By IPS Correspondents
ISLAMABAD, Feb 10 1999 (IPS)

The Pakistani government appears to be pulling back from a confrontation with the Jang Group, publishers of the country’s largest selling newspaper, but a journalist union has said it will pursue its legal case for press freedom.

Ongoing negotiations between top government officials and Mir Shakilur Rahman, the owner of the Jang Group here in Islamabad seem to be heading towards returning to the newspaper group the right to access its newsprint stores and bank accounts.

The government has had to backtrack because of unprecedented public condemnation and the stiff resistance from working journalists and human rights crusaders.

On Monday, all Pakistan’s political parties excluding the prime minister’s Muslim League participated in a mammoth Press Freedom March held simultaneously in the capital city Islamabad and Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city.

Benazir Bhutto, the previous prime minister and Sharif’s arch rival addressed the participants in Karachi, her home town. “This is not the issue of a particular group of newspapers but a matter of press freedom and the integrity of the country,” she said.

Earlier some 4,000 journalists, lawyers, non-governmental organisations, trade unionists and artists participated in an anti-government march called by the ‘Committee for a Free Press’ in Lahore, set up last week.

“The show of strength was unprecedented,” commented its convenor, veteran journalist Aziz Mazhar. “We last saw similar protests 27 years ago, when the martial law government of Gen. Ayub Khan took over Progressive Papers Limited in Lahore, including daily ‘Pakistan Times’ and ‘Imroze’.”

Political parties, as well as columnists in various newspapers, including traditional rivals of the Jang Group, have slammed the Nawaz Sharif government and called its attacks on the Jang Group an abuse of authority.

“If democracy is the body, freedom of expression is its soul,” said Neelam Shah of the Awami National Party, addressing the crowded courtyard of Lahore Press Club, before a rally on Wednesday.

The ‘Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists’ President Abdul Hameed Chapra said a petition on press freedom filed in the Supreme Court would not be withdrawn, even if the government submitted to pressure and stopped harassing the Jang Group.

The Sharif government has been after the Jang Group for alleged tax evasion, withholding newsprint supplies and demanding that it sack 16 journalists who have been open in their criticism of government policies.

The Committee for a Free Press has demanded the withdrawal of various controls over press freedom, including government control over newsprint imports, the abolition of the Ministry of Information, the removal of state control over the electronic media, and the setting up of a committee to ensure equitable distribution of government advertisements.

Journalists in four Pakistani cities – Lahore, Hyderabad, Islamabad and Peshawar – have observed token hunger strikes outside their Press Clubs in solidarity.

The campaign snowballed when the government dragged its feet on the release of newsprint, despite the Supreme Court’s Feb. 1 order that 200 reels should be immediately released in order to allow minimal publications of Jang Group papers.

Trucks carrying newsprint were prevented from reaching Jang presses by government officials, and journalists protesting this defiance of Supreme Court orders were beaten up and roughed up by police at least twice over the last week in Islamabad. It was only on Feb. 4 that the Supreme Court orders were finally implemented.

A resolution passed at the the end of Monday’s ‘Press Freedom March’ has called on the government to withdraw sedition cases against the editors of the Jang Group, and dailies ‘Aman’ and ‘Parcham’ for printing an advertisement of the Karachi-based political group MQM, considered anti-national by the government.

The advertisement, calling on supporters to donate money for a fund for the families of victims of police excesses, was considered by the Sharif government to be inciting the people against the state. The MQM is blamed for the sectarian violence in Karachi, and the police have for years been trying to crush the group.

The resolution also called for the removal of Mushahid Hussain as minister of information and the abolition of the Information

Ministry – a promise made in the election manifesto of the ruling party in 1997.

The Karachi rally also called for the lifting of government controls on the electronic media which at present is the “government’s mouthpiece”. Speaking in Islamabad, cricketer- turned-politician Imran Khan said his political party has been blacked out on radio and TV.

“This rally marks the start of our struggle for press freedom,” thundered Federal Union of Journalists president Abdul Hameed Chapra. “We will continue our efforts as we did in the past when we fought against military dictators.

And Pakistan’s leading rights lawyer Asma Jahangir who is representing the Union in its case for press freedom in the Supreme Court, said the petition was “historic”. “Nawaz Sharif may come and go,” she said. “The people are desperate to keep and strengthen democratic institutions”.

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