Ministry of Information Document
reveals the Mad Rush to Impose Restrictions
Special
SAT Report
ISLAMABAD:
The Pakistani media top bosses have finally woken up to the insiduous
game being played by General Pervez Musharraf's military regime,
who wants to silence the voice of the media, totally disregarding
his own farce of an electoral exercise which will bring in a new
government theoretically capable of deciding all such issues.
Days
before the Oct 10 polls, Musharraf has introduced black Press
laws which are being projected by cronies of the General as "of
no signficance". However these cronies fail to explain why
are they undertaking such an exercise when, according to them,
it means nothing, specially when the country is about to transition
into an elected polity.
But
behind the scenes these very minions of the Information Ministry
were fiercely pushing each other to finalize these ordinances
in the greatest of hurry to impose them on the media as soon as
possible. SA Tribune has obtained evidence that the Information
Secretary, Mr Anwar Mahmood, wrote a two-page memo to the Justice
Ministry pushing them not to wait for the views of the two main
media organizations, the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS)
and the Council of Newspaper Editors (CPNE) and to issue the ordinances.
View Memo of Information Secretary
Page1 | Page2
The
Memo dated August 26, 2002 confirms that not only the Justice
Ministry was hurrying with these laws the President's secretariat
was also making uirgent calls, at least to issue two ordinances
if two others were to be deferred for a later date.
The
Information Ministry, however proposed its own amendments, based
on some old meetings with the APNS and CPNE, without waiting for
their latest views.
The
new laws come in the wake of secret tactics being continuously
used by the Musharraf Government to muzzle the voice of the independent
Press, both print, electronic and internet-based.
One such shameless tactic has been
arresting innocent and totally unconcerned distant relatives of
media critics, specially the Editor of South Asia Tribune, Shaheen
Sehbai. One family boy has now been in jail for over a month without
any relief.
While the mainstream media in Pakistan
has not taken much note of these mean tactics, the sudden imposition
of Press laws has created a sense of panic and now the two well
known organisations, the owners group APNS and the editors body
CPNE have joined hands to resist these laws.
In Karachi last week, these two groups
unequivocally
rejected the newly promulgated Defamation Ordinance and the three
other press laws that were recently adopted by the Federal Cabinet.
The
two newspaper bodies which represent newspaper publishers and
professional editors from the most widely respected and circulated
newspapers in the country, on Friday adopted similar resolutions
in opposition to the four controversial "black press laws"
which President Musharraf's government is attempting to "impose"
on the country.
These
two important press bodies have chalked out a joint programme
of action, and set up a joint committee composed of twelve members
(six from each body) who will work together to promote public
awareness, both domestically and internationally. The public awareness
campaign will consist of contacting international press bodies
and asking for their help in rolling back the black press ordinances,
running nationwide public service informational campaigns in the
national press to highlight the transgression of press freedoms
by these new laws; and finally by the periodic calling of nationwide
strikes by newspapers and magazines to protest the actions of
government in crippling press freedom.
In
addition, the APNS and CPNE have issued a joint statement which
has posed seven leading questions about the new press laws to
the Federal Information Minister, Mr Nisar Memon, and the Federal
Cabinet that has endorsed these laws. The statement demands that
these seven questions be fully answered in order to justify the
"attempt to snatch away from the public their sacred right
to know, and of their right to be fully informed of what their
leaders and public servants are up to in the name of reform."
The
joint statement of the APNS/CPNE declares: "The critical
situation surrounding press freedom and the freedom of expression
poses a grave danger to the continuation of constitutional democracy
in Pakistan. We must act in defence of our freedoms against the
draconian laws that President Musharraf's government is trying
to impose. We must act to protect Article 19 of the Constitution
with the support of the entire press and independent media, and
indeed, of all segments of society."
The
formulation of a common stand by two bodies emerged as a consequence
of two meetings held in Karachi on Thursday. The first, that,
of the Executive Committee of the APNS held under its president,
Hameed Haroon, in a unanimous resolution of the body decided to
launch "a massive awareness campaign" to educate the
public on the consequences of reviving "a series of black
ordinances that most closely resemble the draconian Press &
Publications Ordinance of General Ayub Khan's regime. Then in
the late afternoon, the CPNE under the presidentship of Mujeebur
Rehman Shami responded with its decision to "fully apprise
international organisations of the press, and both governmental
and non governmental decision makers" about "the grave
threat posed to journalistic freedoms and the public's right to
know by the intended promulgation of this government's unconstitutional
and undemocratic package of black press laws."
By
evening, the two bodies had closely co-ordinated their joint programme
of action in a tersely worded joint statement, that deplored "the
widespread conspiracy in both circles of the government and certain
echelons of the military circles, that is hell bent in throttling
press freedoms and replacing these with an authoritarian information
order in Pakistan. This conspiracy has been hatched by discredited
and undetectable technocrat-civilians and disgruntled retired
generals on the payroll of the public exchequer who are seeking
to discredit civil society and denigrate our main democratic values.
The military higher ups have fallen victim to this unscrupulous
planning and have thus compromised their assumed posture of neutrality
with respect to the future of Pakistani democracy," the statement
declares.
The
joint statement further points out: "The APNS and CPNE are
dismayed that the present government has once again failed to
honour its written commitments and agreements reached between
the Ministry of Information and us on the substance and texts
of the draft Press Council Ordinance (PCO), the draft Registration
of Newspapers, Presses, News Agencies and Books Ordinance (RNPNO)
and the draft Freedom of Information Ordinance (FIO). We strongly
believe in the process of productive dialogue. But when settled
matters are unilaterally overturned and agreed decisions are flouted
by an ostensibly esteemed body like the Federal Cabinet, then
meetings and talks become meaningless.
