Abductions, censorship — critics are under siege
INTIMIDATION OF JOURNALISTS IN THE COUNTRY IS INTENSIFYING AND HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE LAST YEAR
When Prime Minister Imran Khan boasted last year that Pakistan had one of the “freest presses in the world,” journalists were quick to object, saying that intimidation of reporters across the country was intensifying. It has only gotten worse since.
Two years into Khan’s term, censorship is on the rise, journalists and activists say, leaving the country’s heavy-handed military and security forces unchecked as they intimidate the news media to a degree unseen since the country’s era of army juntas.
The security forces frequently pressure editors to fire or muzzle reporters, journalists say, while the government starves critical news outlets of advertising funds and refuses to settle previous bills worth millions of dollars.
The abduction of a prominent reporter by state security officers in late July, coupled with the disappearance of a rights activist in November, has heightened those concerns. In June, Pakistan’s Military Intelligence agency admitted that it had detained the activist and that he is awaiting trial in a secret court on undisclosed charges.
“Disappearances are a tool of terror, used not just to silence the victim but to fill the wider community with fear,” said Omar Waraich, the head of South Asia for Amnesty International.
“In Pakistan, the military’s intelligence apparatus has used disappearances with impunity,” Waraich said, adding: “Civilian politicians look on helplessly, affecting concern and promising to investigate. Unable to uphold the rule of law as Imran Khan vowed to do, their authority erodes.”
Dragged him from car
On July 21, the reporter, Mattiullah Jan, had just dropped off his wife at her job in an upscale neighbourhood in Islamabad when several men, some in plain clothes, others in counter-terrorism police uniforms, dragged him from his car, bundled him into one of their vehicles and sped away.
Jan, 51, is a vocal critic of Khan’s governing party, the judiciary and the military, which critics accuse of working together to preserve their power and stamp out dissent.
Footage from a security camera clearly shows the police’s involvement in the abduction, working alongside men in civilian clothes that many believe are Pakistani intelligence officers. The footage culminated in a pressure campaign on social media and Jan was released 12 hours later. He released a vague statement saying he had been abducted by forces that are “against democracy.”
Multiple requests to the Pakistani government and military to comment for this article went unanswered. Pakistan’s security forces have not publicly commented on Jan’s abduction.
Under Pakistani law, statedirected abductions like Jan’s are lawful. While Pakistan has long had a poor track record on press freedom, it has gotten notably worse under Khan’s administration, which has been widely seen as a high-water mark for military influence in the past decade.
Under pressure
Pakistan slipped six spots since 2017 — the year before Khan took office — to 145th place out of 180 countries in the 2020 world press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders.
In the last five years, 11 journalists have been killed in Pakistan,
seven of them since Khan was sworn in as prime minister two years ago. Like many Pakistani reporters, Jan claims that he lost his job as a popular talk show host just months after the election because of his hardhitting reporting. He now runs his own YouTube channel.
“This is the first time in the 31 years of my career where I’ve seen a structural takeover of the media industry,” said Talat Hussain, a former Geo TV news anchor who has been critical of the military and government.
Hussain said his company fired him under pressure from the military shortly after Khan’s election. He has remained unemployed, with newspapers and TV shows refusing to host his work. “We have dealt with fairly tyrannical regimes that were elected and dealt in repression, but it was episodic,” Hussain said. “This time it is structural and complete and it’s hard to breathe.”
Eventually, the authorities came after Hussain’s former boss. In March, Mir Shakilur-Rehman, the owner of the Jang Group, which owns Geo TV and The News newspaper, was detained over accusations of corruption, which Rehman has denied. Rehman has been held for over 100 days without charges, and several bail hearings have been postponed.
This is the first time in the 31 years of my career where I’ve seen a structural takeover of the media industry.”
Talat Hussain | Former Geo TV news anchor