Journalist detained following coverage of land dispute

A Pakistani journalist, Sarwar Mujahid, has been detained for three months following his coverage of an ongoing land dispute between paramilitary forces and military farm tenants in Punjab’s Okara district. Mujahid, a correspondent for the Urdu-language daily ‘Nawa-I-Waqt’, has been detained under section three of the 1965 law of Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) and is currently being held in the central jail of the adjoining district of Sahiwal, also in Punjab province. Pakistan’s independent Human Rights Commission (HRCP), in a statement, has expressed deep concern over the arrest of Sarwar Mujahid in Okara several days ago “to prevent him from reporting on the growing violence faced by tenants of the military farms”. “Mujahid has been continually harassed by the authorities for his reporting on the dispute at Okara military farms,” a local journalist told IRIN from the western city of Lahore. Mujahid had also been detained last year in 2003 for over a month under the anti-terrorist law, for his reports on the situation in military farms. He was charged with inciting the public against paramilitary forces but was later released on bail. “On 31 July, saturday night, my father was standing outside the house with two men when two motorcyclists appeared suddenly and pointed guns at him from both sides. Then they started beating and kicking him up,” his 17-year old daughter, Ayesha Sarwar, told IRIN from Okara. “He was bleeding pretty bad when they took him away in a police van and we haven’t seen him after that,” Ayesha added. “We are utilising every available means to pressurise the government - contacting government officials, writing editorials and printing news items protesting against his detention,” deputy editor of ‘Nawa-I-Waqt’, Irshad Arif, told IRIN from Lahore. Meanwhile, the daughter of the detained journalist has requested that the government release her father. “My mother is severely ill and my younger brothers and sisters are distressed over the situation,” she pleaded.