KARACHI: The Karachi Press Club (KPC) has condemned Israeli air and ground attacks on the innocent and unarmed people and media houses in Palestine.

In a statement issued here on Sunday, President Fazil Jamili and Secretary Rizwan Bhatti of the KPC criticised the Zionist regime of Israel for carrying out airstrikes on a building which housed the offices of Al-Jazeera news channel and the American news agency Associated Press in Gaza during the unilaterally declared war against Palestine.

They deplored the killings of innocent people, including women, children, infants, old and youths, by the Zionist forces.

The airstrikes, they said, not only pulled down the building housing media offices but also exposed Israel’s claim about media freedom.

They said the Zionist regime did not show even slightest respect for media men covering the war. The fresh Israeli offence has threatened the journalists who are doing their duty in the war-hit zones.

The KPC has appealed to the United Nations to make efforts to de-escalate the war that the Zionist regime had waged against the hapless people of Palestine.

It said the UN had so far turned a blind eye to the atrocities of the Zionist regime against Palestinians and continued human rights violations.

The KPC asked the UN to come up with a comprehensive and durable plan to end the Zionist rule over the state of Palestine and enforce its declarations.

It urged the UN to protect the journalists based in Palestine as well as Israel.

The KPC said the UN silence was undermining the whole concept of the world body’s charter for upholding peace and stability and respecting human rights and press freedom.

It expressed the hope that the UN would play a role not only in de-escalating the war but also take steps to end the Jewish occupation of Palestine once and for all.

The KPC said the world, which was already fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and growing climate chaos, could not afford to see the spread of war in the Middle East and elsewhere as a result of the Israeli aggression.

It extended complete support to the entire journalist fraternity of Palestine, particularly the members of Al-Jazeera and the Associated Press, who were facing threats to their lives from the Jewish regime while covering the war. It also expressed solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Newspaper: Dawn  

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists PFUJ has condemned the Israeli bombing of a building in Gaza housing various media outlets and their staff.

In a statement issued Sunday, PFUJ President Shahzada Zulfiqar and secretary general Nasir Zaidi said the bombing amounted to frightening media persons who have been covering the terrible war that has claimed so many lives.

“Such bombing flies in the face of the tall claims of Israeli leaders asserting that they are the only democratic state in the Middle East. We believe that after this bombing it would be difficult for media persons and journalists to cover the conflict in an objective way without the fear of being attacked or bombed”.

PFUJ leadership also condemned Israeli brutalities against innocent Palestinians and forcible occupation of houses of residents of Gaza and East Jerusalem which may further aggravate agonies of Palestinians. “We call upon international community and United Nations Security Council to immediately intervene to save further loss of lives,” they demanded.

They said it was not only this bombing that jeopardised the lives of media persons but before that bombing the Israeli authorities tried to use media in a manipulative way. “Such deceptive behaviour of the Israeli authorities amounts to using media as a tool of psychological warfare. This is highly condemnable because in a conflict zone such behaviour could cause grave security problems for media persons”.

The leaders of the journalists’ fraternity demanded the United Nations, global journalists’ bodies and the international community to set up an inquiry commission for probing into the matter of the bombing of the building.

Newspaper: The News

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).

“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: Following the interior minister’s directives, the capital city’s police have begun equipping key installations and important buildings – including media houses – with a ‘panic button’, which can be activated in the case of any emergency to summon a quick response from rescue and law enforcement personnel.

A total of 78 important installations in the capital are considered possible targets for terrorists. These include educational institutions – schools, colleges and universities – which were provided the panic button system as part of the fresh security Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) following the brazen attack on Army Public School in Peshawar.

So far, police have successfully introduced the panic button facility at 422 government and over 1,200 private educational institutions in the city.

Also read: Police start taking measures for security of schools

In January, interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan met with representatives of media houses in Islamabad and said that there were threats to media personnel. Representatives from about 30 media houses participated in the consultation and were asked to follow the government-developed SOPs for their security, including installation of panic button.

Earlier this month, media representatives were invited to Rescue-15 headquarters and provided Android-based software that would serve as a panic button. Activating the panic button would automatically generate an SMS message, which would be delivered to all concerned police officers and police stations along with Rescue-15.

Interior minister orders additional security for all ‘red’ category buildings in Islamabad
So far, 10 media houses have been were provided the facility, officials said, adding that two representatives of each media house were provided the panic button facility.

The minister has now asked police to provide the same facility to all the other 78 important buildings which have been security audited. Police have also been asked to train the security guards posted at these buildings to ensure they are ready to deal with any contingency.

The guards have been divided into separate categories and their training has also begun, police officials told Dawn, adding that so far, two batches of a few dozen guards had been trained at the Police Lines on how to react, retaliate and secure themselves when faced by attackers.

Mohammad Younus, who heads security for the Geo Network in Islamabad, told Dawn that in their meeting with the interior minister media representatives had put forward suggestions and given input on how they could better protect themselves.

Meetings were also held with Inspector General Tahir Alam Khan and Assistant Inspector General Sultan Azam Temuri and media personnel were asked to install CCTV, and walkthough gates and construct security walls.

