CHARSADDA: A journalist here on Friday demanded a judicial probe into the alleged torture and humiliation he faced at the hands of some local leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Speaking at a press conference, the journalist Saifullah Jan, who is a member of the governing body of the Charsadda Press Club, also accused the local police of siding with the accused.

He alleged that the PTI leaders, including Abdullah, his brother Fahim, Zakat Committee chairman Iftikhar and other armed men, forcibly took him to the PTI’s office in Charsadda bazaar, where he was allegedly stripped naked and tortured.

The journalist claimed that the accused made his video while being naked. Saifullah Jan said the accused let him go after public pressure. He said he went to the Sardari Police Station to register a complaint against the accused.

The journalist said though District Police Officer Mohammad Shoaib had directed the cops to register the case as per the law, the police used delaying tactics and did not include the relevant sections of the law in the first information report (FIR).

Saifullah said that five people had been nominated in the FIR, but the police removed the name of the main accused Iftikhar from it. He said his leg was fractured due to the torture, but the police mentioned in the FIR that he had suffered minor bruises.

The journalist said the police did not press charges against the accused and the local court granted bail to them. He asked the chief justice of the Peshawar High Court to look into the matter and help provide him justice by ordering a judicial probe into the incident.

Newspaper: The News

The security forces detained Nasrum Minallah, correspondent of Express Tribune, along with his father, also a reporter, and four other journalists at Kajori check post in North Waziristan Agency (NWA) near Pak-Afghan border, at about 03:00PM on 31st March 2015.

Later, the father of Nasrum Minallah, and four other detained journalists were released.

Talking to PPF Haji Pazir Gul, the father of Nasrum Minallah, who himself is the correspondent of Daily Dawn newspaper, said that he was going along with his son Nasrum Minallah and four other journalists for the coverage of internally displaced persons (IDPs). However, at Kajori check post, security forces stopped them and asked them to prove their identity.

He said that after confirming their identification, the security forces let them go, but 4 to 5 kilometers ahead they were again intercepted by the security force personnel, who took them to some unknown place and detained them for about 10 hours. He said they kept his son Nasrum Minallah in other room and did not release him. He said he does not know why his son was detained.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) President Rana Muhammad Azeem and Secretary General Amin Yousuf have demanded the security agencies to release Nasrum Minallah immediately.

The detention of Nasrum Minallah is also being condemned by the journalist community in Pakistan.

At Bannu Press Club in Khyber-Pakhtunkhuwa Province, local journalists addressed held a meeting and passed a resolution unanimously, demanding the government and security forces to release the detained reporter. They warned of more protests movement if the reporter is not released.

Pakistan Press Foundation

KARACHI: Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti, President of Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC) has expressed concerns over safety and security of Christian journalists in Balochistan after a threatening letter was sent to Quetta Press Club by an extremist organization, says a press release issued by Central Secretariat of Pakistan Christian Congress.

The letter sent by an outfit named Fidayan-e-Islam said entry of Christian members of the club be banned because they were involved in anti-Islam activities. There are four Christian journalists pointed in this threatening letter who are cameramen.

One Christian photojournalist talking to Pakistan Christian Post (PCP) said that he did not feel safe in Pakistan after this threat but had no place to hide.

Dr. Nazir Bhatti urged Baloch nationalists to come forward and save Christians in the province from threats of Islamists.

Journalism Pakistan

The post PCC demands protection of Christian journalists in Balochistan appeared first on Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF).

Mental health carries a stigma in Pakistan, but one team is fighting the taboo to help journalists traumatized by their work covering the front line of the country’s battle with terrorists.

Peshawar (dpa) – Amin Mashal was among the first people to reach a Pakistani military training academy when Taliban suicide bombers had just killed nearly 100 recruits, three years ago.

The young journalist was traumatized by the brutality of the attack in the north-western town of Charssada in May 2011.

He saw bodies in pools of blood, scattered limbs and wounded soldiers moaning in pain.

“It was the worst thing I have ever come across in my life,” Mashal, now 24, recalled his first experience covering a terrorist attack. “It was terrifying.”

