KARACHI: The Board of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has called upon the authorities to lift restrictions on the distribution of daily Dawn and condemned recent actions as a deliberate attempt to stifle press freedom in the country.

In a meeting in Estoril, Portugal, on the occasion of the World News Media Congress, the board acknowledged reports of disruption in Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab, where salesmen had been told to cease distributing the newspaper after the publication of an interview with former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. “Military personnel went so far as to search newspaper sellers to prevent copies of the paper from reaching military cantonment areas.”

Furthermore, the board noted, since Oct 2016 there had been reports of disruption in the distribution of the newspaper in a number of cantonments and other military-controlled residential districts as a result of Dawn’s coverage of civilian-military relations.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2018