PTI condemns action against party's social media activists
May 22, 2017
ISLAMABAD: Offices of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) social media head for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were raided by unidentified officials, it was revealed on Monday.
Talking to the media outside the Supreme Court on Monday, PTI spokesperson Fawad Chaudhry condemned the continuous action against the party’s social media activists.
He explained that the party does not know for sure which organisation ransacked its social media office in Peshawar, saying it could be the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
However, FIA officials have denied they were behind the raid.
“[Prime Minister] Nawaz’s actions [against free speech] mirror Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s crackdown on opposition parties,” claimed Chaudhry, a lawyer by profession.
He cautioned the federal government from using state machinery to clamp down on dissent, saying “there is a difference between hate speech and [political] insults.”
We stand with our social media activists, and even with those from across the aisle, he said further.
Praising the Pakistan Army as ‘our own’, PTI MNA Mohammad Ali Khan said [Interior Minister] Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is behind the FIA action.
The PTI will hold a protest outside the Islamabad Press Club against the arrests of its social media activists Monday evening. Party leaders say if the situation does not improve they will increase the size and frequency of their protests.
The FIA is investigating some 41 people for posting anti-state content on various social media websites. “Some two dozen people suspected of publishing hate materials are in our custody — and it also includes some eight activists of the PTI and PML-N,” a senior official of the FIA disclosed to Geo News on Sunday.
