Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday berated former premier Imran Khan for media suppression during the PTI term and said that his government is completely committed to freedom of press and speech in the country, media reports said.
In his statement, which came a day after the World Press Freedom Day, Sharif said that Pakistan slipped 12 places on the World Press Freedom Index during the last time of Imran Khan’s government and 18 points during his term, Geo News reported.
“It not only earned him the opprobrious title of press freedom bloodsucker’, but also placed our republic in a bad light,”Sharif tweeted, slamming PTI president Imran Khan for assessing checks on media during his stint as the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Sharif’s statement, quoting the periodic report of Journalists Without Borders (RSF), said that his government is” completely committed to freedom of press and speech”.
In its report, the RSF painted a bleak picture of media freedom in Pakistan, ranking the country 157th out of 180 with a score of37.99.
Pakistan was at 145th spot last time on the list with a score of53.14.
The International World Press Freedom Day was observed across the globe on Tuesday. This time’s theme for the day was’Journalism Under Digital Siege’, which stressed the multiple ways in which journalism is risked by surveillance and digitally- intermediated attacks on intelligencers, and the consequences of all this on public trust in digital dispatches.
