KARACHI: The Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) has written letters to the head of states of Nicaragua, Honduras, Mozambique, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo, protesting incidents of attacks on journalists and media houses around the world.
According to a statement on Monday, the PPF in its letter to Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega expressed concern over the raid in the office of online magazine ‘Confidential’ and urged the Nicaraguan authorities to immediately and thoroughly investigate the matter in order to ensure that such incidents do not happen in the future.
In a letter to Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez, PPF expressed concern over the threatening message to ‘Radio Progresso’ correspondent Erick Pineda and urged the authorities to investigate the attack.
In another letter to Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi, PPF expressed its concern over the detention of a journalist along with his researcher and driver. PPF termed it an act to threaten journalists from investigating any story and called on the authorities to stop targeting journalists and media professionals, and allow them to freely fulfil their journalistic responsibilities.
Similarly, the PPF, in it’s a letter to President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed concern over the arrest of journalist and writer Hakan Gülseven and called on the Turkish authorities to immediately release the journalist and drop all charges against him.
Further, in a letter to Bruno Tshibala, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the PPF expressed concern over the arrest and assault on Rodrigue Ndakazieka, a journalist and technician at Radio Mwinda, calling for his immediate release.