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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistan Army Silences the Media’s Big Guns |
| 2003-12-11 |
| As Pakistan’s premier arrived in France Tuesday, Reporters Without Borders drew Paris’ attention to the ten-month campaign of intimidation against investigative journalist Amir Mir, who was fired as editor of the Pakistan weekly Independent, allegedly at President General Pervez Musharraf’s behest, and remains under threat. While RSF has been drumming up support internationally, back in Pakistan, dozens of journalists demonstrated in support of Mir in the federal capital Islamabad last week. On November 22, unidentified persons had set fire to Mir’s car and shots were fired outside his home in Lahore, in the eastern province of Punjab. Says Mir, now the deputy editor of the Herald, an English-language monthly, "During the past few months, I have been threatened with dire consequences in one-on-one meetings with several senior military and political leaders." According to the editor, the authorities had told him General Musharraf was angered by his articles and that he should desist from writing against the general and the army. The recent acts of intimidation reportedly began after Musharraf remarked at a meeting of leading newspaper editors on November 20 that the editors of the Herald and the monthly Newsline had not been invited because they had published articles damaging Pakistan’s international image. The August and November issues of the Herald carried investigative reports by Mir on the presence in Pakistan of a don of an Indian crime syndicate, Dawood Ibrahim. A lot of the time we don’t even think about the fact that practically all the information that has been posted here about Pakistan’s Jihad policy was originally reported by a handful of brave Pakistani journalists. Mir is only the latest who has crossed the establishments ’red lines’. There have been other journalists who have been given assylum in India or America, and there are others who have been jailed on trumped up charges of treason or drug trafficing. According to the General, the articles gave weight to the Indian allegation that Pakistan was protecting the don - who is on the run from Indian police. Earlier, the Weekly Independent had claimed that Musharraf himself chaired a meeting in Lahore at which it was decided to take concrete measures against the magazine, including withdrawal of all government and state sector advertising. Mir wrote in a June 12 editorial that it was not easy to keep a newspaper going in a country where the army dominates. A day later he was given the boot. Post the November 22 incident, the persecuted editor claims he has received warnings from Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence to leave the country for the time being and refrain from taking up the issue. From Newsline Does a critical assessment of the impact of the Kargil operation on Indo-Pak relations, or the government’s blow-hot, blow-cold policy towards the jihadis, go against national interests? Is questioning the army’s growing business interests, or its penchant for prime property, indicative of a lack of patriotic fervour? If the army has chosen to install itself in the driving seat, it must face the glare of the spotlight. The general professes to be the progressive, liberal head of a democratic state. And the first prerequisite of a democratic dispensation is a free, vibrant media that is allowed to play its watchdog role, without fear or favour. But generals aside, even politicians unfortunately have yet to understand and appreciate the merits of an unfettered press. Newsline has suffered the worst of times in times of ’democrats’ like Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Nawaz Sharif. At the zenith of its power, the MQM attacked "the westernised Newsline women" virulently at public meetings, for exposing their misdemeanours in the publication. For, at the end of the day, governments will come and go, but the press is here to stay But federal minister for information and broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed trashes the allegations. "The incident could have been a result of some personal enmity or criminal activity," he says. But the government, he adds, has ordered a probe. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |
| #1 Mir is only the latest who has crossed the establishments ’red lines’. Daniel Pearl was likely another one. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-12-11 7:10:10 AM |