LAHORE: A large number of media and political workers staged a demonstration outside the Jang/Geo offices at Davis Road on Sunday to register their protest against the unlawful arrest and detention of Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman.
The participants chanted slogans for freedom of press and severely criticised the NAB-Niazi nexus. They said Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman has been in illegal detention for the last 100 days.
Main participants in the demonstration were senior journalists Maqsood Butt, Zaheer Anjum, Ali Nawazish, Akmal Bhatti, PPP stalwarts including Iftikhar Shahid Advocate, Arif Zafar, Shahida Jabeen, and other workers associated with Jang and Geo.
Speakers in their speeches on the occasion said that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman was fighting a war for the freedom of press and he had refused to surrender before the fascist government. They said the Editor-in-Chief had been in detention without any crime and no FIR had been registered against him so far.
The speakers criticised NAB and said that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman stands clean in the eyes of the public and those believing in the supremacy of the law. The speakers appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice of the illegal detention and order release of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman.
In Karachi, the Pakistan People’s Party’s Member Sindh Assembly, Syed Zulfiqar Shah, on Sunday condemned the unduly long and illegal arrest of Jang-Geo Group Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, who has been under detention for the past 100 days without any charge.
He said the Editor-in-Chief is being persecuted for not publicising the narrative of Prime Minister Imran Khan and supporting the inept policies of the federal government. He condemned the curbs on the freedom of media and also criticized the conspiracies to close down the Geo and Jang Group.
Shah, who is PPP’s senior leader and an MPA elected from Mirpurkhas, said that the current coward regime wants to jail all those opposing and questioning its poor performance. “The government had imprisoned the PPP supremo Asif Ali Zardari and Faryal Talpur, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s central leaders Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif and other leaders in baseless cases without any proof,” said Shah. “And simultaneously, they started threatening the media and Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman’s arrest was a part of the government’s campaign because, despite all odds and pressure, the Geo and Jang Group refused to bow before illegal demands and refused to comprohmise on his independent editorial policies.”
The Sindh MPA said that everyone knows that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman was arrested in a fake and fabricated case. “I am confident that such attempts were bound to fail and independence of the media would continue to prevail in the future too.”
