Police in the city of Dera\u00a0Ismail\u00a0Khan in Pakistan\u2019s province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)\u00a0filed cases against\u00a0two journalists from South Waziristan on December 8 for covering protest rally of\u00a0Pashtun\u00a0Tahafuz\u00a0Movement\u00a0(PTM).<\/p>\n

PTM\u00a0is a\u00a0social movement that has been protesting denial of civil and political rights for the ethnic Pakhtuns in\u00a0Pakistan.\u00a0The movement is led by\u00a0Manzoor\u00a0Ahmad\u00a0Pashteen, an\u00a0activist\u00a0from\u00a0South Waziristan.<\/p>\n

Javed\u00a0Khan, Station House Officer\u00a0(SHO)\u00a0lodged\u00a0criminal complaint known as\u00a0First Information Report\u00a0(FIR)\u00a0against\u00a030 people, who participated in the PTM rally as well as the\u00a0two journalists who claimed to be just covering the rally.<\/p>\n

The journalists Sailaab\u00a0Mehsud\u00a0of Radio Free Europe\/ Radio Liberty\u2019s\u00a0Mashaal\u00a0Radio and Zafar\u00a0Wazir\u00a0of\u00a0local\u00a0Khyber TV,\u00a0were booked for\u00a0raising slogans against state institutions and inciting the public to violence.<\/p>\n

PTM had organized the rally to protest the imprisonment of their leader\u00a0Arif\u00a0Wazeer and two\u00a0otherPTM members for\u00a0two years in D.I. Khan Jail.<\/p>\n

On December 12, a meeting of tribal journalists was organized in which a committee of six journalists headed by\u00a0Awardeen\u00a0Mehsud, President of Tank Press Club was formed to look into this matter. \u00a0 The journalists in the meeting demanded the immediate withdrawal of cases against journalists.<\/p>\n

Local press clubs including the\u00a0Wana\u00a0Press Club, Tank Press Club,\u00a0Makeen\u00a0Press Club,\u00a0Jandola\u00a0Press Club and Masood Press Club, Tank participated in the meeting.<\/p>\n

Talking to Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) Sailaab Mehsud said they were at the rally only\u00a0for the coverage of the event where they also conducted interviews with protestors\u00a0about the imprisonment of PTM leader and activists.<\/p>\n

Speaking to PPF,\u00a0Secretary General\u00a0of\u00a0Wanna\u00a0Press Club,\u00a0Aala\u00a0Khan\u00a0and Senior Vice-President of Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ)\u00a0Shamim\u00a0Shahid,\u00a0condemned the incident and\u00a0demanded the withdrawal of cases against the two journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police in the city of Dera Ismail Khan in Pakistan’s province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) filed cases against two journalists from South Waziristan on December 8 for covering protest rally of Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). PTM is a social movement that has been protesting denial of civil and political rights for the ethnic Pakhtuns in Pakistan. The movement is led by Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen, an activist from South Waziristan. Javed Khan, Station House Officer (SHO) lodged criminal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[4,328,3038],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330"}],"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=7330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanfoemonitor.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}