(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has asked President Pervez Musharraf to urge General Shaukat Sultan, the armed forces (ISPR) spokesperson, to withdraw comments he made on 10 September 2004 in which he accused the Pakistani press of “selling out national interests in exchange for a few hundred dollars.” Sultan’s comments came in defence of the army’s tough […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has asked President Pervez Musharraf to urge General Shaukat Sultan, the armed forces (ISPR) spokesperson, to withdraw comments he made on 10 September 2004 in which he accused the Pakistani press of “selling out national interests in exchange for a few hundred dollars.” Sultan’s comments came in defence of the army’s tough restrictions on journalists in the northwestern Tribal Areas.
“The media are the guarantors of press freedom and the right to be informed, and there is no justification for Gen. Shaukat Sultan’s offensive insinuations,” the organisation said in a letter to General Musharraf.
While acknowledging that the Pakistani government must ensure minimum security conditions for journalists, RSF said the requirement should not be used as a pretext for preventing the press from independently covering the situation in what is a strategic region in the fight against terrorism.
Addressing a panel of journalists in Peshawar (North-West Frontier Province), General Sultan argued that a five-month-old ban preventing journalists from circulating in South Waziristan was justified because certain journalists had acted “unethically” and “helped foreign media to malign Pakistan.” Without naming them, he alluded to two journalists in particular, Khawar Mehdi and Sami Yousafzai, who were previously arrested for working with foreign reporters (see IFEX alerts of 9 and 4 June, 17 and 11 May, 27 and 1 April 2004, and others).
In July, RSF and the Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ) held a news conference in Islamabad in which the organisations called on the authorities to respect the principle of press independence in South Waziristan and the right of journalists to circulate freely in the area.
