MEDIA-PAKISTAN: Fight for Free Press Not Over With Editor’s Release

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Amir Mir

LAHORE, Jun 4 1999 (IPS) - Najam Sethi, a prominent Pakistani newspaper editor who was in police custody for 25 days for making an anti-state speech in India, was set free this week, but other journalists imprisoned by the government remain in jail.

Treason charges against Sethi, editor of ‘The Friday Times’, were quashed by the Supreme Court on June 2, and Justice Mamoon Qazi, a member of the three-judge bench said the government cannot proceed against him on the same charges.

“I have been set free, which means that the case against me has been withdrawn,” Sethi said immediately after he was reunited with his family, friends and admirers in Islamabad.

“I hope the government of Pakistan will display democratic tendencies, respect human rights and press freedom,” Sethi was separately quoted as saying in a newspaper interview Friday.

Pakistan’s independent media has had several highly-publicised run-ins with the government on matters of policy and governance over the last six months.

The week Sethi was whisked away from his home late at night, two others were detained and two journalists received threatening calls. While Hussain Haqqani, columnist and opposition politician, is still in custody on corruption charges, Mehmood Lodhi of ‘The News’ daily was released after two days.

He was quizzed about a documentary film being made by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on government corruption for which he only provided the team with some contacts, he said later. Both Haqqani and Sethi had been interviewed by the BBC team.

The authorities said Sethi was taken into custody for his Delhi speech, Apr. 30, in which he told the Indian audience that Pakistan was in the throes of multiple crises, including a breakdown of law and order, national security and identity.

Ejaz Haider, a columnist with ‘The Friday Times’, said the government was not able to produce convincing evidence to back the charge.

According to him, the Nawaz Sharif government backed off to side-step a “serious diplomatic row” with the U.S State Department over press freedom in Pakistan. Support for Sethi and independent journalists has come from all over the world, including the U.S-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

“No government can teach the press any lessons that the press doesn’t know already. One lesson an independent and free press will never learn is to give up its independence,” Sethi who walked out of police custody as a free man, said this week.

Since January, the government has filed a variety of charges against newspaper editors and publishers, ranging from income tax evasion to drug trafficking. There have also been several violent attacks against journalists.

Imtiaz Alam, editor current affairs at ‘The News’, had his new car set on fire, and Mir Shakil ur Rehman, the newspaper publisher, said he had been pressured by a powerful government commissioner to demote a number of employees.

“This government has zero tolerance for dissent. It’s not just a few cases; there is a total assault on whatever is left of civil society,” observed Afrasiab Khan Khattak, chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which has also been under fire.

Aides to Sharif, however, deny they are trying to silence criticism, and say critical editorials and columns appear regularly in various newspapers. The last three editions of ‘The Friday Times’ have published scathing editorials on the Sethi case and continued to pound Prime Minister Sharif, his family and official circle as corrupt and dictatorial.

The English-language ‘Frontier Post’ reported this week that the government has prepared a list of several prominent journalists it plans to target. The newspaper’s owner, Rehmat Shah Afridi, is in jail on charges of drug smuggling since April.

“The federal government has decided to establish a special media cell comprising officials from the police, Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to punish independent journalists who are writing against the present government,” the newspaper reported.

Outspoken journalists could be abducted, threatened over the phone, stalked, houses broken into or arrested for drinking (prohibited in Islamic Pakistan), sources in the ‘Ehtesab’ (accountability) cell said.

The government is determined to rein in the media, says M. Ziauddin, a prominent columnist of ‘The Dawn’. “After taming the judiciary, army and the presidency, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government has gone all out against his media critics”.

Journalists fighting for press freedom think the government is hell bent on crushing dissent. “More than 95 percent of our press has already surrendered … The next government move would be the imposition of a Press Council, with a view to further tighten executive rule over media,” says Imtiaz Alam.

Pakistan’s small but influential independent media have so far refused to cow down.