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| Restrictions on freedom of expression: 'Only the faces have changed, laws and policies remain the same |
It was a hot afternoon on August 7, 2021, when the door of journalist and YouTuber Imran Shafqat's residence in the Mughalpura area of Lahore was knocked.
When the door opened, a woman asked, "Is this Imran Shafqat's house?" At the same time, a man tried to enter the house from behind the woman.
According to Imran, when he came out of the room in this noise, plainclothes officials caught him and took him out of the house to the main road.
Imran Shafqat was forcibly detained by the FIA cyber crime wing officials.
"I was caught like a terrorist is caught," he says. At that time, I did not understand what was happening and I did not even think that there was a case against me.
According to Imran, he was taken to the Cyber Crime Wing police station in Gulberg and was told on the way that there were complaints against him of derogatory behavior against the judges of the Supreme Court, the Pakistan Army, and women, especially the wife of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
He says that after some time when he reached the police station, the FIA inspector said, 'We have no problem with you, there are some objections to your journalism, and the state is a plaintiff against you'.
On that day, along with Imran Shafqat, another journalist was also arrested and brought to the FIA office. He was Aamir Mir, today the Information Minister in the caretaker cabinet of Punjab.
According to Imran Shafqat, the FIA officials told him and Amir Mir that they should write to us and that they will not do this work in the future. So they will not give news.
He also claims that he was told to apologize and write down that he will not do this in the future, so we said, 'You take action, we have not done anything wrong and we will not apologize'.
According to Imran Shafqat, this process of forced detention and investigation lasted for four hours, but no FIR was filed against him during that time and then he was released on the personal bail of senior journalist Sohail Waraich.
Imran says that since that day till today, the case against him has not been processed.
"We did not appear in any court nor applied for bail but according to my information that case is still there in the records of the FIA".
When this action was taken against Imran Shafqat, Tehreek-e-Insaf was in power in the country and Imran Khan was sitting on the prime minister's chair.
The next scene is in March 2023, a year and a half after the incident. It is about a year since the end of Imran Khan's government and the PDM government under the leadership of Shehbaz Sharif is in the country.
On the afternoon of March 23, when Azhar Mashwani, Imran Khan's focal person for social media, left home to go to Zaman Park, he had no illusions that he would not reach his destination and then search for him for a week. The process will continue.
Mashwani, who went missing on March 23, announced his safe return on Twitter on March 31 saying, "Alhamdulillah, I have just returned home safe and sound." I pray that our other captive workers will have breakfast with their families soon.
Azhar Mashwani, in his abduction statement submitted to the Lahore High Court after his return, said that he was detained by "unknown persons dressed in Punjab Police uniform and plain clothes" near the Akbar Chowk area of the township.
According to the statement, after blindfolding him, he was taken away with a cloth on his head, and his mobile phone was confiscated.
He said in the statement given to the court that 'during detention, he was fasted for six to eight hours and was handcuffed to a wooden chair and questioned' He was asked about the activities taking place.
According to the statement, Azhar Mashwani was subjected to a polygraph test three times during his detention, in which he was repeatedly asked about running certain Twitter handles and accounts.
He alleged in his statement that the people who took him said that he was "picked up on the orders of DGFIA and Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and I will be kept as a hostage until he wants".
This treatment of Imran Shafqat and Azhar Mashwani happened in the periods of different political parties, but it is clear from this that the faces have changed in these periods, but the policies of banning the expression of opinion have remained the same.
Imran Khan's government, which was formed as a result of the 2018 general elections, has been in power for more than four years, and during this time, it has been accused of imposing restrictions on freedom of expression, putting pressure on journalists and actions against them. It seemed.
After the Tehreek-e-Insaf government was overthrown in 2022 as a result of no-confidence and a coalition government headed by Shehbaz Sharif was formed, the idea was that this government would protect journalists, bloggers, and YouTubers from expressing the freedom of opinion and anti-government narratives. She will not tolerate the attitude that she has been openly opposing for the last four years.
TLeading analysts say that the policy of restricting freedom of expression is the only policy of the previous government which is being continued vigorously by the current PDM government.
"Earlier PTI and Establishment were on the same page, now PDM has replaced PTI"
Journalist and anchor person Hamid Mir, who faced restrictions during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf era, says that the government and the establishment are on the same page in imposing restrictions on journalists and those who voice against the government and state institutions on social media.
"Earlier, PTI and the military establishment were on the same page, now PDM has replaced PTI on the same page."
The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf claims that during the PDM regime, more than 3,000 PDM workers have been arrested, most of whom spoke against the government and the establishment on social media.
The use of sedition law, which started during the Imran Khan era to suppress the voices of opponents of the government and the establishment, has continued under the PDM era and all the cases against journalists and anchor persons have been registered. The provisions of this law were also included in them.
The first large-scale operation against PTI activists and especially social media activists after the PDM government came to power was when a military helicopter crash in August 2022 killed Southern Command commander Lt. Gen. After the death of Sarfaraz Khan, various tweets by Tehreek-e-Insaaf supporters on social media allegedly tried to reinforce the impression that foreigners were allegedly trying to topple the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The characters who played an important role in the plot have reached their logical conclusion.
