TeaThat trial ended in a matter of minutes: four lashes would fall on the body of Khawar Naeem Hashmi, accused of defacing the tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah on Pakistan’s Independence Day in 1977. He was arguably lucky – the other journalists who had joined him in a public protest against the military dictatorship were each sentenced to five lashes. Lines were drawn on his back to ensure that the whip would fall with accuracy; army officer, Hashmi later recalledWill entertain their families by bringing them along to watch.
Lashing seems to have become a popular pastime during the time of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. One lakh people gathered in a park in Karachi to watch the sentencing of Mohammad Kalim, convicted of raping a girl child.
Earlier this week, the newspaper owner and editor Called into meetings with Pakistan military officials and ordered to shut down darling-rebel Imran Khan covering the establishment. During his tenure as Prime Minister, Imran and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate used to disappearTorture, false criminal cases to terrorize journalists, even driving some dissidents into exile.
Absar Alam was shot outside his house. Expert Lynn O’Donnell record. Asad Ali Toor was tied up and beaten in his own house. exiled critics also found themselves targeted for murder Hit squads abroad have allegedly been hired by the ISI.
This time Imran has been donned the muzzle and chain he used to gleefully use on his opponents – and that is bad news for Pakistan.
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build a propaganda factory
Like most of the Indian media, Pakistan’s news industry was born in the ideological crucible of the independence movement. dawnFounded by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the patron of the Pakistan Movement, it was changed from a weekly to a daily newspaper. of Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman WarHamid Nizami Nava-e-Waqtand Mian Iftikharuddin Pakistan Times The post-independence period would lead to the emergence of a new generation of media conglomerates.
Even though an organized media flourished, Historians Saima Parveen and Muhammad Nawaz Bhatti Let us remind, it was not “free to defend democratic values; Instead they were working to praise the policies of the government”. Phrases such as ‘national interest’, ‘the glory of Islam’, and ‘Pakistan’s ideology’ were used to garner support from the press for the government.
The military regime of General Ayub Khan institutionalized this informal censorship. leftist Pakistan Times, Imrose, And Lail-o-Nahar were nationalized. Three large circulation newspapers run by the family of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – musawat, Hilal-e-PakistanAnd Nusrat – also ended up in the hands of the state-owned National Press Trust.
Press and Publication Ordinance – Introduced by General Ayub and which, among other things, included “offences of violence or sex in a manner likely to excite unhealthy curiosity” as well as the publication of “information likely to cause public alarm, frustration or dismay” punished – provided a powerful tool where polite persuasion failed.
Future historians may debate how important censorship was as a tool for the regime’s survival. The law, in particular, did not prevent Dhaka newspapers from publishing special supplements marking 23 March 1971, the anniversary of the Muslim League’s Pakistan Resolution, as “Bangladesh Liberation Day”.
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Democrats Undemocratic Press
After his installation as the President after the Bangladesh War of 1971, Media Specialist JM Williams As noted, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began to use a more subtle form of coercion. The supply of newsprint was a state monopoly, and major advertisers such as Pakistan International Airlines were also public sector entities. The new president first promised to disband the National Press Trust, but swiftly concluded that even a tyrant’s tool could serve his own ends.
The government moved to cancel the newsprint quota War, stopped advertising for dawnand restricted Sun,
General Zia, who seized power in 1977, tightened state control of the media. Even journalists were put in jails. Four more – Masudullah Khan, Iqbal Jafri, Khawar Naeem Hashmi, and Nisar Zaidi – were flogged for organizing an event. pro-democracy hunger strike, As during the Emergency of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, pre-censorship of content was introduced in Pakistan.
Even though Zia’s regimes based themselves on the revolutionary Islamism of Iranian mullahs and Saudi Arabia’s monarchical concentration of power, those regimes managed to use their resources to address at least some economic and social problems. Did. The same cannot be said of Zia’s Islamism, Ibrahim Karwan has noted,
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto ushered in the opening up of media freedom in a democratic resurgence, but Editor Imran Aslam recorded that his government regularly tried to buy off critical journalists. The military, for its part, maintained its own list of client authors as it battled the prime minister for control.
The Nawaz Sharif government restored the use of blunt instruments. Ownership newsMir Shakeel-ur-Rehman, famously released the taped conversations of two prominent government officials, seeking to blackmail them into sacking critical journalists by threatening them with tax suits.
Former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf presented himself as a defender of a free press and promoted private television news broadcasts. Even under Musharraf, journalists who crossed the establishment faced dire consequences. Journalist Syed Salim Shahzad He was allegedly murdered by military agents.
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lessons for india
For Indians familiar with their own media history, much of this story will sound depressingly familiar. As in Pakistan, a powerful liberal impulse ran through Indian democratic institutions after independence. Angered by what he claimed was a biased and communal media, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru cracked down on freedom of the press. “Horrible, something terrible,” he said of Indian journalism scholar Michael Brecher, “We end it.”
In 1950, the Supreme Court struck down the Madras government’s ban on the left-wing weekly Crossroad, Then, the court restrained the Delhi government from pre-censoring the magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Organizer, The government responded by reviving the colonial era anti free speech laws,
The Indian state also created a system of funding and patronage to control the media. Even though the media sometimes protested against it, it rarely enjoyed real independence from the government.
Even though some of Imran’s detractors have reason to shed tears for his fate, liberals fear that what has been passed for democratic change is edging closer to military tyranny. Commentator Omar WaraichAlong with others, have thoughtfully said that the real lesson is that the generals need to be ousted from Pakistani politics. The military’s stranglehold on thought and debate has created a republic of fear.
For Indians, the crisis in Pakistan is a stark reminder of how fragile democratic freedoms are—and how difficult they can be to revive when they have been allowed to crumble.
The writer is National Security Editor with ThePrint. He tweeted @praveenswami. Thoughts are personal.
(Edited by Hamra Like)