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| Threat to invesatigative journalism in Pakistan | | | B L KAK
Pakistan is now what it wasn't yesterday. Changes, one after another, take place, rapidly of course. Various categories of people, police and politicians face threats of sorts--and make their adversaries face threats under one pretext or the other. The problem has become somewhat complicated for those who are engaged in the field of investigative journalism.
Being a journalist in Pakistan, especially an independent-minded one who would want to practice the profession as it should be done, has never been easy. Other than the relatively low pay compared with what one gets in many other professions, the problem has always been that there is often a heavy price to pay for investigative journalism. In carrying out their professional duties, journalists in Pakistan face threats not only from the state and its various law-enforcement and intelligence agencies but also from non-government parties such as the land mafia, religious and political organisations and sometimes even commercial entities.
The greatest threat, however, comes from the state's extensive and vast intelligence network. Journalists who do stories on, say, issues related to the armed forces, the government's US-led war against terror or those who wish to probe allegations of official corruption at high levels can expect to be warned off. This in the past used to come in the form of an anonymous phone call to a reporter who was thought to be particularly troublesome, according some Pakistani commentators. Whatever the method, the objective of the warning is always the same: that journalists as a whole (and not just the one warned) need to get into line and need to know that they cannot report on certain things and if they do, then they should be prepared for the consequences.
Of late, however, these warnings have assumed more sinister proportions. The family of late Hayatullah Khan alleges that his murder was perpetrated by an intelligence agency, and the detention incommunicado for over three months of Mukesh Rupeta, a correspondent of Geo TV, severely undermines the claims often made by the Pakistan President and the Prime Minister that the press is free. Mukesh Rupeta had been missing since early March and it was only after his disappearance was disclosed by his employers that he was presented before a court. Till then, the government -- as per what seems to have become the 'standard operating procedure' in such cases -- had been denying any knowledge of his whereabouts.
However, the day the Pak national press reported that he had been missing for over three months, and that he might have been taken into custody by the intelligence agencies for filming a military installation, he was produced before a court and the police filed charges against him under the Official Secrets Act. What was the need to detain him and his camera man incommunicado for over three months?
If the Pak government believes that a journalist has violated a certain law and detains him, then surely it should not lie about the matter and deny any knowledge of the detention. It also does not have the moral prerogative to detain him for an indefinite period without notifying his family, presenting him before a court and providing him access to a lawyer. From the number of such cases in the past, it would seem that those doing the detaining surely could not be working without the sanction of their superiors. Tacit or explicit approval of such barbaric methods whose sole objective is to terrorise and intimidate all journalists must stop.
A truly free press is an important cog -- in fact a prerequisite -- for a fully functional democracy because of its role of monitor over government policies, decisions and the conduct of public officials. Crude methods aimed at gagging the press and thus preventing it from carrying out its crucial watchdog function should be permanently dispensed with, because they have no place in this day and age and because they thoroughly contradict official claims on press freedom.
The Christian Science Monitor has, on the other day, brought to the fore horror-filled story about Pakistani journalist, Hayatullah Khan. Khan, according to the publication, took a photo of something Pakistan's government said was never there. Within days he disappeared without a trace, dragged off by masked men. Last week, six months after his adduction, he body was found dumped in North Waziristan, handcuffed and shot in the back.
The tragic news has startled the Pakistan, sparking protests, and the government ordered a judicial probe into his death. It also sent a chilling message about the risks of reporting the conflict in Waziristan, one of the premier fronts in the war on terror. Khan's photo spoke a thousand words, much as his death does today. In December, he rushed to a house in North Waziristan, where Abu Hamza Rabia, an Egyptian Al Qaida commander, had been killed moments before in an explosion.
Government authorities would later say Rabia had blown himself up while making a bomb. But Khan, who enjoyed a reputation as an intrepid reporter, snapped photographs of contrary evidence: fragments of a US Hellfire missile. The Pakistani government stuck to its story, dismissing the photo, which was published in Pakistan. But Khan reported that Rabia met his demise at the end of a missile fired by a CIA drone. That assertion seems to have cost Khan his life. His murderers remain unknown. Some journalists and Khan's family blame the intelligence services of the government, a claim Islamabad denies.
What is most striking is that Khan's body was found at all. The message journalists are taking from his mysterious death: Stay out of Waziristan. "Try and meddle where you're not supposed to, try coming to the tribal areas and you put your life at risk," says Adnan Rehmat, director of Internews Pakistan, a media watchdog organisation.
Khan's death, which has garnered international attention, is a reminder that Waziristan is now a media black hole. The stakes are high in Waziristan, where some 80,000 Pakistani troops have battled Al Qaida and the Taliban for four years. But as the fighting in Waziristan intensifies, little information is coming out of the area. Khan is the fifth, and most high-profile, journalist to have been killed there in the last two years. Few reporters dare enter, and those who do face harassment from the military and death threats from the Taliban, they say.
Khan, who worked for an Urdu-language newspaper and a European photo agency, was rare among journalists in Waziristan, taking risks that many now avoid. Out of some 150 journalists formerly covering the area, only a handful are left in the region. Reporters such as Haroon Rashid, a BBC correspondent based in Peshawar, say they seldom venture into Waziristan. "We are helpless. At least one party should secure your safety. But no one is willing to help a journalist," Rashid has b een quoted by Christian Science Monitor as saying.
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