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| July 26, 2005 | Tuesday | Jumadi-us-Sani 18, 1426 |
Suppression of critical voices ‘suicidal’
LAHORE, July 25: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Chairperson Asma Jehangir has said that the government’s policy of suppression and silencing of critical voices was quite suicidal.
Criticizing a series of incidents of targeting individual journalists and newspaper organizations seen over the last few weeks, in a statement issued here on Monday, the HRCP chairperson said these were obviously intended to suppress and gag the media. Most recently it had come in the form of arbitrary detention of Rashid Channa, reporter for the daily Star, Karachi. The subsequent release of Mr.Channa in no way mitigated the offence.
She pointed out that several other journalists had also been detained in similar illegal fashion in recent weeks. They had faced severe intimidation and had sometimes been deprived of their means of livelihood as a result. It had also been noted that other journalists had been arrested on the grounds of spreading hatred. Whereas inciting hatred could never be condoned, it must not become an excuse to be used to harass the journalists or close down media organizations.
She said the HRCP joined the media organizations across the country in strongly condemning the campaign of harassment. The journalists must not be made a punching bag between the provincial and federal governments. If the chief minister of a province was guilty of action outside the law, it fell among the duties of the federal government to demand that he should quit the office.
The HRCP chairperson noted that the use of advertisements as a means to coerce newspaper owners and influence policy had also continued despite the claims of the government to uphold the media freedom. The defamation law had become yet another tool of harassment. The HRCP reiterated its demand that the law be repealed. The fact that the environment of repression was growing at a time when local government elections were just round the corner, augured ill in terms of transparency and the liberty of media and other civil society organizations to comment on the conduct of the polls.
By denying people even the right to vent grievances and stripping away from the media the right to give voice to public sentiments, the authorities were adding to the deepening sense of frustration among the people. Apart from pushing the country farther and farther away from the people’s ideal of democratic governance, this could only add to the existing social tensions and act to aggravate many acute problems already being faced by the people of the country, she said.
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