Pakistan government gagging media, alleges Human Rights Watch

BY A CORRESPONDENT

2 May, 2007: Human Rights Watch, the United States-based human rights group, has charged the Pakistani authorities with engaging in what it calls a concerted attempt to muzzle the media. The Pakistani authorities’ intention, it said, is to blunt criticism of the government, using violence and financial pressure.

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s President, has said many times that he has introduced unprecedented media freedoms since he seized power in a coup in 1999. The United States, the main international supporter of Musharraf, has cited active debates in newspapers and Pakistan’s prospering private television channels as evidence of the General’s democratic leanings.

However, Human Rights Watch says that those liberties have been eroded, especially since March 9, 2007, when Musharraf drew a barrage of criticism from political opponents and media commentators for suspending Pakistan’s top judge.

In an open letter to Musharraf, the New York-based human rights group also said the security forces were implicated in the death of one journalist and the detention of five more journalists since the beginning of 2006. Three of those detained were said to have been tortured, Human Rights Watch alleged.

Brad Adams, the chief of the group’s Asia division, said in the letter that Human Rights Watch is concerned about “concerted and increasing attempts by the Pakistani government to muzzle the media.”

While some media publish critical comments, many reporters receive phone calls from intelligence agents or unidentified persons coercing them to avoid publishing stories that expose government or, in particular, military misdeeds, Brad Adams alleged.

His letter also criticised a move by Pakistan’s media regulator against Aaj TV, a private channel which covered the weeks-long protests against Musharraf’s removal of the Supreme Court Chief Justice.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an organisation of journalists, has come down heavily on Pakistan for “harassment and physical attacks” on the media and rejected President Pervez Musharraf’s claims of promoting freedom of the press.

“The Pakistani government’s harassment through legal, financial, and physical attacks on media houses runs contrary to your often-repeated claim of fostering a free press in Pakistan,” Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, pointed out in a protest letter to Musharraf.

Joel Simon demanded that, as Pakistanis prepare for elections and a possible change of national leadership in the coming months, the government must reverse its recent anti-press actions and allow for greater public criticism of the administration in the media.