MEDIA-PAKISTAN: Free Press Vulnerable Till Democracy Takes Root

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Beena Sarwar

LAHORE, Feb 28 2000 (IPS) - Pakistan’s free press is continuing to take its role as a watchdog very seriously, although journalists realise the military-led government offers no protection from political persecution.

While every move, action and statement of the Pervez Musharraf government is written about and discussed threadbare, often very critically, there have been no serious attacks on the freedom of the press, a report by a New York-based media watchdog says.

Journalists writing independently on “sensitive” issues still find themselves harassed by intelligence agencies, their phone lines tapped and cars followed, but complaints to the military establishment have resulted in the pressure easing.

Pakistan’s free press is most likely to outlive the military regime, but journalists will “continue to be vulnerable … for as long as the democratic foundations of the state remain weak,” the ‘Committee to Protect Journalists’ said in a special report.

The report, ‘Pakistan – the Press for Change’, describes how the “historically vigorous press survived an increasingly tyrannical ruler (ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif)” but now faces challenges under military rule.

It points out how many Pakistani journalists felt that “democracy in Pakistan was endangered long before the coup”.

“The press in Pakistan, despite more than four decades of government efforts to control it, is remarkably vigorous and aggressive,” says the report authored by Kavita Menon, who left Pakistan, after a two-week research trip, just three days before the military coup last October.

Citing specific examples, the report shows how Sharif, like his predecessors, used state machinery to try to control the press, except that he did it “with particular zeal and efficiency”.

Besides incidents that caused an international outcry, like the crackdown on the largest publishing house, Jang Group of Newspapers, and the arrest of the high-profile journalist Najam Sethi, the report documents tactics like the infiltration of newsrooms and press unions by intelligence personnel.

“With so many spies doubling as reporters, and journalists moonlighting as government agents, ‘now the biggest problem is lack of trust in each other’,” one journalist told Menon.

Menon notes that Pakistani press is not a monolithic body. Newspapers that publish in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, have a far broader reach than English papers, and are subjected to greater pressures by the state.

“Not surprisingly, Sharif initially focused his energies on controlling the Urdu-language press, while pointing to the relatively unfettered English-language press as evidence that the Pakistani media was operating freely”.

A reporter whose stories appeared in the English-language ‘Fontier Post’ and its sister paper, the Urdu-language ‘Maidan’, both published from Peshawar, said while his stories in the ‘Frontier Post’ went unchecked, when they ran in the Urdu daily, the chief editor started receiving death threats.

The government used the anti-press laws enacted by the last military ruler, Gen Zia-ul-Haq, although these were supposed to disappear with the return of democracy in 1988.

Journalists interviewed said they believed the budget for the Information Ministry was substantially increased under Sharif, “in order to help the minister and his staff woo journalists — and even place friendly journalists on newspaper staffs”.

Other measures to keep the press in check is government control of newsprint and advertising.

Idrees Bakhtiar, Karachi-based correspondent for the BBC, told Menon, “They (government) control the advertisements. They control the newsprint. If a newspaper doesn’t toe their line, they can shut them down.”

“Such methods were used commonly — at both the federal and provincial level — to reward some papers and punish others. Many newspapers were forced to close when deprived of the government ads that were their staple,” says the CPJ report.

On taking over power on Oct. 12 last year, Gen Musharraf went out of his way to say that civil liberties would be respected, but the press should “play a positive and constructive role”.

Still, Menon points out, there have been a few incidents that belied the army’s claims to respect press freedom. A week after the coup, local newspapers reported that the names of 20

journalists had been added to a list of citizens prohibited from traveling outside Pakistan.

On Oct. 21, 1999, a truckload of soldiers visited the Lahore office of a leftist political weekly, questioned them about their reasons for publishing an issue headlined “No to Martial Law”, and sought the details of the weekly’s publisher and printer.

Pakistan’s free media are worried that, like the high court judges who were forced to take an oath to not question the military’s decisions, they too would be made to swear loyalty.

“While there have been no serious attacks thus far, journalists know that if they had few protections under Sharif, they have none under Musharraf,” according to the report.

Menon has also dwelt at length on the plight of Afghan journalists in Pakistan, who “battle alone” against the Taliban.

“Reporters living in towns along Pakistan’s northwestern border with Afghanistan have been threatened by Pakistani police and intelligence agents, as well as local agents of the Taliban.”