October 6, 2002	Sunday	Rajab 28, 1423

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PARIS, Oct 5: The Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) has issued a sharp denunciation of Pakistan’s new defamation law, saying it should be “urgently amended” because it “threatens press freedom” and “is so general that it will protect all kinds of abuses.”

In an unusually virulent attack against the measure issued on Friday, the RSF expressed “alarm” at what it characterizes as “a new law that would send journalists to prison for ridicule, unjust criticism, dislike, contempt or hatred”, and called for it to be “urgently amended.”

In a letter to Information Minister Nisar A. Memon, RSF secretary-general Robert Menard noted that “this is a serious threat hanging over the heads of independent and opposition journalists in Pakistan.”

“Every country needs laws that punish incitement to hatred and violence,” he admitted, “but this one is so general that it will protect all kinds of abuses.”

“We are very disappointed that the government has ignored the comments of international and Pakistani journalists’ organizations,” remarked Menard, and noted that “coming a week before parliamentary elections, it is a new obstacle to balanced and impartial coverage of the final days of the campaign and the vote-counting process.” The RSF called on the information minister “to see to it that the imprisonment clauses be eliminated from the law and to ensure that all political parties get a fair share of air time on the state-owned media.”

According to RSF Asia spokesman Vincent Brossel, “the new law, which came into force on October 1, increases penalties for ‘defamation,’ with up to three months imprisonment, fines of Rs 50,000 and an obligation to publish an apology.”