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3 October 2003
International Secretariat
Asia Pacific Desk
PAKISTAN - TRIBAL AREAS
Two journalists detained and
threatened by fundamentalist group
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) today called
on the authorities to protect two journalists who were briefly
detained on 18 September in the Khyber Agency part of Pakistan's
Tribal Areas by an outlawed fundamentalist group, and who still feel
threatened and concerned for their security.
Nasrullah Afridi and Aurangzeb Afridi, correspondents for the
Peshawar-based, Urdu-language dailies Mashriq and Subah Morning were
held in a private prison by the Organisation of the Unity of Ulemas
(Tenzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema) for several hours before being released as
a result of pressure from influential persons.
They were then summoned for a meeting with the organization but did
not attend. Thereafter, they have continued to receive threats
warning them they should fear for their lives if "they don't give up
the idea of a free press in the Khyber Agency."
Reporters Without Borders urged North-West Frontier Province
governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, to do everything necessary to
ensure their safety and called for an investigation into their
arrest and detention by the private militia of an organization that
has been officially declared illegal.
"Journalists in the Tribal Areas work
in difficult conditions due to the lack of laws guaranteeing press
freedom," Reporters Without Borders said in a letter to the
government. "If they must also protect themselves from religious
groups equipped with militias and private prisons, then all hope of
independent news reporting in this strategic region is lost."
Nasrullah Afridi and Aurangzeb Afridi
are respectively president and vice-president of the Tribal Union of
Journalists in the Khyber Agency. When detained, they had just filed
a report on the abduction of two persons from Lahore by Tenzeem
Ittehad-e-Ulema.
In a previous report, Nasrullah Afridi had described Tenzeem
Ittehad-e-Ulema as illegal group, recalling that it has been banned
for the past five years. Nonetheless, it has an armed wing
comprising 3,000 persons in the Tribal Areas and imposes it own law
in the region. A 15 September report in the daily Ausaf Khadrian
claimed that Tenzeem Ittehad-e-Ulema was financed by money from
contraband.
Vincent Brossel
Asia - Pacific Desk
Reporters Sans Frontières
5 rue Geoffroy Marie
75009 Paris
33 1 44 83 84 70
33 1 45 23 11 51 (fax)
asia@rsf.org
www.rsf.org
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