ISLAMABAD, May 3: Police crushed a journalists’ march near the parliament house on Tuesday, virtually turning a press freedom day into a police freedom day and provoking strong rebukes from the National Assembly and press community. In what was probably the roughest-ever physical handling of the press in Islamabad, police commandos picked up about 40 marchers and kept them under detention for over two hours before the government ordered their release after protests were launched against the police action.

While journalists covering the National Assembly boycotted proceedings in protest, the lower house passed an opposition-moved resolution condemning police ‘brutality’ and deciding to set up a committee to probe into the police action against the march, which was organized in connection with the International Press Freedom Day.

Opposition members told the protesting journalists outside a police-besieged parliament house that the committee would be named by Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain in consultation with leaders of parliamentary parties and would submit its report within a month. Witnesses said police stopped the journalists at the main crossing near the parliament house from marching towards the Prime Minister’s House where they intended to deliver a memorandum to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz about their problems.

While police and civil administration officials were arguing with march organizers, more than 200 police commandos wearing track suits pounced on the marchers, some of the victims said.

They said the commandos kicked and punched the marchers and broke and damaged cameras before bundling them into police vehicles. The journalists were first taken to the nearest Secretariat police station and later shifted to one at Sihala, southeast of Islamabad.

As the National Assembly met afterwards on the second day of its present session, journalists covering the house walked out of the press gallery and came out on the road outside the parliament house where they continued protesting for about four hours until their detained colleagues returned.

Members from both opposition parties — who also staged token walkouts — and the ruling coalition came to the protesting journalists to ask about the incident or express solidarity with them.

When tempers were high in the protest camp, PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and secretary-general Mushahid Hussain came together to meet them, braving some hostile slogans.

They told protesters that Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao had been asked to order the release of the detained journalists and that they would consult the prime minister about compensation for broken cameras. But the protesters refused to listen to Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed when he came to talk to them afterwards. He went back in silence amid hostile slogans.

Representatives of opposition parties, including those of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal also came to express solidarity with journalists and condemn the police action.

They linked the incident to what most of them saw as a government policy to suppress dissent and press freedom. Finally, after the detained journalists had returned from Sihala, it fell to the share of PPP members Aitzaz Ahsan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi to inform the protesters about the National Assembly resolution on the formation of the house committee.

Mr Ahsan said the opposition would ensure that the committee followed the right track and would walk out of it if the government tried to stifle the effort. Mr Qureshi said many ruling coalition members, particularly the back-benchers, also supported the opposition resolution forcing the government to acquiesce to the move.

But despite the conciliatory gesture from the National Assembly, Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Tariq Mahmood told Dawn that the local administration would register cases against the journalists who took part in the march in violation of a ban on processions under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The Rawalpindi-Islamabad Union of Journalists issued a statement later, saying that it would hold a protest camp outside the parliament house on Wednesday and that the boycott of the National Assembly proceedings would also continue.

In a related development, journalists in Rawalpindi boycotted a function where Interior Minister Sherpao was the chief guest and chanted slogans against the police action in Islamabad.