Life in today’s world is about information: the need for it, the right to it and access. We’ve become used to getting the news virtually instantly, straight from the scene and sometimes even before help – medical aid, law enforcement personnel, etc – arrives. So the fact that journalists, anywhere in the word, often work in dangerous areas and circumstances is no surprise. News is, after all, usually centred on disruptions to peaceful everyday life.

Here in Pakistan, however, the situation here is doubly alarming, for journalists are under threat not only from the militants and murderers about whom they report, but also – to varying extents – from governments. Particularly in Fata, NWFP and Balochistan, reporters, cameramen and other professionals perform their duties under increasing threats to their lives and liberty.

The deaths in 2007 of six Pakistani journalists, the Musharraf government’s clampdown on the electronic media and various transgressions against news organisations’ freedom to operate earned the country the abysmal ranking of 152 out of 169 on the Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index for 2007, published by the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF). Sadly and tellingly, Pakistan was rated below Zimbabwe (149), Saudi Arabia (148) and Afghanistan (142).

Earlier this year, the organisation noted that while “suicide attacks and heavy fighting between the army and Islamist militant parties accounted for 2007’s higher death toll,” the country was fast becoming a very hostile area indeed for journalists. In an open letter sent to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in April, RSF said that “Pakistan has become the most dangerous country for journalists in Asia.”

As the anniversary of the first Musharraf coup has just passed, while that of his second one – against himself – draws near, it is worth remembering the number of occasions on which the state intervened to clamp down on the press as a whole, curtail the rights of individuals and organisations connected with the media, and in some cases even allegedly sponsored the abductions and killings of journalists.

The year 2007 saw immense pressure piled on media organisations and practitioners after the March 9 removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, which was drastically ratcheted up in wake of the Nov 3 declaration of emergency rule. The images of riot police firing tear-gas shells and roughing up staff inside the Islamabad offices of the Jang Group Publications on March 16 are a severe indictment on the state of media freedom in Pakistan, as was the fact that journalists were assaulted and beaten by plainclothesmen and security personnel at the Islamabad airport as they covered Nawaz Sharif’s return on Sept 10. Let us not forget, too, the formal complaint filed by the police against 200-odd journalists after members of the press, led by the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office in Islamabad on June 4. They were demonstrating against a presidential ordinance enacted a day earlier, giving the government broadened powers to halt broadcasters’ transmissions, close offices, seize equipment and revoke licences.

These transgressions against press freedom paled in comparison, however, to what was to come later: the steps taken by the then government on and after Nov 3. The broadcast of independent news channels was arbitrarily curtailed, draconian amendments were made to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance 2002 and journalists were harassed and/or detained by state-sponsored agencies, such as on Nov 20 when nearly 200 journalists were arrested in Karachi as they protested against the government’s crackdown on the media.

In other cases, actors representing the state have allegedly carried out excesses. On May 18 last year, for example, Shakil Ahmad Turabi, the editor-in-chief of the South Asian News Agency, was pulled out from his car and beaten in an Islamabad commercial area by attackers who asked him if “the chief justice was his father.” According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, “the day before the attack, Turabi had written a piece that contradicted government claims that local police, not government intelligence agents, had roughed up the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry when the judge was first detained in March.”

In its open letter to the prime minister, RSF noted that at least 30 journalists were seriously injured in 2007 and more than 120 arrested. It asked that police, army and intelligence personnel be trained on the role played by the media in order to avoid further violence against journalists, and called in addition for the provision of protection to news media that are threatened by terrorist groups.

The not-so-newly-installed government has so far had a better track record and steps such as the recent release of Rehmat Shah Afridi are welcome. However, the security situation in the country appears to have hit an all-time low and those in positions of power must not allow themselves to fall into complacency vis-à-vis press freedom and the provision of protection to journalists. Given the political and economic situation developing here and in the rest of the world, the actions and omissions of state and political actors are bound to come under increasing scrutiny by press organisations. The government must not only refrain from using its resources to harass journalists and curtail the independence of press organisations, but must in addition devise methods to protect the rights of journalists. Unless such steps are taken on an urgent footing, all claims for media freedom will remain hollow.

-- hmumtaz@dawn.com