The attack on Mina Khairi in Kabul, Afghanistan is only the latest in a string of attacks on media persons in that country. Mina finished her shift in Ariana TV where she worked as head of the news section and as an anchor since 2017, and took her mother and sister to the market, where a bomb blast immediately claimed her and her mother’s life; her sister succumbed three days later.  

SAWM believes that these repeated attacks on women across the South Asian region are a concerted move to silence their voices, ensure that they do not dare to speak truth to power and slowly disappear from the news landscape.

In India, social media is often weaponised by the state to prevent journalists from doing their duty — Patricia Mukhim was delivered of the charge of sedition by the Meghalaya government only when her case went right up to the Supreme Court; other journalists are still languishing in jail. The 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru has still not been resolved. Neha Dixit has filed a case of intimidation against people who have used sexually loaded threats to frighten her. Online abuse and rape threats against women journalists by troll armies sympathetic to the government are common.

Across South Asia, the needle of suspicion sometimes points to the State, other times to non-State proxies. The common objective is to brutally stamp out any criticism of the government or powerful groups allied to it. 

SAWM calls upon media organizations and watchdogs in the region, indeed across the world, to condemn these often-fatal attacks. It calls for a thorough investigation of these crimes so that the perpetrators as well as forces behind them are exposed and duly punished.

SAWM believes that media solidarity is vital because the bell tolls for the entire profession.

SIGNED : SAWM journalists across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives

KABUL CITY – Meena Khairi, 23, news anchor for the Ariana private broadcast service, who was severely injured in a bomb blast on Thursday (June 3, 2021) in Police District 6 of Kabul city, passed away Saturday June 5 from the severe injuries she sustained.

The Ariana TV network confirmed that Meena Khairi and her mother had been killed in the explosion that occurred in the Pol-e-Sokhta neighborhood of the Afghanistan capital. 

The broadcaster, citing sources in the family, said that her sister was also injured and is now in hospital. 

The bomb was placed in a minivan and went off in the Pol-e-Sokhta area.

The Center for Protection of Afghan Women Journalists (CPAWJ) strongly condemns the killing of Ms Khairi and expresses concern over such violent incidents.

It noted that while the peace process is going on, no cease fire has been agreed upon.

Meena Khairi is the second woman journalist to lose her life this year while carrying out her work.

South Asian Women in the Media (SAWM), India chapter, welcomes the Supreme Court order which quashed the criminal complaint against senior journalist Vinod Dua, underlined the importance of free speech and believes the media must be protected from sedition.

In the past year, there has been a sustained attempt to pressurize journalists in one way or another so they are not critical of the government. Five journalists were arrested in January this year—including on sedition charges—the highest number since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Data compiled by Article 14, an independent media and research group, has noted that the number of sedition cases has steadily risen in the past decade.

It is unfortunate that there has been an increasing trend by the ruling regime to stifle any criticism against the government. The free functioning of the fourth estate is essential to democracy.

It is welcome that the Supreme Court has chosen a critical time — when the fear of government reprisal is real and Facebook posts can lead to arrests — to note that that “strong words’’ of disapproval about the government do not amount to sedition. The highest Court observed that it was the right of every journalist to criticise, even brutally, the government with a view to improving or altering them.

In fact, this right to honest and reasonable criticism is a source of strength, rather than a weakness, the judgment observed.

The apex court also upheld the spirit and intent of the 1962 Kedar Nath Singh verdict, which said “commenting in strong terms upon the measures or acts of government, or its agencies, so as to ameliorate the condition of the people or to secure the cancellation or alteration of those acts or measures by lawful means, that is to say, without exciting those feelings of enmity and disloyalty which imply excitement to public disorder or the use of violence is not sedition.

SAWM hopes that the order will force the government to re-examine the charges against Siddique Kappan, the journalist who has been in jail since October 2020, while he was on his way to report on the gruesome gang rape and murder in Hathras.

SAWM urges the government to immediately repeal the draconian sedition law, a vestige of the colonial era. It was imposed by the British to stop Indians from speaking out, and has routinely been used by governments to harass journalists. It is now time for it to be deleted from the law books.

This story first appeared in The Print

The Pakistani media may never undertake a full-throated challenge to the diktats of the deep state, but sometimes it is angry enough to let out a roar.

