Pakistan: JI leader slams Imran Khan-led govt for making Islamabad insecure for journalists

The head of Jamaat-e-Islami's (JI) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa unit, Senator Mushtaq Ahmad Khan has alleged that the Imran Khan-led government had turned Islamabad into a second Guantanamo Bay for journalists, who have spoken out about feeling insecure inside Pakistan's capital city.

Addressing a news conference on Sunday, the JI leader said that the domestic, foreign, economic, defence and political policies of the government had totally failed while the inflation bomb was about to fall on the people in the upcoming budget, reported The News International.

Ahmad Khan further demanded the government make public the recent agreements made with the United States, while further lambasting that the national debt of Pakistan was rising and circular debt was getting out of control while the people had been hit hard by inflation.

The Senator also said that his party would resist the anti-people budget prepared on the basis of foreign proposals. He also opposed any step to give air bases to the US, while slamming the alleged move to gag the media and imposing restrictions on journalists reported The News International.

Criticising the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), he alleged the government was using the executive body for political engineering.

This comes after a wave of attacks against journalists in Pakistan, a sign of the federal government's intolerance of criticism towards its policies.

Last month, an Islamabad-based journalist Asad Ali Toor, known for criticism of the country's establishment, was attacked in Pakistan's capital. The attackers broke into his house and attacked him brutally.

Prior to that, an unidentified assailant shot and wounded Absar Alam, a television journalist and a prominent critic of the government, outside his house in Islamabad.

Hamid Mir, the host of the flagship news program "Capital Talk", was taken off the air for three days after he spoke against the rising curbs on freedom of expression in the country and about the safety of his colleagues, following the recent attack on Toor.

Other media outlets have come under pressure from authorities not to criticise government institutions or the judiciary.

Freedom of the press has long been a problem in Pakistan but the situation has deteriorated markedly under Imran Khan, who has dismissed allegations of attacks on the Pakistani press as a "joke".

Earlier, three international rights groups on Thursday voiced grave concern at the recent attacks on journalists in Pakistan and mounting pressure on scribes critical of the Imran Khan-led government.

( With inputs from ANI )