(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: Four journalists arrested, one radio station closed Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) is concerned at a wave of arrests of journalists and the closure of one of Pakistan’s few privately-run radio stations. The worldwide press freedom organisation has written to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz urging […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
Four journalists arrested, one radio station closed
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) is concerned at a wave of arrests of journalists and the closure of one of Pakistan’s few privately-run radio stations.
The worldwide press freedom organisation has written to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz urging the release of the journalists who are still being held and for FM Radio 103 to be reopened.
Police arrested Farhat Abbas Shah and Afaq Shah, journalists at FM Radio 103, on 10 November at their radio’s studios in Lahore, Punjab province, in the east of the country. They were released on bail the next day.
Two days later, around 20 police raided the station and seized equipment, making it impossible for it to continue broadcasting. They also arrested two staff members, reportedly Abdul Ghafoor and Nauman. The radio chiefly broadcasts programmes from the BBC World Service Urdu-language service.
According to the Pakistan Press Club, the two radio journalists were arrested for broadcasting a report on a scandal at the Punjab cardiology institute. They were reportedly ill treated in the first hours of their detention.
Police accused them both of taking part in a demonstration in front of a public building but the station director said that Farhat Abbas Shah had not been involved in the demonstration.
On 6 November, Qazi Muhammad Rauf, correspondent for the Urdu-language daily Express, in the north-eastern Khyber Agency tribal zone, was seized by armed men and held for 24 hours by members of Sheikhmalkel tribe who were angry at what they saw as a biased article.
Rauf had reported on clashes between the tribe and a fundamentalist religious organisation – Amr Bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar – in the tribal area. Around a dozen armed men abducted Rauf and took him to a private detention centre, where they beat and then chained him.
The authorities intervened following a tip off from his colleagues in the Tribal Union of Journalists and persuaded the tribal leaders to release him on 7 November.
Police in Skardo, in the north-east, arrested the editor of the banned magazine Kargil International, Ghulam Shehzad Agha, on 4 November. The authorities accuse the journalist and political activist of backing autonomy for the Pakistani part of Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani Interior Ministry banned the magazine that he ran on 8 September 2004, charging that it carried seditious and unpatriotic news.
Elsewhere, Sarwar Mujahid, correspondent for the conservative Urdu-language daily Nawa-I-Waqt, in Okara district, in the east of the country, was freed on 12 October 2004. He was arrested and detained on 31 July 2004 at Sahiwal prison, Punjab province.
Mujahid was held under the Maintenance of Public Order law. His detention appeared to be linked to his articles about a conflict between Pakistani paramilitaries and tenant farmers who have for years farmed land belonging to the army.
