Pakistani Media: victim of perpetual harassment!

Speaking against the army in Pakistan has become so dangerous for the media, that journalists have not only suffered severe physical torture for this, but many journalists have lost their lives. The recent deadly attack on journalist Asad Toor and the statement of well-known Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir against it has once again exposed the complicity of the army, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and the government against the media and journalists in Pakistan. Local media and news agency DPA reported that Pakistani journalist and vlogger Asad Ali Toor was attacked and threatened by unidentified assailants inside his Islamabad apartment last Tuesday night. It is noteworthy that he is known for his criticism of the powerful army of Pakistan. Hamid Mir, the senior journalist of Geo TV and presenter of the show Capital Talk, strongly condemned the attack and questioned the role of the Army and ISI. As a result, under pressure from the army, he has been removed as the presenter of the event.

Since the beginning of his career in Geo TV in 2002, Mir had been hosting the talk show 'Capital Talk', which is Pakistan's oldest current events program. In December 2007, due to the constant criticism of the Pakistani government by Mir, several restrictions on the program imposed by military dictator General Pervez Musharraf. In January 2008, the show was re-telecast, but instead of Hamid Mir, Muhammad Malik hosted it. And finally, after the 2008 general election, when the general's departure was decided. Mir returned to Capital Talk.

The story of the army's bloody rivalry with Geo TV is also old. Hamid Mir had a narrow escape in November 2012 when about half a kilogram of extremely dangerous explosives was placed in his car, though it was successfully defused by the bomb squad. Later the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the incident but there was no room for doubt on whose behest it was being done.

Similarly, in April 2014, Hamid Mir was fired upon by unknown gunmen in which he was seriously injured. It is noteworthy that even before this attack, Mir had told his colleagues that if they were attacked, then Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, and its chief Lt Gen Zaheer-ul-Islam would be responsible for it. But instead of taking action against the culprits, Geo News was banned for airing this statement of Hamid Mir.

In September 2015, Aftab Alam, a senior journalist with Geo TV, was shot dead near his home in Karachi. Alam was known for his critical reporting of the military's involvement in politics and thus military and its spy organization, he faced the wrath of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). A few days after the incident, Geo TV satellite engineer Arshad Ali Jafri was killed by three gunmen in the city. In this sequence of harassment, Geo TV channel owner Mir Shakeel ur Rahman was arrested last year in a decade-old case related to allegations of tax evasion in a real estate purchase. Months later, he was released on the orders of the court.

It has become very difficult to speak and write against the army in Pakistan and the Imran Khan government now running under its protection. Since the outbreak of the Corona epidemic in the country, many such incidents have come to the fore when journalists were harassed. Leading Journalists in July 2020 Matiullah Jaan, who is considered an outspoken critic of Pakistan's army and government, was kidnapped. Journalist Shahzeb Jilani was charged under laws relating to abetment and defamation, cyber terrorism, hate speech, electronic fraud, but was acquitted by the court for lack of evidence. In September last year, Bilal Farooqui, a Pakistani journalist who has been an outspoken critic of the army, government, and religious extremist groups, was arrested on charges of defaming the country's powerful military and spreading religious hatred.

It shows that media and journalists who are critical of the government can be unlawfully silenced and while Prime Minister Imran Khan continues to rejoice that Pakistan has independent media. Despite all this, during an interview with Stephen Sackur for the BBC program "Hardtalk" at the end of May 2021, Fawad Chaudhry, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting in Imran Khan's government, flatly refused to acknowledge that Pakistan was failed to defend its journalists. The minister said journalists are given "protection" in the country and have "freedom to express their opinion".

On the other hand, local journalist groups from Pakistan, which involved in the documentation of such attacks against journalists in Pakistan stated that there have been 148 such attacks on journalists from May 2020 to April 2021. The Global Impunity Index 2020, released in October 2020, also shows such a frightening situation. It throws light on the countries where journalists have been killed and their killers are roaming free. Pakistan is the ninth worst-hit country in the list of countries with such dire conditions. Countries such as Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and South Sudan plagued by war and political instability as rank above Pakistan in this list. The report further pointed to three countries, including Pakistan, where there is "corruption, weak institutions, and a lack of political will to pursue strong investigations into the killings of journalists, the two other countries besides Pakistan are Mexico and the Philippines. Notably, in the last 10 years, 15 journalists have been murdered in Pakistan." and the killers have not been punished in any of these cases. According to the database, 61 journalists have lost their lives in attacks in Pakistan since 1992.

Pakistan is currently in a state of chaos. The so-called democratic government is in a state of helplessness and its position has been further weakened by the ever-deteriorating economic condition and deteriorating credit internally and globally. The army and radical Islamist terrorist organizations are the real powerful forces inside Pakistan and whose alliance since the time of the Mujahideen war may have weakened to the present day, but it is still intact. And such media groups and journalists who expose this organized disorder and nexus are the natural victims of this wrath.