Police compiling data about journalists
KARACHI: The police and intelligence agencies have started to collect data related to journalists and journalists associations, sources in the police department told Daily Times. The action was initiated after the PEMRA Ordinance Amendments were passed, and are ostensibly on account of the ongoing judicial crisis.
The sources said that the special branch police (a part of the Karachi police) have started to collect personal data of active journalists in Karachi, including their cell-phone numbers and residential and office addresses. It was also learnt that field journalists, especially political reporters, crime reporters, and special correspondents, were being focussed on the most.
A source from the special branch police told Daily Times that the details of newspaper offices and their sub-offices in various areas of Karachi was being collected, as well as the data related to TV and radio channels. The source further said that data of the banks linked to the media, was also being sought.
The collection of data related to the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ), the KUJ-Dastoor, Association of Television Journalists (ATJ), and Pakistan Association of Press Photographers (PAPP), was due to their prominent role in criticizing the government’s policies and the amendments in the PEMRA Ordinance.
Another source of the special branch police, however, told Daily Times that it was routine work to gather such information and that they were merely gathering data about the office bearers of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), and its parts, the KUJ, KUJ-Dastoor, PAPP and the ATJ, to immediately contact them when the need arose.
Daily Times then contacted DIG (political) Syed Zakir Hussain, who also supervises the special branch police. He denied giving any orders to collect the data of journalists, and added that no such orders were given to him by his superiors either.
Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Azhar Ali Farooqui said that he did not know about such police activity because the special branch police was under the IG Sindh. He further said that such data had never been needed in the past, which is why no records related to journalists had been maintained.
Source: Daily Times
Date:6/10/2007
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