Pakistan blacklists, expels global journalists' group leader

Agencies
October 18, 2019

Islamabad, Oct 18: Pakistan blacklisted and expelled the Asia coordinator of global press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists, the group's executive director said Friday.

Joel Simon called the expulsion of Steven Butler "baffling" and "a slap in the face" to those concerned about press freedom in Pakistan.

Butler was refused entry at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore despite having a valid visa and was returned to the United States. Butler said he was told he was on "a stop list of the Interior Ministry." The Pakistani government had no immediate comment Friday.

"Pakistani authorities should give a full explanation of their decision to bar Butler from entering and correct this error," Simon said in a statement issued by the CPJ. "If the government is interested in demonstrating its commitment to a free press, it should conduct a swift and transparent investigation into this case."

Butler was planning to attend the Asma Jahangir Conference- Roadmap for Human Rights in Pakistan. The conference this weekend is named for a renowned Pakistani human rights activist who died last year of a heart attack. Butler had been a regular visitor to Pakistan, working with journalists' groups throughout the country.

His expulsion at the airport "reinforces our deep and growing concerns about press freedom in the country," Simon told The Associated Press. Pakistani journalists have come under increasing censorship in the past year.

Websites have been shut down, including the Urdu website of the US government-funded Voice of America, after it reported on an ethnic Pashtun tribal movement that's been critical of military operations in regions bordering Afghanistan. Mashaal Radio, affiliated with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has also been shut down.

Leading newspapers, including the well-respected English-language Dawn Newspaper, have come under pressure, its distributers harassed and prevented from delivering the newspapers.

Journalists and journalist advocacy groups blame the military and its powerful intelligence agency, which they say are seeking to quash critical coverage in general as well as any coverage of the Pashtun movement against the military's war on terror, particularly in the tribal regions.

The military has denied it is involved in censorship.

"There is no media censorship through ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) or ISI," the country's main intelligence agency, said military spokesman Gen. Asif Ghafoor in an earlier written response to questions from AP.

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News Network
February 18,2020

Beijing, Feb 18: Police in China have arrested a prominent activist who had been a fugitive for weeks and criticised President Xi Jinping's handling of the coronavirus epidemic while in hiding, a rights group said Tuesday.

Anti-corruption activist Xu Zhiyong was arrested on Saturday after being on the run since December, according to Amnesty International.

China's ruling Communist Party has severely curtailed civil liberties since Xi took power in 2012, rounding up rights lawyers, labour activists and even Marxist students.

The death this month of a whistleblowing doctor who was reprimanded by police for raising the alarm about the deadly new virus before dying of it himself triggered rare calls for political reform and freedom of speech.

The "Chinese government's battle against the coronavirus has in no way diverted it from its ongoing general campaign to crush all dissenting voices," said Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, in an emailed statement.

Another source, who spoke to news agency on the condition of anonymity, said Xu had been arrested in the southern city of Guangzhou.

Guangzhou police did not respond to requests for comment.

Xu went into hiding after authorities broke up a December gathering of intellectuals discussing political reform in the eastern coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian province, prior to the coronavirus crisis.

Over a dozen lawyers and activists were detained or disappeared after the Xiamen gathering, according to rights groups -- and Xu's detention appears linked to his presence at the meeting, explained Poon.

But while on the run, Xu continued to post information on Twitter about rights issues.

On February 4 Xu released an article calling on Xi to step down and criticised his leadership across a range of issues including the US-China trade war, Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests and the coronavirus epidemic, which has now killed nearly 1,900 people.

"Medical supplies are tight, hospitals are filled with patients, and a large number of infected people have no way to be diagnosed," he wrote. "It's a mess."

"The coronavirus outbreak shows just how important values like freedom of expression and transparency are -- the exact values that Xu has long advocated," Yaqiu Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, told news agency.

But the disappearance of Xu illustrates how the Chinese state "persists in its old ways" by "silencing its critics", she said.

Xu -- who founded a movement calling for greater transparency among high-ranking officials -- previously served a four-year prison sentence from 2013 to 2017 for organising an "illegal gathering".

"That he was a fugitive for so many days while continuing to speak out, that in itself was... a kind of challenge to (Chinese authorities)," said Hua Ze, a long-time friend of Xu who told AFP she lost contact with the Chinese activist on Saturday morning.

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News Network
April 2,2020

Washington, Apr 2: The total US death toll from the coronavirus pandemic topped 4,000 early Wednesday, more than double the number from three days earlier, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

The number of deaths was 4,076 -- more than twice the 2,010 recorded late Saturday.

More than 40 percent of recorded deaths nationally were in New York state, the Johns Hopkins data showed.

On Tuesday the United States exceeded the number of deaths in China, where the pandemic emerged in December before spreading worldwide.

The number of confirmed US cases has reached 189,510, the most in the world, though Italy and Spain have recorded more fatalities.

After initially downplaying the threat from new coronavirus in the early stages of the US outbreak, President Donald Trump warned of "a very, very painful two weeks" to come for the country on Tuesday.

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News Network
June 6,2020

Islamabad, Jun 6: Pakistan has reported a record 97 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, taking the total number of fatalities to 1,935, while the number of confirmed cases in the country approached 94,000 after over 4,700 infections were detected, the health ministry said on Saturday.

Punjab registered 35,308 COVID-19 cases, Sindh 34,889, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 12,459, Balochistan 5,776 Islamabad 4,323, Gilgit-Baltistan 897 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 331 cases, the Ministry of National Health Services said.

The total number of COVID-19 cases reached 93,983 after 4,734 new infections were detected across the country, it said.

With a record 97 fatalities in one day, the death toll in the country has reached 1,935, while 32,581 people have recovered from the disease.

The ministry said that the total number of active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan are 59,467, out of which 1,265 patients are in critical condition.

More than 100 labs in the country have so far conducted 660,508 tests, including 22,185 in the last 24 hours.

There are 747 hospitals across the country with COVID-19 treatment facilities where 5,060 patients are being treated. Others have been asked to self-isolate at home.

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