When you fail to create a narrative about Israel in the Pakistani media, you get very angry. You pick up Matiullah Jan, shoot Absar Alam and enter the houses of people like Asad Toor. Then you say that your tanks are becoming rusty, so let’s make peace with India…You called ‘Madre-Millat Fatima Jinnah a traitor and today you call Asad Toor a traitor…Do not ever enter the homes of journalists again. We don’t have tanks or guns like you, but we can tell the people of Pakistan about the stories that emerge from inside your homes. We will tell them whose wife shot whom inside the confines of their home. And which ‘General Rani’ was behind this. I hope you all have understood what I am saying.”

This was Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir of Geo News, speaking at the National Press Club in Islamabad over the weekend, in defence of his country’s media and mediapersons.

For a country that has been ruled by its army for more than half its existence and whose politics has consequently followed a tortuous course, Pakistan’s media has always kept at least one candle burning in pursuit of free speech and expression.

Mouthpiece of regimes as well as fiercely independent, both ultra-nationalist as well as severely critical of the military establishment, you can love or hate the Pakistani media; but it’s not easy to be indifferent to it.

A section holds its own

Over the decades, Pakistani journalists have been imprisoned, beaten and censored for writing and reporting on the 1971 break-up of Pakistan; on human rights abuses in Balochistan and elsewhere; on the shenanigans of political parties; and especially on the aggrandisement of the “deep state,” a euphemism for the army-ISI intelligence dyad that has infiltrated almost every branch of State and society.

In the past ten years, journalists have increasingly fallen foul. In May 2011, the body of Saleem Shahzad was found “entangled” in the Upper Jhelum canal, a couple of hours away from Islamabad; his body bore signs of torture. In April 2014, four gunmen fired at Hamid Mir, as he drove from Karachi airport to his Geo News office – he received bullets in his stomach and upper legs. Mir had told his friends that if he was attacked, he would hold ISI chief Lt Gen Zaheerul Islam responsible. One month before, journalist Raza Rumi barely escaped with his life and now mostly lives abroad – along with other journalists like Ayesha Siddiqa (a columnist at ThePrint), Taha Siddiqui and Gul Bukhari.

More recently, the Pakistani media’s reporting of its “hybrid government” – the rule of Prime Minister Imran Khan, brought to power with more than a little help from the military establishment, which means the establishment demands its pound of flesh more often than not – has been less tolerant.

But the gloves are not fully off – and may never be. The Pakistani media may never undertake a full-throated challenge to the diktats of the deep state, but sometimes it is angry enough to let out a roar that may damage not just the “enemy,” but also its own, cosy compact with it.

One of those moments is now.

The method of silencing

One week ago, three men barged into the house of popular vlogger and journalist Asad Ali Toor, told him they “belonged to the ISI” and proceeded to torture him. It seems that Toor, in his YouTube channel ‘Asad Toor Uncensored’, had talked about the sudden elevation of ISI chief Faiz Hameed’s brother Najaf Hameed, from ‘patwari’ to ‘naib tehsildar’ (both positions in the provincial civil service).

Only a month ago, journalist and former head of Pakistan’s broadcasting authority PEMRA, Absar Alam, had fortunately escaped with his life, the bullet merely grazing his ribs; last year in July, journalist Matiullah Jan, was picked up outside his wife’s school in Islamabad, but soon released.

On the eve of the attack against him, Alam had tweeted that as the head of PEMRA in 2017, he had ordered that TV Channel 92 be shut down because it violated guidelines, but was told by the ISI’s then counter-intelligence head General Faiz Hameed (he had not become ISI chief yet) to keep it open.

Certainly, Gen. Hameed earned his public spurs in that incident. For three weeks, the extreme Islamist Tehreek-e-Labbaik party gheraoed Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) government, which was in power at the time, upon which Hameed brokered an agreement between the two sides and signed off as guarantor. Many believed the Labbaik was merely a front for the ISI, which wanted to oust the PMLN and install a more favourable outfit, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) – an accusation Nawaz Sharif would make later.

Opening Pandora’s box?

Asad Toor’s break-in and torture last week has now galvanised Pakistan’s media. Demonstrations have been held all over the country, but none more in the spotlight than outside the National Press Club, Islamabad, over the weekend — where three journalists, Munizae Jahangir, Asma Shirazi and Hamid Mir, set the stage on fire.

