Gen. Musharraf’s Pakistan has earned another dubious distinction. According to a report compiled and released by a US-based “Committee to Protect Journalists”, Pakistan has become the third deadliest country for journalists who dare to reveal official corruption, crimes, extra-judicial killings and human rights violations. Iraq and Afghanistan were the first and second deadliest countries respectively. Some other courtiers that made the list are Philippines, Russia, Mexico and Columbia.
But Pakistan, I believe, has been deprived of the first position it rightfully deserved as far as the manner of the crime committed is concerned. Unlike Iraq or Afghanistan where almost all the journalists have been targeted, kidnapped, and executed by insurgents for working with the organizations affiliated to the Iraqi government or sponsored by the US, in Pakistan it is the government or its agencies or its allies who have targeted, kidnapped, and executed journalists.
Though apprehensible and unacceptable even in Iraq and Afghanistan I fail to understand why Pakistani government has become an enemy of truth and wish to wrap up its citizens in a blanket of ignorance if it is not committing any corruption or crime? We don’t have the insurgents or the foreign occupiers in Pakistan at least in the recognized sense of the terms. Why would, then, an indigenous military junta become an enemy of pen and its holders in Pakistan?
In Iraq the journalists, at least, have a green zone to work from. Where is that green zone in Pakistan where the journalists can go if they feel threatened? But reporting the truth can be fatal Ask 38-year-old Dilawar Wazir Khan who works for the Urdu language service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Pakistan's English daily the ‘Dawn' and was kidnapped from Islamabad, the capital, blindfolded, fettered, and tortured for 30 hours before he was released. His fate was different from his colleagues who had been murdered after they were similarly kidnapped because protests from journalists' unions been launched for his release. The journalists in Islamabad had threatened to boycott parliamentary proceedings. International media organizations also raised an outcry. The BBC Urdu service carried the story of his abduction for two consecutive days and World Service director Nigel Chapman called on the Pakistani government to ascertain his whereabouts. He was released but he says: "Many of my colleagues have given up their profession and others have left the area."
Dilawar had escaped two earlier attempts on his life in which two of his colleagues, Allah Noor Wazir and Amir Nawab, were left dead. His 15-year-old brother Taimur was kidnapped and murdered in 2005. At that point Dilawar moved out of his hometown of Wana, in South Waziristan, to Dera Ismail Khan.
After his abduction he said, he did not "know where to find refuge. No place seems safe enough. This time I was lucky and came home almost unscathed but I am not sure if I'll be this lucky the next time."
Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said in a statement on Nov. 21, after Dilawar's release: "The disappearances and deaths of several Pakistani journalists have gone unexplained, uninvestigated, and unreported by the authorities. Police and courts must bring to justice the people who harm and intimidate journalists." But unfortunately it is the police, government agencies and courts who have become partners in these crimes.
Hamid Mir is a well-known Urdu language columnist for the Jang newspaper and anchor of a popular Geo TV current affairs talk show 'Capital Talk'. He has been termed, in his words, "an anti-state element" by the Pakistan army and has been receiving numerous threats for his coverage of the insurgency in Balochistan province and for writing about the assassination of his friend Hayatullah Khan, another journalist from North Waziristan. He said about Dilawar Khan that: "Dilawar was abducted because his story in Dawn about the peace deal in North Waziristan proved that it was signed by militants not by local tribal elders. He was released because Dawn published the vehicle number that belonged to the ISI in which he was taken away."
Dilawar says that he has "been threatened with dire consequences" if he divulges who had kidnapped him. He says that he has "caused enough trauma and pain" to his family because of his profession and he has "fear for their lives". He thinks it was because of his journalistic work that his brother was killed. "It was to teach me a lesson and to bring me down to my knees", he says.
Mazhar Abbas, secretary of Pakistan Federation of Unions of Journalists (PFUJ), said the first kidnapping incident took place in the 1990s when a senior Islamabad-based reporter Humayun Fahr was detained by the ISI for "working against the national interests". Humayun was sentenced to death by court martial. He was released when his health deteriorated but died shortly after his release.
Kamila Hayat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) calls these abductions as "harassment and intimidation", and says "it is part of a broader campaign to stifle dissent, opposing opinions and embarrassing news through intimidation."
While the government boasts of giving media freedom of expression but it has subjected journalists to kidnappings, tortures, executions and other terror tactics for reporting the truth. Hamid Mir says that initially Musharraf gave full freedom to the media so it may criticize the prime minister Nawaz Sharif he had overthrown. "But the situation changed after 9/11, when Musharraf became an ally of the United States and he was given a free hand by the West", says Mir.
The hoax of media's freedom of expression is exposed when you see that Geo and ARY (another private TV channel) have their transmission centers not in Pakistan but in Dubai where they have bear heavy expenses to keep their freedom away from the clutches of eve present government agencies. Hamid Mir gives the reason for these TV channels being out of Pakistan: "... they don't have permanent uplinking license for Pakistan. They get an uplinking license on monthly basis. The government can ban any channel anytime, like they banned Sindh TV recently."
Is it the legacy Gen Musharraf promised when he illegally took over power in 1999?
The journalists used to be considered neutral observers and portrayers of the facts but in foreign occupier-run and dictator-run countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan they have become an endangered species.
The state terrorism and murder is not the only tool Pakistan’s dictator is using in its war against truth. The courts and the laws are also being brought to the fore in this war of words against guns. A coalition partner of the military junta, MQM, filed a criminal, rather than a civil, case under the highly controversial 'Pakistani Criminal Defamation Law', and the district and session court in Karachi on Thursday indicted three journalists of evening daily The Star, Kamal Majidullah, Syed Saleem Shahzad and crime reporter Ralph D. Cruze. They could face imprisonment because their paper ran a front page story last year about the alleged linkage of Shoaib Khan, a underworld crime king pin and MQM. The 53-year-old newspapers was shut down on 2 December, 2006, under pressure from the government coalition partner MQM.
The case, the indictment, and the law have been criticized by national and international journalist and human rights organizations.
How far military is willing and able to go in deteriorating the situation in Pakistan? I know it has the wherewithal, the will and weapons. Why it does not have a consciousness, a rein, a check, on its un-opposable, unbridled power?
Pakistanis deserve to know the vital story, the truth. A free press is the only window to the facts and its ability and freedom to report the news as is vital to maintain an informed and aware public and a check on officials to make responsible decisions. If the government wants to limit its ability to provide the real story what recourse, the citizens of Pakistan have left than to leave the pen and pick up the gun? Why government wants to leave the press crippled and on its mercy to operate? By declaring an unannounced war on journalists the military government and its callous allies are working together to create an environment of fear and setting a dangerous precedent in this tormented nation to prevent the factual reporting.
