KARACHI: Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international media advocacy group, has called for an immediate release of two journalists held by Sindh Police, according to a local English daily.
A correspondent for the Daily Koshish newspaper in the town of Tanda Bago, Rafaqat Ali Jarwar, went missing on February 15 but it was only on March 2 that the police admitted he was in their custody. Jarwar was charged with terrorism and alleged links with groups created by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
Likewise, a journalist working for Sindh Express newspaper and BOL TV, Kamran Sahito, went missing on February 6 from Hyderabad. The court ordered the police to produce within three days on February 28 him after his father filed a complaint. The police charged Kamran Sahito with burglary.
“Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the immediate release of two Pakistani journalists held on spurious charges by the police in the southeastern province of Sindh. Both were initially the victims of enforced disappearances before the police eventually acknowledged holding them,” said the organisation.
“The crude police behaviour and trumped-up charges border on the absurd,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk. “These reporters are clearly the collateral victims of the relentless harassment of independent journalism in Sindh.”
“We call on the government to dispatch an independent commission of enquiry to shed light on these arbitrary arrests. The police must stop serving as the armed wing of private interests, as is so often the case in this province,” he added.
Jarar’s brother, fellow journalist Nasrullah Jarar, told RSF that his brother’s abduction was a reprisal for his investigative coverage of complaints by local cane sugar producers about their treatment by major landowners with links to provincial politicians.
The RSF ranked Pakistan 139 out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index 2017.