Hundreds of journalists gathered at the National Press Club in Islamabad to mark a black day following a widely condemned attack by Islamabad police on the press club and violent assaults on reporters. Black flags were flown at the press club and protesters took a rally from the club to Blue Area to register their anger over the incident.<\/p>\n
The action was organised under the call of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists and led by PFUJ president Afzal Butt alongside Rawalpindi Islamabad Union of Journalists president Tariq Ali Wark, general secretary Asif Bashir Choudhry and the acting National Press Club president Ehtesham ul Haq. Secretary Naeer Ali and PRA president MB Somroo also joined the demonstrations, while religious leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman arrived to express solidarity with the journalist community.<\/p>\n
Speakers at the gathering said the Press Club Attack violated the sanctity of journalists’ workplace and the privacy of their homes, calling the action an assault on the very idea of press freedom. They warned that any attempt to intimidate the media will be resisted<\/strong> and described the raid as a deliberate and unacceptable violation of democratic norms.<\/p>\n Journalists staged a walkout from the National Assembly press gallery as part of the protest and announced that after consultations they will present a charter of demands to the government. Central demands include clear SOPs to prevent police entry into press clubs and guarantees that no press club’s sanctity will be violated again.<\/p>\n Organisers emphasised that the National Press Club is seen by reporters across Pakistan as a fortress of independent journalism and must be protected. The protest reflected nationwide outrage and a pledge by journalist bodies to coordinate a firm response, while calling for accountability for the events that triggered the black day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Journalists mark black day after Press Club Attack in Islamabad, demand SOPs and accountability through protest and National Assembly walkout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":12085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peakpoint.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}