According to FIA officials, six people who posted such tweets were detained after which these tweets were deleted from their social media accounts.
According to FIA cyber wing officials, more than 30 people were also arrested in this case, whose social media accounts were being used in the campaign related to this incident. Cybercrime wing officials claim that many social media accounts were operating from foreign countries in this incident.
According to the officials, all the people involved in this incident were arrested, although they have been granted bail, the proceedings of this case are going on in the concerned court and the challan of this case has been presented in the court and the decision of this case is expected soon.
According to FIA officials, since PDM came to power, 1469 cases related to cybercrime were registered across the country, out of which more than 300 cases were related to spreading hate and false content against state institutions on social media. While in the first two months of this year, 17 cases were registered for insulting state institutions and their heads, and 14 people involved in them have been arrested.
In this case, videos were also aired on Pakistani media in which various people could be seen admitting their affiliation with Tehreek-e-Insaaf and expressing regret for joining this campaign.
Journalists going out of the country
Iftikhar Durrani, leader of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and ex-spokesman of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, says that due to the actions taken by the current government to suppress freedom of expression, thousands of workers of his party and their families have left the 'ruling coalition'. Enduring oppression'.
Speaking to BBC, he claimed that eight key members of PTI's social media wing were detained in Sindh province, while six people were detained from Punjab and seven from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Allegations of running a regular campaign on social media against the army and other state institutions and their heads have been made.
During the last year, when there were actions against the social media activists against the state and its important institutions and their officers, the journalists were also not safe from it.
After the PDM government came to power, many journalists left the country who had played their role in smoothing public opinion in favor of the government in the talk shows aired on various private TV channels during the government of Imran Khan. And after the change of government, PDM allies became major critics of the government and the establishment.
Among the important names who left the country were journalists like Sabir Shakir and Arshad Sharif. Arshad Sharif was murdered in Kenya sometime after leaving Pakistan and the investigation into his death is still ongoing. Before Arshad Sharif left the country, cases of sedition were registered against him in various cities of Balochistan and Sindh.
The public relations department of the army says that the army has no role in the killing of Arshad Sharif. The federal government has registered a case of the murder of Arshad Sharif in Islamabad and the owner of the private TV channel ARY Salman Iqbal is also named in this case.
Shahid Aslam, a journalist from Lahore, is also an example of this, during the current government's tenure, FIA obtained the tax information related to former Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and his family from a website called Fact Focus. Affiliate Journalist Ahmed Noorani was arrested on charges of sending him, but later he was released on bail.
Not only this, during this one-year tenure of PDM, YouTubers who used social media to promote their ideas, apart from mainstream journalism, also faced difficulties, who openly opposed Tehreek-e-Insaaf and Imran Khan's position. seem to support
Be it anchor Imran Riaz Khan or Siddique Jan, several people like him have been served summons notices by FIA on charges of 'opposing and defaming the state and its important institutions' and being detained in various cases. Later they had to knock on the door of the court from where they were getting relief.
More than a dozen cases were registered against Imran Riaz in different cities of the country and in these cases, he was also arrested by Attock and Chakwal police, but later he was released on bail. BBC repeatedly contacted Imran Riaz to know his position on these issues, but he did not respond.
Fauzia Shahid, the executive member of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, the largest organization of journalists in Pakistan, says that the media policy related to journalists has been going like this for the past several decades, but there has been a change in it for some time. Journalists as well as social media users are being targeted to restrict freedom of expression.
He said that the PDM government has continued the policy of the former ruling party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf in this regard.
Journalist and analyst Mazhar Abbas also say that only the faces have changed, the laws are the same, which can be called 'Draconian Law'.
Talking to BBC, he said that Pakistan Muslim League brought PICA law to suppress the voice of its opponents, on the other hand, PTI came up with PICA Ordinance which was even stricter than the PICA law.
He said that the statement of former Federal Information Officer Fawad Chaudhry is still on record in which he had said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz could not implement the PICA Act while the PTI government should implement the law completely. will
He said that against anti-government journalists and social media activists, the way the sedition law was freely used during democratic governments is unprecedented.
"Government institutions are working according to the constitution and law"
When the BBC spoke to Home Minister Rana Sanaullah about these measures taken by the PDM government, he said, "State comes first and politics comes later."
He said that if the role of the heads of state institutions will be portrayed on social media and if the state keeps silent in such matters, then such action is aimed at weakening it.
The Home Minister said that the allegations of PTI targeting its workers or sympathizers under any agenda are not true.
According to him, there are clear instructions to the FIA and other institutions that legal action should be taken only against those persons who are involved in the corruption of the institutions and their associated persons.
The Home Minister claimed that the action taken by the FIA against the persons was done on a solid basis and in the light of irrefutable evidence.
Rana Sanaullah said that there are many such videos on social media in which the officials admit their mistakes and say that they will not again be a part of any campaign on social media that is done by any organization or personality. Be concerned with character assassination'.