ISLAMABAD, Jan 24: The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has urged the government of Pakistan to withdraw media curbs.

The demand was made in a report submitted by the IFJ mission that visited Pakistan as part of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists’ movement against anti-media laws and ban on more than 60 TV channels.

The report was released here by PFUJ Secretary-General Mazhar Abbas. He said during the past week, the PFUJ had launched a global signature campaign ‘Free media for fair polls’.

The IFJ has also published a booklet containing reports of IFJ’s two missions which visited Pakistan in February and November 2007.

The IFJ has called for revoking the Press, Newspapers, News Agencies and Books Registration (Amendment) Ordinance of 2007 and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, (Third Amendment) Ordinance of 2007. Mr Abbas said that another IFJ mission would visit Pakistan by the end of February on the invitation of President Pervez Musharraf who had extended the invitation during a meeting with IFJ’s General Secretary Aiden White in Brussels.

He said that although resumption of all private TV news channels was a welcome sign, it proved that the channels had been chained by the so-called ‘code of conduct’ which was actually a ‘code of censorship’.

He said that in the aftermath of the Dec 27 violence, 78 journalists had been booked in Sindh under the Anti-Terrorism Act and police were now allegedly blackmailing these journalists to write ‘favourable stories’.

Mr Abbas said that the PFUJ condemned registration of cases against journalists and decided to observe a ‘demands day’ on Friday against anti-media laws, registration of cases against journalists in Sindh and the so-called media ‘code of conduct’.