ISLAMABAD - Chairman Pakistan People’s Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday said that the opposition would reject the government’s Journalists Protection Bill if it was moved without consultation of the opposition.
He expressed these while chairing the NA Standing Committee on Human Rights. The meeting discussed attacks on journalists and Protection of Journalists and Media Professional Bill. Journalists including Hamid Mir, Absar Alam, Maneza Jahangir, Asma Shirazi, Ehtesham Khan and Asad also attended the meeting on the invitation of Bilawal Bhutto.
Bilawal Bhutto said that it was decided by the federal minister for human rights to form a sub-committee on the Journalist Protection Bill, and if the bill was passed without opposition’s review, it would be rejected. He said that many points in the Sindh Journalist Protection Bill were missing in the National Assembly Journalist Protection Bill.
He also raised concerns that despite attacks on journalists, the elements were not identified and apprehended. “I don’t know the outcome of the cases regarding attacks on journalists,” he remarked.
Speaking on the occasion, journalists expressed concerns on attacks and said that media was being pressured by different tactics. Asma Sherazi said that on one side the journalist protection bill was being brought while media authority was being set up on the other side. She said, “We do not belong to any political party, we belong to the constitution of Pakistan, while the supremacy of Parliament is our ideology.”
The chairperson committee said that bureaucracy was accountable to Parliament and bureaucrats must satisfy members of the standing committee on human rights.
PTI MNA Lal Chand said that journalists had held a meeting in Rawalpindi but he would not say with whom this meeting took place while the Standing Committee on Human Rights was being used to defame the government.
MNA Saif-ur-Rehman said that violence against journalists also occurred in previous govts and this should not be ignored.