(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Pakistani interior minister, Lieutenant General Moin-ud-din Haider, RSF protested the assault on two French press photographers by Pakistani policemen in Quetta (central Pakistan). “If the perpetrators of this attack are not punished quickly, relations between the foreign press and Pakistani security forces risk deteriorating. The Pakistani government will […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to the Pakistani interior minister, Lieutenant General Moin-ud-din Haider, RSF protested the assault on two French press photographers by Pakistani policemen in Quetta (central Pakistan). “If the perpetrators of this attack are not punished quickly, relations between the foreign press and Pakistani security forces risk deteriorating. The Pakistani government will suffer the consequences,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. RSF asked the federal minister to order that the complaint filed by the photographers be accepted. RSF also expressed its concern about the attitude of security forces in Quetta, which prohibit foreign journalists from leaving their hotel. “We respectfully ask you to reconsider your policy towards the international media in Quetta. Security reasons can not be an argument to prevent reporters from doing their work,” said Ménard.
According to information obtained by RSF, Patrick Aventurier and Vincent Laforêt, photo-journalists with the Gamma agency and the American daily “New York Times”, respectively, were beaten on 9 October 2001 by Pakistani policemen near a madrassa in Quetta. The two photographers were following an ambulance carrying the body of a child killed during a demonstration against the American and British air strikes in Afghanistan. The child’s family and fundamentalists asked the police to return the child’s body. He was killed the same day in a village near Quetta. As the convoy was arriving at a religious school, policemen in grey uniforms attacked the two photographers and beat them with sticks and the butts of their Kalashnikovs.
According to Aventurier, who was interviewed by RSF, “the policemen could not stand the fact that we were taking pictures of this dead child, who was shot in the head. I don’t know what they have to blame themselves for, but they brutally attacked us while fundamentalists were not aggressive at all.” The two photographers and the French consul in Quetta lodged a complaint with the town’s police superintendent.
In the past week, Pakistani authorities have prohibited foreign journalists from leaving the hotel where they are staying in Quetta. Because of the violent demonstrations in and around the town, police and soldiers are blocking more than two hundred reporters who have come to cover the conflict between the United States and the Taliban regime in this town which is near the Afghan border. Quetta is close to the Taliban headquarters of Kandahar. During a recent demonstration, Taliban supporters threw stones at the hotel and tried to set it on fire. Some foreign journalists recently signed a petition asking the authorities to allow them to work freely in the town. They were ready to sign a release discharging the police of their security.
