(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Pakistani Information Minister Nisar A. Memon, RSF expressed its deep concern following the resignation of Shaheen Sehbai, editor of the daily “The News”, on 1 March 2002. “We ask the new information minister to shed further light on this case,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “The government’s statements in […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Pakistani Information Minister Nisar A. Memon, RSF expressed its deep concern following the resignation of Shaheen Sehbai, editor of the daily “The News”, on 1 March 2002. “We ask the new information minister to shed further light on this case,” stated RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “The government’s statements in support of press freedom are in complete contradiction with its actions,” he deplored. The organisation also asked the minister to do everything in his power to ensure that the call for the free circulation of journalists launched by the Southern Asia Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) on 9 March is heard and put into practice.
According to information obtained by RSF, Sehbai, editor of the English-language daily “The News”, filed his resignation on 1 March and stated that he was acting under “government pressure.” The journalist had reportedly refused to dismiss Kamran Khan, Amir Mateen and Rauf Klasra, three journalists from the daily, as requested by his editor-in-chief. Khan had written an article in which he suggested that Sheikh Omar, instigator of the abduction of American journalist Daniel Pearl, was involved in the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Mateen, who is based in Washington, reported that during Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s most recent official visit to the United States, some of his ministers “had remained in the shadows” for security reasons. Sehbai and Klasra had previously complained of pressure from secret service agencies a few weeks earlier.
This is not the first time that the government has put pressure on the daily’s management. On 21 July 2001, Masood Malik, a journalist from the Urdu-language daily “Nawa-i-Waqt”, was demoted a day after he asked General Musharraf a question during a press conference. On 20 July, the journalist attended Musharraf’s press conference at the Agra Summit and asked him the following question, “If an elected head of state had gone to the summit, he may have been more productive. What’s your opinion?” The next day, the journalist was asked to leave the newspaper’s reporting team and join the editorial staff for having “violated” the newspaper editorial line. The Press and Information Department, a regulatory body for Pakistani media, had put pressure on the daily’s managers to punish the journalist (see IFEX alert of 26 July 2001).
On another note, RSF welcomes the call launched by information ministers from SAARC member countries at the SAARC summit’s closing conference on 9 March. They appealed for the free circulation of journalists in the region. RSF hopes that the future working meetings on the issue, as mentioned by the Pakistani information minister, will be effective.
