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA) in Australia and a long-time member of the CJA international executive committee, is dead. He was 71, authorities said.

Wessels died of bone cancer in a Sydney hospital, CJA headquarters in Toronto announced Monday.

He built the Rural Media Network Pakistan (RMNP) website in May 2006. He guided the RMNP in programmes to upgrade skills of rural journalists, both men and women, in print and broadcast.

Wessels was a broadcaster, writer and editor who initiated and ran dozens of courses for the Asia and Pacific regions on the behalf of UNESCO, the Thomson Foundation, the CJA, the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, the Commonwealth Press Union, and other media organisations.