The ugly conspiracy of silence in Pakistan
Countries with an image problem have two ways to change the way the world looks at them. They can either take the necessary political, legal, social and administrative steps that will address the issues that in the first place created a negative image about them; or, if they are countries like Pakistan, they will muzzle, intimidate, even eliminate, not just the bearers of bad tidings but also dissenters and critics of the shenanigans of the state and “deep state”.
Dirty realities
Apparently, the thinking is that if no one in Pakistan exposes or questions the dark and dirty realities of the place, no one in the rest of the world will be wiser for it, and everyone will think that Pakistan is the most hip, happening, and happy country in the world. Unfortunately for Pakistan, bad news, like water, always manages to find an outlet. Pakistan was never an easy place for journalists. But even in the worst days of military rule, journalists found a way to get the news out, often between the lines.
The end of the Zia dictatorship in 1988 saw a lot more openness in the English media, not so much in the mass circulation Urdu press. This was because the establishment didn’t care so much for what the classes read as they did about what the masses read. As a result, news and views were much more tightly controlled in the Urdu press, which was used to peddle the line that the "deep state" wanted.
For instance, while the Urdu press glorified jihad because that was useful for fundraising and recruitment, the English press used the space available for critical reportage on jihadi groups, their links with the military establishment, their activities in Kashmir and Afghanistan, and the criticism of the "establishment". This continued right until the early 2010s when the "deep state" suddenly woke up to the fact that the stuff in the English press, which was Pakistan’s window to the world, was contributing to Pakistan’s negative image.
During the tenure of Gen Raheel Sharif, the thought-control project of the Pakistan military establishment went to a totally new level. The propaganda wing of the military, ISPR, became hyperactive, intrusive, and imposing in reshaping the narrative. A sort of informal censorship became the norm. Hotspots like FATA, Balochistan, PoK, even Karachi became virtual no-go areas for independent reporting critical of the "deep state". Carefully supervised conducted tours become the norm. TV panels were stacked with former generals, and civilian panellists often obsequiously swallow the rubbish the generals peddle.
Investigative stories on the extremist and jihadi groups have all but dried up. Most journalists and owners of newspapers and TV channels got co-opted. Any media organisation with the temerity to take on the establishment was bludgeoned into submission — Geo TV is a prime example. Laws have been (mis)used to shut dissent on social media. Gag orders were imposed on media (with some help from a pliable and complicit "independent" judiciary) from airing views of or even referring to people (including politicians) viewed as anti-state.
Deep state
In recent weeks and months, there has been an uptick in the attacks by state, "deep state" and non-state actors working as auxiliaries of the "deep state" on journalists, activists, bloggers who have dared to dissent against the narrative being peddled by the state. The latest such attack was on journalist Taha Siddiqui who narrowly escaped an attempted abduction by a bunch of armed men on a busy road in Islamabad. Taha had been harassed earlier as well for his social media posts which were critical of the military establishment in Pakistan. This time the intimidation went to the next level.
But Taha is not the only journalist or blogger to receive this treatment. In January 2017 five bloggers went missing. Their crime? They were secular, progressive activists who questioned, wrote, poked fun at and spoke against the "deep state" and its interference in politics as well as its deep association with all sorts of despicable characters — terrorists, extremists, Islamists. They were picked up by the "agencies", kept in illegal custody for weeks (one of them still remains "missing"), tortured, humiliated, their families threatened, a sinister campaign accusing them of committing blasphemy was carried out in the so-called free and independent media of Pakistan and finally released.
Conspiracy of silence
One of them, Ahmed Waqas Goraya, subsequently revealed all that was done to him but refrained from naming his captors. The reason is simple: most of his family lives in Pakistan and was therefore vulnerable to harm caused by na-maloom afraad ("unknown persons" who are known to everyone but about whom everyone pretends otherwise). Other journalists working in the mainstream media have also been roughed up, harassed, intimidated. Human rights activists like Wahid Baloch and Punhal Sario and student activists have been tortured and traumatised for raising their voice against the thousands of "missing persons" in Balochistan and Sindh.
Not surprisingly, not one of the na-maloom afraad has so far been arrested. The government, media, civil society, politicians, issue pro forma condemnations and hold the standard protests, and then it is back to business as usual. There is never any attempt to get to the bottom of these "disappearances", partly because the victims are too terrified to name their tormentors, and partly because the police and judiciary would rather not stir the pot too much lest they suffer a similar or worse fate.
The conspiracy of silence over the roguishness of the Pakistani "deep state" means that now only the most sanitised, sterile and anodyne news and views are aired in Pakistan. Worse, the impulse, even compulsion, for reform that comes with criticism, is now absent from the public discourse. But the puerility of shutting the eyes of Pakistanis and imagining that the rest of the world cannot see what is happening there is not going to end its image problem.
(Courtesy of Mail Today)