By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad/Karachi : More than 100 journalists were arrested in Karachi Tuesday for protesting the ban on Geo and ARY TV channels and curbs on media after the imposition of emergency by President Pervez Musharraf.
The political crisis in Pakistan further deepened with bloody sectarian clashes in and around the town of Parachinar in Kurram Agency tribal area that have claimed at least 110 lives.
“We are trying to get the exact numbers but there are more than 100 journalists who have arrested by the police in Karachi,” Huma Ali Shah, president of Pakistan Federation of Unions of Journalists, told IANS.
The journalists were protesting in front of the Karachi Press Club when they received a message from the Governor’s House for a meeting. “They were going for a meeting with the Sindh governor when police baton-charged them and chased them into the press club,” Shah said.
He said that some of them were released while some were still in police custody late in the evening. There was no immediate information about how many arrested newspersons were released.
Witnesses talking to IANS said police also nabbed some female journalists. “One of them was with her one-year-old son,” said Akhtar Hussain.
The two news channels, operating from Dubai, were taken off air Friday night.
The media community continued demonstrations in Islamabad, Lahore and other cities. They raised slogans against Musharraf, who left Tuesday for Saudi Arabia to hold talks with King Abdullah.
While police in the country continued crackdown against protestors and dissidents, more than 3,500 political workers and leaders were released on court orders.
The caretaker set-up after the previous government completed its five-year term Nov 15 has favoured freeing of the political workers.
Though chief military spokesman, Major General Waheed Arshad, said the situation in Parachinar was “stable”, there are reports that hundreds of thousands of people belonging to rival Shia and Sunni groups were in arms against each other.
Troops have been patrolling the streets and have set up pickets in several parts of the town, while armed groups have taken positions around the area in mountains.