PESHAWAR, Dec 6: Newsmen from tribal areas on Wednesday narrated harrowing incidents of intimidation at the hands of political authorities and militants now holding sway in the region. They claimed that they had been harassed and even restricted from performing their duties by rival groups, adding that several of them had been compelled to leave the region.

Journalists representing various national and international media organisations working in South and North Waziristan, Mohmand, Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram agencies and Darra Adam Khel attended a seminar on “Problems of journalists working in tribal areas”, which was organised by the NWFP chapter of the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) at the press club here on Wednesday.

Three journalists — Amir Nawab, Allah Noor and Hayatullah — were killed while others, including Shakir, Mujib and Dilawar Wazir, narrowly escaped several attempts on their lives. Others shifted to Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and other areas, they claimed.

At one time, there were 28 journalists working in the South Waziristan and 25 in the North Waziristan, but now there were only a few of them left in the tribal agencies, said Sailab Mehsud, founder and president of the Tribal Union Of Journalists.

The few reporters who had somehow managed to survive in the tribal regions were terrified, journalists from South Waziristan said. “The local Taliban call us spies while the political administration and law-enforcement agencies do not let us report freely,” another journalist from North Waziristan said.

Several reporters from North and South Waziristan had been so rattled by constant intimidation and the lack of security in the tribal regions that they abandoned the profession altogether, a journalist from South Waziristan claimed.

Newsmen from the Khyber agency said that they also had been facing hardships since the time clashes between supporters of Ansaarul Islam and Lashar-i-Islami started last year. Followers of both the groups harassed the journalists whenever they reported about their activities, reporters from the Khyber agency complained.

They claimed that in addition to the religious groups, the local political administrations also compelled them to write what they deemed fit for publication. Some reporters working in local dailies were forced to shift to Peshawar after receiving threats from the religious groups, journalists said.

“I received threats from Mufti Shakir’s group (Lashkar-i-Islami) when I published a report about them. The Maulana used his FM radio to instigate the tribesmen against other journalists as well,” said one journalist who was forced to leave the Khyber agency.

He said that Mufti Shakir had barred people from buying the newspaper in which the report had been published and threatened to impose fines on people who did. He also burnt copied of the newspaper.

Another journalist from Khyber agency, who now lives in Peshawar, also said that he had been threatened by Pir Saifur Rehman group called Ansaar-ul-Islam. He said that two other journalists had been beaten up by the group, adding that he had been threatened to be targeted in bombings.