Mashal was in a state of shock after the attack that the Taliban said was to avenge the killing of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden by US commandos weeks earlier.

The subsequent murder of a colleague by jihadi militants in Mohmand tribal district near his hometown made Mashal jumpy and aggressive, and his anxiety began to reflect in his work.

But he never thought about counselling, because of the stigma attached to mental health issues in conservative Pakistani society.

He nearly quit working as a reporter for the state-run radio after Taliban gunmen killed 136 children at an army-run school in the city of Peshawar on December 16.

“I felt would have a nervous breakdown if I continue to cover such incidents anymore,” Mashal said.
But he recently found renewed courage to pursue his dream career.

Mashal was among 15 journalists treated for post-traumatic stress at a centre established by Peshawar University, with technical and financial assistance from the German DW Akademie.

“I was encouraged by my teachers to go for therapy and it feels much better now,” Mashal said, speaking from the journalism department of the university where he also completed a master’s degree last year.

DW Akademie provided funds to finance the centre for three years, and the university’s psychology department provides expertise and infrastructure.

“It was badly needed here,” said professor Altafullah Khan, who heads the journalism department and is coordinating between the DW Akademie and the university.

“Journalists are the first ones to get exposure to violence. Trauma is natural in some cases,” said Khan, who formerly headed the German broadcaster’s Urdu-language service.

“The idea behind the project is to make sure that the impact of trauma does not reflect in journalists’ reporting of some of the most depressing incidents,” said Khan.

Marina Khan and Farhat Naz are the psychologists providing counselling and proposing therapies to journalists bruised by years of exposure to violence.

“Most newsmen come to us with problems like aggression, anxiety, stress, abnormal sleep patterns and disturbed appetite,” Naz said.

The psychologists said they often have to probe to determine the exact nature and level of their depression because Pakistanis do not easily open up about mental health issues.

“This is the most difficult part,” Naz said. “You have to make them realize that this is a problem that needs to be taken care of.”

Khan said he was happy with the way journalists had responded to the initiative.

Fifteen journalists were treated at the centre during the first three months of its launch.
“This is something much better than our expectations,” Khan said.

Dal je

“Press freedom … is in retreat in all five continents,” said the RSF 2015 World Press Freedom Index.

The head of the RSF told the media that the deterioration is linked to a range of factors, “with information wars and actions by non-state groups acting as news despots”.

Take a look: Pakistan ranked 159 out of 180 countries in press freedom: report

Examples of such groups are Boko Haram and the Islamic State, as well as criminal organisations in Italy and South America.

Further, several countries fell in the rankings as compared to last year, for example the US. The latter’s drop was in part because it launched a “war on information” against whistleblowers including WikiLeaks and others, while Venezuela’s record worsened since the National Bolivarian Guard fired on “clearly identified” journalists covering protests.

Pakistan, where the threats faced by journalists and the constraints on reporting are a dirty, if open, secret, was ranked at 139 of the 180 countries evaluated.

That said, however, some of the positions awarded are curious, and raise questions about the methodology and logic used in ranking countries. Qatar, for example, like several other Gulf countries, is not exactly known for reporting freely on its internal politics. However, it weighed in at 115.

Placed higher were the Central African Republic (110) and Kuwait (90), which, again, can by no means be considered places where there is any degree of freedom to report.

In fact, the ranking exercise falls into the trap of counting statistics rather than analysing the actual situation in its full context, especially in developing countries. In several parts of the world, the growing levels of violence against journalists actually provides a clue to increasing media freedoms since the state or other parties hit back only when there is reportage to resent.

Pakistan is a good example of this: during earlier periods of severe restrictions on the media, violence against journalists was less frequent because information was so tightly controlled that much of it went unreported.

As the scope of the media has expanded, so too has the resistance to open debate. It is a pity that a number of journalism’s watchdog bodies have failed to account for these nuances, for they are of vital importance in the complex web of media repression.

Daily Dawn

Khalil Ahmad, the club’s Secretary Finance, told JournalismPakistan.com that a First Information Report (FIR) has also been lodged with the police.

