KARACHI, July 28: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents more than 500,000 journalists in 110 countries, has strongly condemned what it called the illegal detention by police of Rasheed Channa, a reporter of daily The Star.

In a statement received here on Thursday, IFJ’s president Christopher Warren said: “Journalists must be guaranteed right to report and investigate corruption free of intimidation and threat of detention.”

Mr Channa was arrested on July 24 by plain-clothes policemen and intelligence agents from his home in Karachi and was released 12 hours later.

The IFJ president said that the arbitrary arrest of Mr Channa was part of a campaign of intimidation and harassment aimed at forcing the Pakistani press to stop printing the truth and start exercising ‘self-censorship’.

The IFJ called upon the government of Pakistan to protect press freedoms enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution of Pakistan. — PPI