Pakistan Press Foundation

(PPF/IFEX) – On 19 July 2005, police in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and media centre, raided the offices of a daily newspaper and three weekly magazines and arrested two journalists for publishing hate literature. Police also arrested newspaper vendors from various localities for selling the magazines. Police raided the offices of the Urdu-language weekly “Friday […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 16 July 2005, police in the city of Karachi arrested two journalists from the fundamentalist Urdu-language weekly magazine “Zarb-i-Islam” and six newspaper vendors for spreading “hate literature”. Karachi police raided the offices of “Zarb-i-Islam” and arrested editor-in-chief Nasir Ali Jahangir and reporter Mohammad Saleem. Police also sealed the publication’s offices and confiscated […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 15 April 2005, several journalists and photographers were injured as police charged a crowd that had gathered at Karachi’s Cantonment Railway Station. The police used batons to disperse the gathering. The journalists had gone to the station to cover the departure of 200 members of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) who […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 16 April 2005, police manhandled editors, journalists and photojournalists at Lahore Airport. The journalists were accompanying Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party and spouse of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was returning to Pakistan from Dubai. Police also confiscated the journalists’ mobile phones, cameras and laptop computers. […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 14 April 2005, five armed men from the regional political party Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) stormed into the office of “Daily Mashriq” newspaper in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, and assaulted the paper’s executive editor, Kamran Mumtaz. According to a press report, the attackers were angry over the absence of statements […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 3 March 2005, a homemade bomb was thrown into the home of Khurshid Ahmed, president of the press club in Gilgit, capital city of Pakistan’s Northern Areas. Press reports quoting Ahmed, who is the bureau chief of the Islamabad-based, Urdu-language daily “Khabrain”, speculated that the attack may have been in retaliation for […]

(PPF/IFEX) – The following is an 8 February 2005 joint letter to Nepali King Gyanendra. IFEX member organisations that have signed on to the letter are listed below: His Excellency King Gyanendra Kathmandu Nepal 8 February 2005 We, the undersigned members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) in South Asia, are gravely concerned […]

(PPF/IFEX) – On 30 January 2005, at about 2:00 a.m. (local time), about 30 to 35 unidentified people riding on motorcycles attacked the head office of the Jang Group of Publications in Karachi. They opened fire, beat the building’s security staff, ransacked parts of the building and set fire to vehicles in the parking lot. […]