WASHINGTON: An international media advocacy group, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Pakistan on Saturday to immediately reverse the order to close the Islamabad bureau of the US-funded Radio Mashaal.<\/p>\n

Mashaal is the Pashto-language service of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty (RFE\/RL), which is funded by the US Congress.<\/p>\n

CPJ said the interior ministry issued an order on Friday, asking Radio Mashaal to immediately close its Islamabad office \u201cin light of recommendations made by the country\u2019s intelligence agency\u201d.<\/p>\n

According to RFE\/RL, the ministry said in its closure order that Radio Mashaal\u2019s programmes were \u201cfound against the interests of Pakistan and are in line with [a] hostile intelligence agency\u2019s agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe order to close Radio Mashaal\u2019s office in Islamabad is a draconian move by Pakistani authorities and a direct threat to press freedom in the country,\u201d said Steven Butler, CPJ\u2019s Asia Programme Coordinator in Washington.<\/p>\n

Dawn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON: An international media advocacy group, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged Pakistan on Saturday to immediately reverse the order to close the Islamabad bureau of the US-funded Radio Mashaal. Mashaal is the Pashto-language service of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty (RFE\/RL), which is funded by the US Congress. CPJ said the interior ministry issued an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,21],"tags":[4,3038],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}