(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the authorities to protect two journalists who were briefly detained by an outlawed fundamentalist group in the Khyber Agency region of Pakistan’s tribal areas on 18 September 2003. The journalists have been threatened and are concerned for their safety. Nasrullah Afridi and Aurangzeb Afridi, correspondents for the Peshawar-based, Urdu-language […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has called on the authorities to protect two journalists who were briefly detained by an outlawed fundamentalist group in the Khyber Agency region of Pakistan’s tribal areas on 18 September 2003. The journalists have been threatened and are concerned for their safety.
Nasrullah Afridi and Aurangzeb Afridi, correspondents for the Peshawar-based, Urdu-language dailies “Mashriq” and “Subah Morning”, were held in a private prison by the Unity of Ulemas Organisation (Tanzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema) for several hours before being released following pressure from influential persons.
They were then summoned for a meeting with the organisation, but did not attend. They have since continued to receive threats warning them that they should fear for their lives if “they don’t give up the idea of a free press in the Khyber Agency.”
RSF urged North-West Frontier Province Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah to do everything necessary to guarantee their safety. The organisation also called for an investigation into their arrest and detention by the private militia of an organisation that has been officially declared illegal.
“Journalists in the tribal areas work in difficult conditions due to the absence of laws guaranteeing press freedom,” RSF said in a letter to the government. “If they must also protect themselves from religious groups equipped with militias and private prisons, then all hope of independent news reporting in this strategic region is lost.”
Nasrullah Afridi and Aurangzeb Afridi are president and vice-president, respectively, of the Tribal Union of Journalists in the Khyber Agency. When detained, they had just filed a report on the Tanzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema’s abduction of two people from Lahore.
In a previous report, Nasrullah Afridi had described Tanzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema as an “illegal group,” recalling that it has been banned for the past five years. Nonetheless, it has an armed wing comprising 3,000 people in the tribal areas and imposes its own law in the region. A 15 September report in the daily “Ausaf Khadrian” claimed that Tanzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema was financed by funds from contraband.
