From being the liberal President under whom Pakistan’s independent electronic media was born and flourished, Pervez Musharraf is now seen as the military general who imposed emergency rule on Nov. 3 and suspended the Constitution and the independent judiciary. Musharraf also blocked all independent television channels on the cable network. There were police raids on media organisations, printing presses and bureau offices and detentions of journalists.

For many, Musharraf’s ham-handed dealing with the media over the past year, and the last couple of weeks, evokes bitter memories of the late Gen. Ziaul Haq’s martial law with its strict media censorship and ‘press advice’. Newspapers in protest published blank spaces where material had been censored. Dissenting journalists were arrested and some were even flogged.

Musharraf has been comparatively benign. But this is a very different era, where independent news and views and a continuous flow of information had become the norm. In Zia’s time, there were only a handful of independent newspapers, hardly a threat, given the abysmally low 30 per cent literacy rate. Musharraf has had to contend with the independent electronic media with a huge outreach. Until now, his claim that he gave the media more freedom than ever before was true to an extent, say journalists, but it is a freedom they have fought for, and it has come with a price.

“An explosion in the number of independent TV channels boosted pluralism and the quality of news,” noted the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders in its annual report of 2007.

Simultaneously, since Pakistan’s involvement as a frontline state against the ‘war on terror, “the security forces radicalised their methods of repression: a score of journalists were kidnapped and tortured by the military.” Almost two dozen have been killed in different incidents since.

On Nov. 3, PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) officials invaded the independent FM radio station Mast 103.6’s Karachi office with a heavy police contingent. They forced it to close transmission and confiscated its broadcast equipment, citing the station’s broadcast of its hourly news bulletins and current affairs programmes from BBC as the reason. In 2004 too, PEMRA had sealed the popular radio network’s Lahore and Karachi stations.

The outspoken Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (www.pfuj.info) which has a long history of struggle for media freedom, termed the present situation “one of the worst kind of repression against the media since 1978”. The union has called for an ongoing series of protests, meetings and demonstrations until the media restrictions were lifted and all the channels restored.

“In the Zia days, we would protest in groups of four and chant slogans against the martial law and media restrictions. We would court arrest peacefully, and the police would pick us up,” recalled Nasir Zaidi who works for the The News in Islamabad. In 1978, Zaidi, then a frail young reporter with the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), was arrested and flogged for protesting against the closure of the daily Musawat (a paper sympathetic to the Pakistan People’s Party of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the elected prime minister whom Gen. Zia had overthrown). “We were isolated then. The biggest difference now is the number of people supporting the journalists. It’s a mass movement, there’s a lot of commitment and participation of the younger people,” he said.

Over a hundred journalists offered themselves for mass arrest in Karachi on Nov. 20 after the police attacked them with batons, refused to let them march to the Governor House to present a memorandum, and arrested their leaders. Police have attacked and arrested journalists demonstrating all over the country over the last couple of days, from Gotki and Hyderabad in Sindh province, to Faisalabad in the Punjab, and Quetta in the western province of Balochistan.Zaidi attributes the new energy largely to the TV channels. “They tend to employ younger people, most of whom are very progressive. They see these Black Laws (the new PEMRA ordinances) as a direct attack on press freedom.” The Pakistan Association of Television Journalists has 621 members around the country, 307 in the business capital Karachi alone. “Most are less than 35 or 40 years old,” estimated Faisal Aziz Khan, the secretary general of the association.

By Nov 16, most TV channels were back on air, having agreed to conditions like the government’s new “code of conduct” drawn up in June by the Pakistan Broadcasters Association. Some agreed to drop certain popular talk show hosts or anchors. Geo and ARY refused. “Everyone wants Geo channel back on air,” said Abdul Jabbar, who lives in Korangi, a semi-slum in Karachi. “We don’t know what’s going on. PTV (the state-owned Pakistan Television) only gives one side of the story. Geo was reporting very openly, giving all sides. What is the government trying to hide?” — IPS