"The
drafts of the press laws took almost two years of discussion.
Clause-wise debates were held to arrive at a series of consensus
drafts. The drafts were finalized almost 12 months ago and were
not promulgated despite repeated promises. We were informed that
the agreed draft ordinances were awaiting the formality of enactment
by the Ministry of Law. However, we were astonished to note on
April 8, earlier this year, that the government made what then
appeared as a half heated attempt to attach new clauses to the
drafts of the PCO and the RNPO. To our surprise, a back door attempt
was also made to transform a newly proposed Defamation Ordinance
(DO) into one that stipulates the presumption of guilt as a consequence
of any allegation levelled against a newspaper. The DO also devised
novel measures to punish newspapers in the guise of posing as
a legal code for the conduct of initiating defamation proceedings.
"We
expressed major reservations with respect to the drift of the
government's press policy, and strongly rejected the new clumsy
attempt to curb the freedom of press through the proposed ordinances.
Initial pressure from newspaper bodies and an alert public opinion
forced the Ministry to beat a hasty retreat, and the black laws
were hurriedly withdrawn. We have the documented evidences in
the form of letters and drafts expressing the acquiescence of
high officials of the Ministry to these withdrawals.
"On
July 23, at a meeting at islamabad, we were given fresh drafts
of the press laws, wherein all objectionable provisions as demanded
were withdrawn. The draft ordinances approved by the Cabinet barely
a month later tell a completely different story. Were these new
promises by the Ministry an exercise in deception? Or an innovative
strategy in the art of utilising decoys as in planned military
manoeuvres? Or was it that the ministry simply lacked the moral
authority to convince the Federal cabinet on its earlier agreements
with press bodies? Whatever the answer, this about-turn on agreed
decisions raised serious questions regarding honesty and trustworthiness
of the government of the day. This is certainly not the first
time that the government has lied to us, but we must ensure that
this will be the last," the APNS/CPNE statement continues."
The
Federal Ministry of Information has explicitly stated that only
'minor changes' have been made in the agreed draft laws. This
explanation is grossly misleading and totally unacceptable. For
the benefit of the federal minister of information and media development
we wish to pose the following seven critical questions:
1.
Is the transformation of a self regulating body of the press with
only 2 out of 17 members directly belonging to the parliamentary
side of government, into a new form of press court where 9 out
of 19 members are directly appointed by the government (over half
of them by presidential appointees) a "minor" change?
2.
Is the transformation of the Press Council's moral power to persuade
newspapers to print its decisions regarding published news items
(for example with respect to the government) into a draconian
power that instead cancels the declaration of newspapers, thus
causing them to cease publication instead - is this merely another
"minor" change?
3.
Is the transformation of a mission statement by professional newspaper
editors - the Code of Ethics - something to be tinkered with?
Can a government unilaterally add clauses to this code of its
own volition and, thus converting a professional code into legal
undertaking given by editors, publishers, and printers to the
government, which would be actionable under the law? Is this,
yet another "minor" change?"
4.
Is the transformation of an ordinance that purports to register
a newspaper for purposes of protecting only the uniqueness of
its title and attributing liability, into one that disallows newspapers
from acquiring a permission to print, unless specifically allowed
by a functionary of local government under centralised authority
is this withdrawal of a fundamental freedom we have enjoyed for
the past decade also another relatively "minor" change?
5.
Is the introduction of a new law on freedom of information, that
seeks to render illegal for purposes of publication, all file
notes, minutes, summaries and interim orders by government officials
including ministers - in other words, the kind of information
that caused military governments to issue volumes of white papers
and following Ehtesab, to subsequently prosecute as many as three
civilian prime ministers for corruption and in one case even murder
- can a new law stipulating further prohibitions on the publication
of such information, be somehow termed only as a "minor"
change?
6.
Can the transformation of a law that forces the issuance of an
apology to an aggrieved party by a newspaper, or the payment of
financial compensation for any proven damage caused to such a
party, be thus transformed into a law that imprisons an editor
for the same offence? Can this too be classified as only a "minor"
change?
7.
Can the transformation of a constitutional article that upholds
the freedom of press into an ordinance that excludes from publication
any transaction whatsoever concerning the army (we are not talking
of something as confidential as strategic military secrets), and
the conduct of foreign policy from fair comment by prohibiting
the reproduction of any documents on these matters - will this
also be said to constitute a "minor" change?
The
time has come for the government and its federal minister to answer
fully these seven questions to justify the ludicrous attempt to
classify as "minor" such changes and to conceal the
snatching away from the public of their sacred right to know and
to be fully informed of what their leaders and public servants
are up to in the name of reform. Or is the snatching of such fundamental
rights yet one more of the "minor" changes which President
Musharraf's government intends to effect, upon civil society before
an elected parliament is convened?" the joint statement asks
in conclusion.
The
APNS and CPNE are expected to issue a major document outlining
unilateral changes made by the government early next week and
the consequences such changes imply for Article 19 of the Constitution
and the future of a free press in Pakistan. The document will
also list transgressions of press freedoms by the Musharraf Government
before the induction of the new ordinances into the public arena.
Note:
This Article has been published in solidarity with the Press in
Pakistan.
