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Last Friday, TV 2 reporter Kadafi Zaman was arrested in Pakistan, where he worked to cover a demonstration in Gujrat, in the north of the country.
Before the Pakistani parliamentary elections to be held on July 25, there has been a lot of unrest and more demonstrations. There was such a manifestation Zaman reported from.
The journalist was informed by TV 2 that he had witnessed violent violence on the part of the police, who used clubs to arrest protesters. In addition, clubs were used against journalist Zaman, although he stated that he was from the press and present in the office.
The day before the arrest, Zaman reported on Twitter that the media was ready to report what was happening.
According to a police report that Aftenposten would have had access to, the journalist, along with 38 other appointees, was accused of attacking the police. They were reported to have killed, after taking the phone from four policemen, to tear the uniform to a policeman and the disturbance.
According to the report, he must have been shot at by the police. That's the reason they were arrested were charged with murder. However, there is nothing in the notification of who should have drawn or executed the other actions.
Absolutely nothing indicates that a journalist as experienced as Kadafi Zaman acted in a manner inconsistent with his status as a freelance journalist. Zaman defender Imran Bamta described the charges as ridiculous.
Zaman was released on bail Monday morning. This is the least that can be expected from Pakistani justice. However, the case still illustrates how difficult it is to work as a journalist in Pakistan. Zaman is an experienced journalist with a long history of field reporting, but he ended up being arrested and confiscated because he did his job. It's disappointing.
The Union sans frontières combines freedom of the Pakistani press with 139th place in its annual report. In the 2018 report, the organization points out that a hostile attitude towards journalists is increasing in many parts of the world. Negative attitudes are reinforced by political leaders who make hateful statements against the press. It is no longer reserved for authoritarian regimes that the press be considered an enemy of the state. US President Donald Trump called the press "the enemy of the people", a term originally used by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
The development is scary. The press has the nickname "fourth power of the state" precisely because the main task of the press is to act as a critic and monitor the powers of the state. Without independent journalists and critics, one of the barriers to democracy disappears.
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