12 May 2004	Wednesday	21 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

LAHORE, May 11: Police maltreated journalists and human rights activists at a picket on Amjad Chowk in the cantonment on Tuesday. Police highups, who announced on Monday that journalists would be allowed to go to the airport, did not honour their words.

Both Lahore police chief DIG Tariq Saleem and Operations police chief Aftab Cheema, when asked specifically about the journalists, had claimed that there would be no bar on them from going to the airport.

"As far as the police are concerned, we are not stopping any journalist from going to the airport. But, I can't say anything about the airport premises," Mr Cheema said on Tuesday noon.

The police also did not allow people living near the airport to go home. Several such families were seen sitting along the roadside and pleading the policemen to allow them to go home.

During a scuffle with journalists and human rights activists, the police, with DSP Shahid and Inspector Ashraf Chaddhar in command, inflicted an injury on a journalist from an English-language daily. A plain clothes man slapped a woman reporter from an Urdu daily.

On repeated requests, the police at the pickets did not contact their senior command. And when the DSP radioed a message, he quoted SP Bilal Kamyana as saying that he had no idea what the police chief or the operations police chief had assured the journalists.

"I am strictly ordered not to allow anybody, come what may," the DSP quoted the SP. The police also misbehaved with the journalists at other pickets on the way to the airport.