WORLD AFFAIRS

Targeting critics

The Nawaz Sharif Government's continuing crackdown on journalists comes in for strong criticism inside and outside Pakistan.

AMIT BARUAH
in Islamabad

THE crackdown on the press by the Nawaz Sharif Government does not come as a surprise. It has been in the making for several months now. The first indication came when the Government targeted the Jang group of newspapers - starving it of newsprint and launching an investigation into alleged income tax violations by its proprietor Mir Shakilur Rehman.

More recently, on April 1, the Sharif Government got Rehmat Shah Afridi, the Editor of The Frontier Post, arrested on charges of smuggling narcotics; on May 4, Hussain Haqqani, a leading columnist and politician, on charges of corruption; and on May 8, Najam Sethi, the Editor of The Friday Times, for his alleged links with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India's external intelligence agency. In an effort to diminish these developments, the Government claims that Afridi, Haqqani and Sethi were arrested not for their writings, but for specific offences that are unrelated to their professional status.

In other instances of harassment and intimidation, M.A.K. Lodhi, the Lahore-based head of the investigative bureau of The News, was detained for 48 hours for "providing help" to a BBC team that was making a film on the alleged corruption of Nawaz Sharif's family.

Imtiaz Alam, Editor (Current Affairs), The News, who organised a meeting of parliamentarians from India and Pakistan in Islamabad, had his car torched by unidentified persons who entered his house in the early hours of the day.

Sethi was "arrested" by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for the "disparaging comments" he made about an "all-round crisis" in Pakistan, at the India International Centre in New Delhi on April 30. His comments were used to label him as a person who had "links" with RAW, and he was accused of undermining the foundations of Pakistan as an Islamic state.

A damning report submitted by Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, Pakistan's High Commissioner to India (he was present at the conference Sethi addressed), was used to justify Sethi's "arrest". Around 2-30 a.m. on May 8, several armed men forced their way into Sethi's house in Lahore, beat up two armed guards, and entered his bedroom. Sethi's wife Jugnu Mohsin alleged that they beat him with clubs and the chain attached to the hand-cuffs they carried. She further alleged that Sethi was whisked away without being allowed to put on his spectacles and wear his shoes. She said that when she asked the armed men whether they had an arrest warrant, she was told that she would get her husband's "body". Jugnu alleged that she was tied up and locked up in the dressing room.

A statement issued by the Government on May 8 said: "It is suspected that the journalist has some nexus/connection with the RAW. He has projected a dismal picture of Pakistan at their behest to create despondency and doubts in the minds of Pakistanis. In order to unearth such links, it was considered necessary to investigate him on matters of national security."

However, it is widely believed that Sethi was arrested not for what he said in India, but for his outspoken criticism of the Nawaz Sharif Government. The tone and tenor of his weekly editorials in The Friday Times are biting, and they often mock the Government. It is widely believed that the Government had been waiting for an opportunity to strike.

K.M. CHOUDARY/ AP
Najam Sethi addressing a news conference in Lahore on May 5, where he expressed his fear of being put under arrest. He was detained on
May 8.

Sethi began his lecture at the India International Centre by referring to the multiple crises gripping Pakistan. "The crisis of identity and ideology refers to the fact that after 50 years (of Independence), Pakistanis are still unable to collectively agree upon who we are as a nation, where we belong, what we believe in and where we want to go..." He had used these very words in an editorial titled "What is to be done?" in The Friday Times of January 1-7, 1999. The editorial and the lecture he gave are similar in content.

The Government said that critical remarks about the country could be made on Pakistani soil, but not in India. Obviously, the Lahore Declaration does not extend to individuals or the right to criticise each other's government or society. A 'fact sheet' released by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N) on May 13 makes the same point: "There is enough material to show that he (Sethi) vehemently questioned the very basis of the creation of Pakistan. No doubt many others in Pakistan hold similar views, but most of them follow the ethical principle that one does not denigrate or ridicule one's own country when visiting foreign lands, particularly before an audience known to be opposed to the existence of the country." (Obviously, the fact that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee referred to Pakistan and India as "separate nations" - an acknowledgment of Partition - during his visit to the Minar-i-Pakistan is not enough to convince Sharif's Muslim League that India does not oppose Pakistan's existence.) The 'fact sheet' further states that Sethi started his career as a "book seller" and a "gun-runner", and that he has been dabbling in politics, having been a Minister in Farooq Leghari's caretaker government (November 1996-February 1997). "He is still known to have close links with Mr. Leghari and his recently launched Millat Party," it states, "...but his detention is related neither to his being an editor, nor a politician from an Opposition party. The immediate reason officially stated is the speech he made recently at a seminar in New Delhi. But his alleged links with the Indian intelligence agency RAW were under investigation for long."

APART from being criticised by independent journalists, human rights organisations and a host of other groups for its actions, the Sharif Government has been strongly criticised by the United States, the European Union and Canada.

Interestingly, this is the first time since Sharif assumed power that the U.S. has expressed such categorical views on what is obviously Pakistan's "internal" issue. The U.S. maintained a studied silence and refused to comment on the dispute between Sharif and Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1997 and on the confrontation between Sharif and the Chief of the Army Staff, Gen. Jehangir Karamat, in 1998.

CLEARLY, a battle is on to safeguard the independent press in Pakistan. Najam Sethi's case could well become a test case. If the Government gets away with putting one of Pakistan's best-known journalists behind bars and the courts remain silent spectators (the Lahore High Court rejected a habeas corpus petition in this regard), all the writers who are critical of the Government would be easy game for the Government. The saving grace is that a small but vocal section of Pakistani society is committed to defending the freedom of the press and the right to expression from attacks by the Government.