The pushback was immediate. One Pakistani journalist alleged that a woman had complained to Pakistan’s investigative agency about harassment from Asad Toor. Another TV journalist wondered why Hamid Mir was accusing intelligence agencies.

Certainly, among Mir’s memorable lines at the protest was the challenge to the military establishment not to touch Pakistani journalists again. “We cannot enter your homes, like you enter ours, but we can write about the stories that emerge from them,” Mir said, going on to talk about a “General Rani” of the present-day military dispensation in Pakistan.

There has been a hushed silence to Mir’s remarks, save for a few YouTube comments. So who was “General Rani” and why is Mir talking about her today? Speculation is rife in Pakistan about sexual favours being exchanged by the current military establishment – a bit like the time Aqleem Akhtar was both “muse and mistress” to Gen. Yahya Khan, the martial law administrator from 1969-71. Akhtar turned out to be one of the most influential and enterprising women in Pakistan’s power circles.

Whatever the truth, it seems as if one section of the Pakistani media, at least for the moment, is tired of playing cat-and-mouse. There’s a certain Dutch courage about that community that is rare – they want their country to be a “normal place” where the army and the ISI are subordinate to an elected leadership and all citizens, including Ahmadis, are equal.

The pragmatists say this will never happen; the dreamers insist that one day it will. Pakistan lurches between these two positions today, even as its media refuses to totally capitulate. It knows that staying alive for that new dawn, just like Faiz Ahmad Faiz once wrote, is its best strategy.

POSTSCRIPT: Within 48 hours of delivering his speech, Hamid Mir’s employers, Geo News, took him off his show ‘Capital Talk’. Mir says he is determined to fight back and uphold Pakistan’s Constitution. A new page in Pakistan’s media history is turning.

(Edited by Prashant Dixit)

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This story first appeared in The Wire

By taking on big tech at a time when it tries to pulverize critics online, the BJP may have bitten off more than it could chew.

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Naya Daur Media

At the demonstration against attacks on journalists, @MunizaeJahangir, mincing no words – says Article 19 is used to silence citizens & journalists talking about Army & Judiciary instead of protecting them; warning that we won’t be silenced.

Every citizen has the right to raise his voice according to the law, listen to Naseem Zahra’s analysis

This story first appeared in Prothom Alo

By Rounaq Jahan

When I read the report ‘Take Tk 10 million now, will pay more later,’ published in Prothom Alo on 12 April 2021, the first thought that came to my mind was that I hadn’t read such an excellent investigative report in a long time. I thought if we had a sort of Pulitzer Prize here like in the US, surely this report deserved it. I decided to draw the attention of my colleagues in Colombia University’s department of journalism to this report so that they could see the quality of our investigative journalists too.

Rozina Islam’s report drew my attention because of her professionalism. In the report, filled with information and evidence, she included the statements of both those who had brought about the allegations of corruption as well as those being accused of corruption. The report did not generate any overall negative impression in my mind against the government or the health ministry. What struck me was that while there was corruption in the health ministry, there were still honest officials there who had rejected the lure of bribes and took the courage to seek action against the corrupt. The corrupt persons were transferred. The report gave me a sense of relief that despite there being corrupt persons around, there are still many honest officials too. Perhaps it is because of them that the country is moving ahead.

Then on 20 April and on 30 April I read two more of Rozina Islam’s reports. These too dealt with the discrepancies and irregularities in the health ministry. Her sources were officials within the ministry who had helped her out with information and documents. Rozina Islam and her sources, officials in the ministry, were working in public interest, not in their own interests or in the interests of a handful of people. I was reassured that the problems that Rozina Islam had so painstakingly exposed, would soon be addressed.

When a journalist who has long been investigating the corruption of various ministries is harassed and imprisoned for carrying out her professional duties, this is contrary to the government’s stand of zero tolerance against corruption

Two weeks later on the night of 17 May I saw on the TV news that Rozina Islam, the journalist who I felt deserved a Pulitzer Prize, had been harassed for five or six hours in the health ministry, spent the whole night in the police station and a case had been filed against her. She was taken to the court on the next day and then sent to jail. The next day she was not granted bail at the court hearing, The Detective Branch (DB) of police began investigations against her. I was stunned. I could not make out what was going on in the country. Why was the journalist, who had dug out information on corruption, not being rewarded by the state, but being sent to jail instead?