“They (Fidayan-e-Islam) said the Christian members of the club preach Christianity to their colleagues; therefore their entry should be banned with immediate effect. Otherwise, they would bomb the press club,” he said.

Ahmad said there are only eight to ten Christian members including cameramen and photographers. The club received the letter through mail Saturday morning.

Capital City Police Officer (Quetta) Abdul Razzaq Cheema visited the club shortly after the letter was received and walkthrough gates were installed at the club entrance.

“We are also preparing a list of members and non-members of the club as we want to restrict the non-members to only press conferences and other relevant events in the club,” Ahmad said.

Ahmad who is also Bureau Chief of ’92 News’ said that CCTV cameras are also being installed at the club to keep an eye on “miscreants and outsiders.”

Journalism Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: For a democratic country, Pakistan ranks worryingly high when it comes to the number of attacks on journalists.

Even though it is much better off than countries such as Iraq, Syria or Somalia that are torn apart by civil war and internal strife, Pakistan’s numbers of violence against journalists are comparable to these countries, Bob Dietz, the Asia Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told a sympathetic audience of journalists and media practitioners on Tuesday.

He was addressing the second international conference on Combating Impunity and Securing Safety of Media Workers and Journalists in Pakistan.

Also read: Report terms 2014 the worst year for Pakistani media

Mr Dietz deplored that the authorities in Pakistan had failed to move forward in this regard and had not been able to provide an environment conducive for journalists so far.

“Why can’t we make the situation better,” he asked, earnestly, adding that far too many journalists were getting caught in the crossfire between militants and the authorities. However, he recognised that the current regime had recognised the issue, referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s March 2014 meeting with representatives of the CPJ.

The government’s resolve was also evidenced by the presence of Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed at Tuesday’s conference.

“We first met General Musharraf – who was the president at that time – and expressed concerns over violence against media. But he totally denied it and his minister termed the incidents ‘accidents’,” he said, adding that a similar response was seen when the matter was raised with President Asif Ali Zardari and the ministers of that era.

“Though there were some assurances made by the prime minister and his team, but I see that journalists are still not satisfied with the government’s measures,” Mr Dietz added.

Earlier, addressing the inaugural session, the information minister said that the whole nation was united in the fight against terrorism and the government was trying its best to find solutions.

“I would like mediapersons to come forward and help identify the culprits,” Mr Rasheed said.

His answer to almost all queries and criticism was swift and crisp.

“We would like to hear from the (journalist) community what the solutions should be,” he said.

When veteran journalist and former Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists president Mazhar Abbas questioned the minister about low salaries and job insecurity in media organisations, the minister invited him to a high-level meeting to guide the government on what it could do.

He also announced that a bill aimed at improving access to information under right to information principles would be presented in the next cabinet meeting.

Senior journalist Mohammad Ziauddin said the Afghan war actually came to Pakistan after 2005, but the media was not ready to cover it.

“At the same time, militants wanted to show their presence and pushed for space in the electronic and print media,” he said.

“The same method was adopted by ethnic, nationalist and sectarian parties – now the environment is dangerous and no place is safe.”

Senior anchorperson Hamid Mir quoted several anecdotes from his career, from 2006 onwards and narrated his own ordeal before and being attacked by unidentified gunmen in Karachi last year.

“A hit-list of journalists in Balochistan was floated by pro-establishment militants and this list was published in a report by the PFUJ, but even then, five of the people on the list ended up dead,” he said.

He said that it was time the government passed a law for the protection of the media.

“I do not say it will end the trouble, but it will be a first step towards a solution,” he added.

Representatives from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), as well as other countries from the region, such as Nepal, Afghanistan and Indonesia also participated in the subsequent panel discussion.

Ujjwal Acharya, South Asia regional coordinator for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said that in Nepal and Pakistan, a lot of people believed that the media was not credible. Talking about the importance of perceptions, he said that there was a need to build people’s trust in the mainstream press.

