Editors for Safety urges PM to approve undiluted version of journalist safety bill.

KARACHI -- The Editors for Safety (EfS) has welcomed the move by the Ministry of Human Rights to draft a landmark bill aimed at ensuring safety and security of journalists against intimidation, abduction, torture and murder.

The EfS, a forum comprising a large number of newspaper editors and directors of news at leading television channels, said in a statement on Wednesday that the draft bill, once approved, would be a significant first step in fulfilling a long-standing demand of Pakistani journalists to check the prevailing culture of impunity for crimes against them.

The statement said the bill was presented before the federal cabinet on Tuesday for approval, but for some unexplained reasons the cabinet decided to club it with an earlier bill prepared by the ministry of information and sent it to the law ministry for vetting.

The EfS believed the bill prepared by the human rights ministry was quite comprehensive as it covered key issues, including the setting up of a commission of inquiry under a retired Supreme Court judge, to investigate matters of murder, torture and intimidation of journalists.

'The EfS would like to remind the government that two more journalists were murdered in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkwa over the last 10 days. During the last three decades nearly 70 journalists have...