IFTIKHAR A. KHAN ADDS: During a meeting on Tuesday, chaired by the interior minister, it was revealed that the ICT administration had conducted a security audit of 76 important buildings and they were categorized as yellow, green and red vis-à-vis their security arrangements. Chaudhry Nisar directed the ICT admin, police, CDA and other concerned organisations to take immediate measures to ensure the security of all buildings falling in the red category.

Reviewing the position of the quick response force (QRF) in Islamabad, the interior minister directed that a robust communications system be put in place at all important places in the federal capital to reduce response times to a minimum.

Daily Dawn

KARACHI: Had the bullet not spared Asif Hassan’s heart by a few millimetres, his photojournalism career spanning 16 years would have to come to an end and his young daughter would have been left without a father.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, Pakistan was the most dangerous country for journalists in 2014 with 14 deaths. The bullet that hit Hassan, 39, at the start of the year 2015 makes it seems this year will be no different.

On January 16, Hassan, who works for Agence France-Presse (AFP), was covering the demonstration of a religious party’s student wing, Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), against cartoons published in French magazine Charlie Hebdo when he narrowly escaped death.

“These days, photographers and reporters are the first ones to be beaten, shot, or tear-gassed during events and protests,” said Hassan, as he spoke to The Express Tribune at his house, recovering from his injuries. “The situation for journalists is getting bad.” He sat on a mattress in his apartment in PECHS, pausing every few sentences to catch his breath. His laptop and phone lay nearby.

Being an AFP photographer does not blend well with the religious protests that take place quite frequently in the city. Three years ago when protesters on Ishq-e-Rasool day indulged in riots, over 200 men rounded him up with another colleague outside the Edhi office at Tower. The men beat them with sticks and took away Hassan’s camera lens.

Day he was shot

Hassan remembered how he was not even scheduled to cover the IJT on January 16. “The demonstration was planned suddenly and I was at the press club when the other photographers told me about it.”

He was standing on top of the protesters’ truck at Teen Talwar and was taking pictures as they marched towards the French consulate in Bath Island. Out of nowhere, the area turned into a battlefield. The protesters started pelting stones at the police, who retaliated with tear gas and water cannon. Then, the firing started, he recalled, adding that he and his colleagues tried to get close to the police who were standing near the water cannon.

One of his colleagues shouted that he was struck with a rock. Seconds later, Hassan also felt being hit by a rock when a bullet hit him from behind. “I was conscious and walked over to the police van to take me to the hospital since there was no ambulance there,” he said. “The police officer refused and that is when I lost my strength. I fainted but I came back around quickly.”

His fellow photographers came out to help him. They carried him to the vehicle of a news channel and rushed to Jinnah hospital. The Associated Press photographer, Farooq, kept talking to him throughout the journey.

The doctors operated on him as soon as he arrived and managed to remove the bullet. He was prescribed a month’s bed rest.

The entire ordeal has, however, not broken Hassan’s resolve to work. “I used to be out all the time and now I feel I am in a jail,” he said, smiling. Hassan felt he will return to work with even more passion even though his family is insisting he give up journalism.

“I will be more cautious now,” he admitted. “I will wear a helmet and a bulletproof jacket whenever I go cover protests now.”

Career path

Born in 1976 into a family that owned a photography studio in Korangi, Hassan as a child had no passion for pictures. But over the years, he saw photographers covering strikes with burnt cars and violence, especially during the 1990s operation, and this excited him. He figured out soon that he wanted to be a photographer for a newspaper.

“In 1998, after I did my Intermediate, I joined an Urdu newspaper Aghaaz as a photographer covering crimes, politics, sports and lifestyle,” he said. Hassan worked for a couple of Urdu newspapers before he joined AFP in 2005.

Putting on a brave face

Asif Hassan’s colleagues and fellow photographers feel they are usually on their own if they are hurt in the line of duty.

“If God forbid Asif had died, neither the protesters nor the police or the government would have taken responsibility for it,” pointed out a senior photographer who works for an Urdu newspaper. “There would have been a few protests and that would have wrapped up the incident.”

The photographer said that he was brutally beaten up by a political party when he took pictures of their men torching cars during a strike. “The organisations screaming for journalists’ rights have done nothing to protect us,” he complained, adding that media houses also only care for their own interests. “We have no other option than to go into the field and take pictures.”

Express Tribune

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

Three party workers, who were affected by tear gas, have been transferred to the nearest hospital.

Agence France-Presse photographer, Asif Hasan, was shot while covering the rally.

“AFP photographer Asif Hasan suffered wounds resulting from gunshots fired by…protesters, police have not opened fire,” Abdul Khalique Shaikh, a senior police officer in Karachi, told Reuters.

“The bullet struck his lung, and passed through his chest. He is out of immediate danger and he has spoken to his colleagues,” Doctor Seemi Jamali, a spokeswoman for Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital where Hassan was taken, told AFP.

She added that Hassan was struck by a non-rubber bullet in his back.

Hassan did not appear to have been deliberately targeted but police and witnesses said protesters had been shooting at police and Hassan was caught in the crossfire.

The party denied it was responsible and blamed the police.

Hafiz Bilal Ramzan, head of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba Karachi blamed police for the “indiscriminate” firing. “Police are responsible for those wounded during the protest including Asif Hasan,” Ramzan said.

Another reporter was also said to be injured in the clashes.

Daily Dawn