I have never met Rozina Islam. I checked information about her and found she had published several reports in the past on corruption in various ministries. Each and every report reflected her professionalism. She has received several awards, local and international.

I read those reports and understood she had collected the information from within the ministries. The difficulties faced in collecting such information, particularly for a woman journalist, was evident in a write-up of 14 November 2014 about investigations. It pointed to the difficulties in unearthing two sensational incidents in the ministry of liberation war affairs. It indicated how painstaking it was to dig out such news and how minutely the editors have to scrutinise these reports before publication.

We have a limited number of investigative journalists in our country. And there are even a fewer number of newspapers that continuously publish such investigative reports over the years. Prothom Alo for many years has been publishing high quality investigative reports. Perhaps that is why it is the country’s most popular newspaper.

The case has been filed against Rozina for ‘stealing’ official documents. Any journalist or researcher knows that their main task is to collect information. I remember back in 1968 when I came to Dhaka to collect information for my PhD thesis, I interviewed many government officials. Several bold government officials at the time gave me confidential documents on the disparities between East and West Pakistan at the time. I managed to write my thesis based on those documents. I could highlight the disparities within the state of Pakistan. I never felt I was stealing any secret state papers. In my experience I have seen many official documents marked with the words ‘SECRET’, simply to highlight the importance of these papers. Sharing the information of those documents with journalists or researchers does not go against the interests of the country. There are many instances where government officials have differences of opinion among themselves as to what can be shared with journalists and researchers and what cannot.

When I was researching the elections in 1970, a certain official told me that a long list of complaints against me by the police had been sent to him. He dismissed this as insignificant and hadn’t even felt the need to apprise me about the matter. When I sought information about the recent election, I had a mixed experience. One commissioner gave me information, though another commissioner refused to provide me with information. This harmed my research. Yet another researcher managed to get information from a different source. Actually government officials decide themselves what they consider can be shared or what should not be shared.

It was a relief to learn on 23 May that Rozina Islam had been granted bail. I hope the case against her is speedily withdrawn so that it does not hang above her head. Many editors and journalists have such cases hanging above their heads.

The court stated that newspapers played a supportive role for other institutions to perform in a proper manner. I take this comment positively. However, the five or six hours of harassment in the health ministry and later Rozina Islam’s incarceration sends out a different message. She was not depicted in a supportive role. The people feel that she must have unearthed further information of corruption and irregularities in the ministry.

When a journalist who has long been investigating the corruption of various ministries is harassed and imprisoned for carrying out her professional duties, this is contrary to the government’s stand of zero tolerance against corruption.

All officials of the government must understand that if the zero tolerance policy is to be implemented, then there is need for investigative journalists. They will not get information of corruption from government channels alone, because government officials have long been keeping such information secret. The more transparent and open the free flow of information is, the better it will be for establishing good governance and preventing corruption.

I hope that the government and the leaders of the journalist organisations can sit together so that the laws and clauses in various laws that hamper press freedom and freedom of expression are repealed.

Covid-19 has created a sense of uncertainty among us all. We hope that in these times the government takes initiatives to ensure the fundamental rights of all citizens.

* Rounaq Jahan is a political scientist and distinguished fellow, Centre for policy Dialogue (CPD).
* This column appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir

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This story first appeared in Prothom Alo

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This story first appeared in Voicepk.net

By Rehan Piracha

PFUJ and Freedom Network Pakistan welcomed tabling of the much-awaited the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Bill in the National Assembly but said the legislation should also define freelance journalists as well as further empower the journalists’ protection commission.

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and Freedom Network Pakistan welcomed tabling of the much-awaited the Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Bill, 2021 in the National Assembly but said the legislation should also define freelance journalists as well as further empower the journalists’ protection commission.

On May 21, Lal Chand, Parliamentary Secretary for Human Rights, introduced the bill in the House to promote, protect and effectively ensure the independence, impartiality, safety and freedom of expression of journalists and media professionals. The law would offer ‘journalists and media professionals’ right to carry out their journalist work in conflict-affected areas within the country, without threats, intimidation, harassment or fear of persecution or targeting’. Under the bill, the government would take all steps to protect journalists and media professionals from all forms of abuse, violence and exploitation at the hands of any person, institution (private or public) or authority.

