ISLAMABAD (PPI): All Pakistan Newspaper Employees Confederation (APNEC), Pakistan Federal Union o Journalists (PFUJ) and Rawalpindi Islamabad Union of Journalists (RIUJ); Friday expressed serious concern over, what they called “continued attempts of the government to gag the Press and, harass journalists and editors in an isolate-and-muzzle crackdown on dissent”.
The representative bodies of journalists and Press workers took particular notice of “official tactics shifting, from over to covert pressure which they said gravely threatened the constitutionally guaranteed right of free expression in the country”.
In a joint statement Chairman APNEC Abdul Hameed Chhapra, Secretary General APNEC, Secretary Rawalpindi Press Club and President RIUJ Pervez Shaukat, President PFUJ, I.H. Rasheed, Senior Vice-President PFUJ C.R. Shamsi, Secretary General PFUJ Fauzia Shahid and General secretary RIUJ Faraz Hashmi criticised the actions of government agencies that ranged from intimidating journalists by surveillance of their movements by intelligence sleuths to other forms of harassment. The Press is being forced through “invisible pressures to adopt an elaborate system of self-censorship they charged.
“We call upon the supporters of Press freedom, particularly human rights activists, lawyers, intellectuals and concerned citizens to raise voice against this violation of human rights”, they maintained.
The office-bearers of APNEC, PFUJ and RIUJ voiced concern that a prominent journalist and editor of an English daily of Islamabad has been stopped form writing under her name in her paper for the last three months. “This is the most visible example of covert pressure exercised by the government”. She has also been subjected to various forms of intimidation including being shadowed by sleuths and receiving threatening phone calls”.
They were also critical of government action against an English weekly of Lahore and its editor by issuing incomes tax notices and referred to threatening calls to a couple of others.
Source: The Nation
Date:8/8/1999
