Reprinted
from Dawn, May 5, 2001
PAKISTANS MEDIA FINDS ITS WINGS CLIPPED IN THE NEW
MILLENNIUM
According to the
"State of the Media and Press Freedom Report Pakistan 2000-2001,"
journalists were found prone to self-censorship given that they work without
constitutional protections or democratic safeguards.
ISLAMABAD, May 4: The dawn of the new millennium
brought little respite for the media
professionals in the country as the publications continued to be censored,
suspended and closed down while editors, journalists and publishers were
harassed, attacked and even murdered , says a report released by the Green
Press Pakistan on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day in a seminar here
on Thursday.
According to the "State of the Media and Press
Freedom Report Pakistan 2000-2001," journalists were found prone to
self-censorship given that they work without constitutional protections or
democratic safeguards. "The country¿s constitution has been suspended
since October 1999, when Army Chief General Parvez Musharraf assumed power in a
coup. The government undermined judicial independence last year when Musharraf
ordered senior judges to take loyalty oath affirming the declaration of a
national emergency and promising not to challenge the decisions made by
him," the report states.
Speaking on the occasion of the launching of the
report, the founding president of Green Press Pakistan, Zafarullah Khan, gave a
brief preview of the report which records the excesses against the media during
the military regime¿s rule. He said sporadic violence against journalists
continued throughout the year but the most extreme case was the murder of Soofi
Muhammad Khan, a reporter for the Urdu language daily ¿Ummat.¿ "He was killed
on May 2, 2000, at a small town of Southern Sindh, in reprisal for stories he
had written on drug trafficking and prostitution in the region."
Zafarullah said the broad day light abduction and beating of Shakil Sheikh,
chief reporter of a national English daily in Islamabad, has so far gone
unpunished and without even identification of the culprits. The report says
during the past one year, newspaper offices were closed, raided and sealed by
the government, while in some instances adequate safety precautions could not
be provided to ensure protection to the newspapers against terrorist attacks.
The government banned the publication of ¿The Frontier Post,¿ its sister
publication, ¿Maidan,¿ and a weekly magazine of Skardu.
¿The Business Recorder¿ was forced to temporarily suspend
its publication after a mob torched its printing presses and building the
report says. Moreover, three newspaper employees died in a bomb attack on the
advertising offices of Nawa-i-Waqt in Karachi, it adds. In NWFP, it says, the
government forfeited all copies of a monthly, ¿Saut-ul-Haq¿ and a book titled
"Shaur-e-Farda" (consciousness about tomorrow) for containing
objectionable material. Moreover, a Lahore-based English Daily ¿The Sun¿
suspended its publications, while another Urdu daily ¿Wafaq,¿ being published
for the past forty one years, expressed fears that it would be forced to shut
down if the provincial and federal information departments failed to clear
their advertising dues, the report adds.