OSF’s Maria Teresa shared her experiences of working on journalists’ safety in Colombia and Mexico.

Daily Dawn

We come into this world crying, and by that we are marked as healthy. We leave it with our last words imparting whatever final wisdom they can to those who matter to us. In those moments, expression is free and fearless. All our lives, the desire to express what we feel even if — sometimes especially if — it flows against the tide of our surroundings, our friends, our family, is palpable; a living thing that beat its wings against the warm but stifling cage of our heart and yearns to burst forth. So often, we swallow it back down. So often, for good reason: to keep our friendships, to avoid hurting our family, to spare the dignity of a stranger we do not know, though we believe his opinions to be dreadfully in error. Not everything that yearns to be free should be at every moment. If you gave voice to every thought that flashed in your brain, your social and professional life expectancy would be measured in hours, not days.

We censor ourselves all the time. There is nothing inherently heroic or cowardly about that, good or ill.

It is a way of negotiating life. But when someone else makes that decision for us, snatches it from us, when the state legislates against our expression, we should fight that fight every time. We may not win every fight, perhaps we should not win every fight, but we should fight it all the same. Because even though 99 percent of expression is pointless, trite, repetitive, dull, offensive, vapid or shrill, that remaining one percent is worth more than we imagine. Very little of what comes out of a goldmine is gold but we keep the mine open because, in the filthy darkness, through that hard and tedious and sometimes dangerous rock, we know we will find those gleaming nuggets, precious beyond measure.

Exceptions to free speech, in societies that value it, are defined with painstaking narrowness precisely because violent criminals and (far more dangerously) the state will smell blood in the water and move against any speech it finds inconvenient, using any pretext it can. We may close off a vein of the mine to keep the whole structure from collapsing but we should do so extremely grudgingly and only when its necessity is beyond all doubt. After all, we do not know behind which forbidding tunnel the gold lies.

To be sure, there is a sharp line separating censorship and criticism, the distinction between permitting an action and endorsing it. Refraining from criticism and critique would be as disastrous to free speech as censorship. Hall said of the ever-controversial Voltaire: “I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” There is a humility to this statement but also self interest: the right we defend today may tomorrow be our own. That said, nowhere is free expression utterly unqualified. To imagine this is pure romanticism. Generally, any time you use your speech to carry out another crime, to someone’s material or physical harm, you are not protected by free speech laws. A lawyer cannot betray confidentiality. A broker cannot commit fraud or engage in insider trading. A businessman cannot publish falsehoods against competitors to steal their clients. And so on.

There is another class of speech that can be and has been restricted. I will define it here as obscenity, though it carries different names and exists in varied precedents. Obscenity, for the purposes of this article, is speech that a) adds no possible value (that is to say, not a critique, or debate, or even pointed satire but purely meant to provoke or offend) and b) is incredibly offensive to a great majority of people in your country. To deny the holocaust, in France, is a crime. It is censored because it adds no value (the holocaust is probably the best documented genocide in history and mostly documented by the Nazi’s themselves) and is horrifically offensive. Why is the right to pornographically depict even Jesus Christ (believed to be the son of God by the majority religion in France) so staunchly protected and lionised, while holocaust denial is flat out illegal?

Simply put, it reflects what is unacceptable to that particular society. And there is nothing inherently illogical about this, though it lends a hypocritical tinge to the full throated, unqualified lionisation of free expression that so many have thrust to their chests like a flag pin. What constitutes an obscene abuse of free speech will vary from society to society. The great contradiction of globalism is that individual cultural differences, not to mention national borders, are still very much alive and well. If Pakistan achieved free expression and sat down to list its ‘obscene’ exceptions, we would probably not include holocaust denial — we rationally know it to be abhorrent but it does not strike us with a visceral blow — and instead choose to curtail anyone glorifying terrorism or mocking its victims. And no other society would have the right to force us to obey their cultural sensitivities rather than our own.

