“The APNS strongly flays attempts to browbeat media by acts of vandalism, looting and burning of copies of newspapers,” stated a press release of All Pakistan Newspapers Society.
An emergent meeting of the Executive Committee of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society was presided over by Kazi Asad Abid. The meeting was convened in Karachi on the report that the bundles of Jang Group and The News Int’l. were snatched and torched by activists of a political party at gun point in different parts of Karachi and Sindh province. The hooligans physically assaulted hawkers, distribution agents and threatened dire consequences if the newspapers were distributed. Consequently, a thousands of copies of newspapers could not be distributed. In addition, the transmission of two TV channels was blocked in some parts of the country.
The members of the Executive Committee attended the meeting with black bands,strongly condemned these acts as an attempt to suppress the media by force. The emergency meeting in a resolution termed the incident as a brutal attack on freedom of expression and reiterated its resolve that the media would continue to perform its professional duty to serve the peoples‘right to know’. The resolution stated that the task of media is to disseminate the news and report the events without fear of repression and reaction. The members protested that the city police has refused to register the FIR lodged by the establishment of Jang Group which clearly speaks about the involvement of the government in the incident.
The Executive Committee called upon the civil society, human right organizations and democratic forces across the country to strongly condemn the acts of violence against the media. The APNS also appealed to the international human right bodies to impress upon the Federal and Provincial governments to refrain from such malpractices and take action against the culprits who resorted to strangulate the media.