Speaking on the floor of the National Assembly, Dr Nafeesa Shah, MNA from Pakistan Peoples Party, said she had also moved a bill as private member for the protection of journalists. Shah said her party believed in expression for freedom, adding that she is withdraw her private member bill as not to make this bill controversial.

More powers needed for commission

In a statement, the PFUJ welcomed the bill but urged the government to grant more powers to the commission that would hear the complaints of media persons. PFUJ President Shahzada Zulfiqar and Secretary General Nasir Zaidi said that apart from certain reservations and recommendations, the draft of the bill is much better than the ones prepared in the last 15 years.

“This is a result of our continuous struggle for such a law for journalists’ protection and freedom of the press” the PFUJ leadership said. However, there are certain clauses of the bill that need to be improved or amended, the two leaders said, adding that the commission is not fully empowered.

Bill should include definition of freelance journalists

“For instance freelance journalist may also be defined apart from inclusion of members of the PBC, HRCP, NCHR and other stakeholders should also be included in the commission besides the commission should be empowered to summon government officials. In addition to that the definition of journalist or media person should be clarified and broadened,” the PFUJ said.

The PFUJ also expressed reservations over the method to appoint the chairman of the commission. “The PFUJ had demanded that a judge of the Supreme Court or a retired judge of the apex court should be appointed as the chairman of the commission but the bill has set different terms and conditions for the qualification of the chairman than the ones suggested,” read the PFUJ statement.

“We believe that these terms and conditions should be changed because if the chairman is appointed in this way then he will be subservient to the government and his impartiality would be questionable,” the PFUJ leadership pointed out. In addition to that more stakeholders should be inducted into the commission so that it would emerge as a balanced entity, the PFUJ said.

Despite these all shortcomings, the preparation of a bill is a positive step in right direction, the leaders of journalist fraternity said. The PFUJ hoped that their points and suggestions would be incorporated in the final draft of the bill. The two leaders requested the government to summon the other stakeholders before the committee of the Parliament so that these proposals could be discussed and incorporated in the draft. They urged both treasury and opposition parties to fully support recommendations made by PFUJ before it is tabled in both the houses of the parliament with the strong support for its adoption by the National Assembly and the Senate.

Bill silent on post-threat scenario

In a separate statement, the Freedom Network Pakistan welcomed the government’s move to table the bill in parliament. “The bill should have been tabled years back which could have saved many lives of journalists,” Iqbal Khattak, Executive Director of the Freedom Network. Pakistan, told Voicepk.net. However, khattak said the bill certainly needs improvement as this draft law is silent about freelance journalists. “The bill also missing office of public prosecutor which is cornerstone in father UN Plan of Action,” he said.

Khattak said the bill is also silent about post-threat situation to journalists. “Who will provide protection to a journalist if threat is very serious and he or she needs immediate relocation as Freedom Network does under Pakistan Journalists Safety Fund,” he said. The Freedom Network also said the composition of the Commission for Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals under the bill should have broadened to civil society representation.

Bill for protection of journalists tabled in Sindh Assembly

In a related development, Sindh Minister for Information Syed Nasir Hussain Shah presented the Sindh Protection of Journalists and Other Media Practitioners Bill 2021 in the provincial assembly on May 21. The bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Law, which will scrutinise the proposed legislation and present its report to the assembly in three days. The bill been prepared by the information department in consultation with the PFUJ and the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) and senior journalists and media experts.

The PFUJ and KUJ welcomed the tabling of the bill for protection of journalists in the province.

The PFUJ said the bill was a result of Sindh government’s efforts and the struggle of the PFUJ and Karachi Union of Journalist. They hoped that the bill would be passed soon and it would ensure the protection of media workers and their rights. The PFUJ leaders appealed to other provincial governments to come up with their own bill as well for the protection of journalists and media persons.

In a statement, KUJ President Nizamuddin Siddiqui and General Secretary Fahim Siddiqui asked the members of the Sindh Assembly to pass the bill so that it could become law immediately. “Today is a historic day in that the Journalist Protection Bill was first introduced in the National Assembly and is now being tabled in the Sindh Assembly,” the KUJ said.

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