Pakistani journalist arrested under cyber crime law ‎

Pakistan authorities have arrested a journalist in Baluchistan province under a new electronic crime law aimed at combating terrorism and preventing blasphemy but which critics say is used to suppress political dissent.  The journalist, Zafarullah Achakzai a reporter for the Daily Qudrat newspaper in Quetta city was produced before a magistrate on Wednesday and remanded in police custody under the cyber law, an official from the police's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told Reuters.

He is one of the first reporters to be charged under the electronic crime law, which was introduced in August to the objections of media freedom and human rights activists. Achakzai's father, Naimatullah Achakzai, said some 50 officers from the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force in overall charge of security in Baluchistan province, kicked down their door early Sunday morning and arrested his son. Police filed a case against his son under the cyber crime law on Wednesday.

The Naimatullah said he believed his son was in trouble because his social media activity.  Zafarullah posted a comment on Facebook after a suicide bombing killed 13 in Quetta this month, in which he questioned why the Frontier Corps had responsibility for policing the city.

The FIA official, who declined to be identified, confirmed that the journalist had been arrested by the Frontier Corps, and then handed over to the FIA on Wednesday.

The Pakistani media watchdog Freedom Network said it was concerned about what it saw as "the authorities' zero-tolerance for critics on social media".  "The arrest of journalist Zafarullah Achakzai is a grim reminder that more arrests will follow for the same reason in the near future," the group said.

Authorities began cracking down on social media in May, with security officials saying that more than 200 accounts were under investigation. Last month, a court in Punjab province served a death sentence to Taimoor Raza, 30, over posting allegedly blasphemous content against Muhammad on social media.  Amnesty International described the sentence as the “harshest handed down yet for a cyber-crime related offence."  According to Asma Jahangir, the co-founder and former director of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Journalists in Pakistan are being targeted not only by militants or criminals but also by government agencies or the military itself says.  The New York-based non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 60 journalists ‎and 10 media workers have been killed in Pakistan since 1992. ‎  (Source: Reuters/…)