Freedom of expression: ‘journalists to emerge successful in struggle’
ISLAMABAD (November 20 2007): Although the United Nations Human Rights Charter grants citizens of all states the right to receive free flow of information, Nusrat Javed, was not very optimistic that, despite the fact that Aaj channel has revived, his popular talk-show Bolta Pakistan would be aired again.
An anchor person of Aaj TV channel, he was a speaker in the seminar on ‘Restriction of Media and Citizens right to information,’ at the Sustainable Policy Development Institute on Monday.
Nusrat said, things had gone awry since March 9 after President Musharraf tried to oust the Chief Justice and finally succeeded in driving him out on November 3.
After the movement ignited media men persuaded their owners that the movement needed proper projection. Javed called the often floated view that the media was misbehaving a myth. All private TV channels, without the exception of a few were obeying regulatory disciplines, notwithstanding a specific list of persons given to owners to not allow them to talk shows and programmes. After taking over, the President allowed private TV channels to proliferate.
The idea went back to the days of Kargil when General Musharraf thought that he had won that war, but the state owned TV had not given him good projection. Therefore, when he took over the inspired newspaper owners to come forward and open TV channels.
‘I do not wish to be nabbed when I stay out of SDPI’s property. The information where I would be taken to would be denied to my loved ones and the family, said the anchor person, and that precisely was the situation journalists were up against presently, said Nusrat, adding that, this would not go away after the emergency is lifted, as expected, in a few days, or elections are held.
The offensive law denying freedom of expression would still be in place. To defeat that possibility, journalists were now thinking of courting arrests. ‘Journalists have become battle hardened now.’ But he was hopeful that the journalists would be successful. The market economy would help them achieve the objective. Citing an example, he said at one time Bolta Pakistan was blocked for four days in urban towns and cities.
He went up to the channel owner and asked why they were taking risks for him. ‘It’s not that ,’ he said, ‘The programme has assured advertisement till next January, and even if it is not seen in Lahore or Islamabad, people of Lalamusa or Multan were still watching the programme and purchasing advertised goods for marriages of their kin.
In another example, he pointed to large advertisement in newspapers from mobile cell companies after realising that with TV channels shut up, circulation of newspapers had gone up. That promises a future for free press Matiullah Jan, a free lance writer, a representative of third generation journalists, vowed to carry forward the struggle and keep on providing maximum information.
He counted President Musharraf’s agreement that there should be a code of conduct for the Media. Journalists’ struggle was not connected to the issue. It really linked to the General’s move to shut down judiciary.
Contrary to Nusrat Javed’s argument he said the military was strangling the economy with a business empire. Matiullah Jan urged both demilitarisation and democratisation.
He also accused the international powers of encouraging General Musharraf in creating constitutional crisis, by urging him only to lift emergency while the country remained under the spell of Provisional Constitutional Order, which, was a form of martial law.
Chief of Consumers Protection organisation, Naeem Mirza, said a change had come upon the country after March 9. However, the origin of trouble went back to the days of feudalists like Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto or the industrial class led by Nawaz Sharif, who became comrade of dictators. The intelligentsia was waking up only now to this rainbow of resistance from where the colours of political class missed out.
Centre of Peace and Development Initiative, Mukhtar Ahmad pleaded strongly that the right to know was one of the fundamental freedoms in which the obligation of the Civil Society was critical.
He reminded the audience of the Freedom of Information Legislation in Pakistan promulgated by General Musharraf government in 2002, and said freedom of media is to be understood as a framework for citizen’s flow of unfiltered information not to be decided by one agency or another.
UN Declaration on Human Rights recognised the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want. Pakistan was one of 47 members in the international community elected to the Human Rights Council in 2006.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:11/20/2007
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