PESHAWAR: Rights bodies pledge to protect press freedom
Bureau Report
PESHAWAR, May 4: Civil society organisations set up a protest camp outside the press club here on Friday to condemn what was called threats being issued to the media and government’s moves to curb press freedom.
Representatives of the Alliance for Protection of Human Rights, an organisation representing the Aurat Foundation, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Strengthening Participatory Organisation, Shirkat Gah, Khwendo Kor, Sungi Development Foundation, Noor Education Trust and the Human Resource Management and Development Centre, attended the protest camp from 10am to 1pm to express solidarity with the media.
Banners displayed at the protest camp called for free flow of and easy access to credible information and reaffirmed civil society organisations’ pledge to uphold press freedom.
People from different walks of life and office-bearers of the Khyber Union of Journalists and the Peshawar Press Club visited the camp to express support to the struggle.
Later, speaking at a news conference, APHR representatives Rukhshanda Naz, Kamran Arif and Dr Said Alam Mehsud criticised the alleged harassment of the media by different quarters and termed it an attack on people’s right to get information.
Ms Naz said the independent media was a source of information for the masses, but alleged that the government was using different pressure tactics to suppress the media.
Recalling an attack by police on the offices of a private TV channel in Islamabad on March 16 and serving of a notice by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority on another TV channel on April 23, she said the attempts to intimidate the free press were bound to fail.
She said the media created a space for human rights organisations and helped them to take up issues of concern to people, but they themselves were braving all odds to perform their duties.
Ms Naz said the number of journalists killed last year, illegal detentions of newspersons, violence against them and the threats they faced from time to time proved the challenges to free media in Pakistan. She said human rights organisations would be next to none in protecting the media freedom.
“Nobody has the right to decide which type of information should be provided to people and which should be hold back,” said Human Rights Commission of Pakistan vice-chairperson Kamran Arif.
Dwelling at length on the threats to media freedom, he said the media was under attack by the government, intelligence agencies and fanatic groups. He recalled the case of a tribal journalist, Hayatullah, who had been kidnapped from North Waziristan last year and found murdered six months later. He also recalled and criticised the action against FM103 radio station, cancellation of license of Sindh TV, ban on two Afghan TV channels, Aaryana and Tuloo, and blocking of four websites in Sindh on political grounds.
Dr Mehsud Alam of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party regretted that on the one hand, Pemra was intimidating the free media and on the other, it had turned a blind eye to illegal FM radio stations.