Is the desire for free expression universal? Absolutely. If you have never felt it, you almost certainly hold few opinions that, right or wrong, are terribly interesting. Is the right to free speech absolute? No, nowhere is it absolute. In a society that values free speech, can you legislate against holocaust denial? Denial of other war crimes and genocides? Obscene depictions of a spiritual figure who is, in an incredibly personal way, central to the lives of the people of your country? All of the above? You can. Should you, and which ones? That depends on the society. But these exceptions must be carefully, narrowly selected and defined because free expression, by and large, is worth tolerating a great deal for.

Free expression is the sunshine and the rain in which ideas, art and societies flourish. A casual reading of the World Press Freedom Index is compelling: there is a stark difference in the living profile of the top 10 countries and the bottom 10. Whether prosperity, education and social welfare bring freedom or the other way around, I certainly know which group I would rather aspire to be in. Because when ideas, ideologies and art of all shapes and forms, good and bad, collide with each other in the freewheeling, madly energetic marketplace of ideas wonderful things can happen. Cultures evolve. New ideas are born that may change the world, or at least our corner of it. Art rises that lifts a people and tells their story.

Truths are spoken that burn us and yet set us free. A small spark from an unassuming soul could ignite a generation, and these sparks are too precious to be lost in the chill of censorship.

No, free speech is never absolute. No right ever is. But every society owes it to itself to throw open as much of that mine as it can. There is gold to be had.

Daily Times

The News

“Balach ko apni zameen bhi nahi mili” was the misleading headline ‘given’ to an article written by senior columnist Abdus Salam, alias Dr Chishti Mujahid, printed in the country’s leading Urdu weekly, Akhbar-e-Jehan, at the death of Baloch nationalist leader Mir Balach Marri. This headline eventually resulted in the murder of Dr Mujahid on February 9, 2008.

Even though this furthered the stance that both Balochistan and Fata were Pakistan’s most dangerous areas for journalists, Dr Mujahid’s case was different from that of the 28 other journalists killed in Balochistan in recent years. His was the first case where a group — the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) — claimed responsibility.

Dr Mujahid, a regular columnist for Akhbar-e-Jehan, was assassinated after receiving threats for his article on Mir Balach Marri. The weekly printed a highly provocative headline against Marri, perhaps not realising the possible consequences of this action, which outraged the Baloch nationalists.

Pakistan has been ranked the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, which makes Balochistan the ‘killing field’ for journalists within the country. Journalists in Balochistan have disclosed that if they get a press release from an extremist group, it is not the organisation but the militants who decide the space which will be given to it in the paper and no editing is allowed to be done to it. Dr Mujahid paid the price of writing the article on Mir Balach Marri’s death anniversary. It became a grave problem because an already critical article was given an even more provocative headline, that too, without the knowledge of the writer. The BLA reportedly defended the killing by saying that Dr Mujahid was working against Baloch interest. Hence, on the morning of February 9, 2008, as Dr Mujahid and his wife came out from their house, two unidentified gunmen opened fire on him, leaving him dead on the spot.

What actually went wrong in this whole incident was never properly investigated, either by the government or by his own media group. Thus, his killing was directly linked to his journalistic work. Therefore, whether in print or in electronic media, journalists must take extra care of the language they use when reporting from conflict zones or when writing about sensitive issues.

The late journalists Hayatullah Khan, Munir Sangi, Mohammad Ibrahim, Musa Khan Khel, Saleem Shahzad and a few others, were killed for their journalistic work in which they got themselves in dangerous positions while reporting.

The practice of journalism in Pakistan faces many challenges, but the biggest one is the threat to fair and unbiased reporting, due to which around 100 journalists have been killed in the past 12 years alone, making freedom of expression a ‘dream’.

Journalists have now started discussing what is more important — freedom of press or freedom to live. In the last few months, two sons of the president of the Khuzdar Press Club were killed and the general secretary of the same club was murdered. Likewise, 28 journalists have been murdered in Balochistan alone.

Hundreds of journalists work in fear and under pressure in Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Fata and even in Pakistan’s largest economic hub, Karachi. Most of them refuse to quit the profession because they love their work, even if it is at the cost of their lives.

Pakistan Press Foundation