April 28, 2014
“WE cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used
when we created them,” Albert Einstein had argued. The ruckus kicked up by
indignant patriots after the assassination attempt on Hamid Mir proves just
that.
Outdated notions of national security and national interest
and an unflinching commitment to entrench them oppressively are alive and well
and dutifully being served by servile disciples across our state and society.
Will witch-hunts in the name of national security make Pakistan a stronger
state?
The attack on Hamid Mir, Geo’s response to the attack, the
ISI establishment’s response to Geo coverage, and the acute polarisation caused
as a consequence of this back and forth is proof of our degeneration into an
intolerant lynch mob. We are unable to distinguish between suspicion and
conviction, between fair reporting and slander. We have no patience for
accountability and due process. Anyone questioning our security state’s version
of national interest is a traitor who must be banished.
At least three aspects of the Hamid Mir story deserve
attention. One, what happened to Mir and continuing attacks on journalists that
make Pakistan one of the most dangerous places for journalists. Two, how Geo
treated Amir Mir’s accusation against the DG ISI as a key suspect in the attack
against Mir. Three, the vilification campaign launched against Geo and Hamid
Mir to brand them traitors and ban them.
Freedom of speech is not freedom to slander or malign. The
right to hold and express an opinion needs to be protected. But presenting
opinion as fact is a disservice to journalism. Geo crossed a red line in
reporting Amir Mir’s accusation against the DG ISI not because it aired the
accusation, but because the manner in which it did amounted to running a media
trial, and not just indicting but condemning the DG ISI in the public eye. And
this wasn’t the first time.
Components of the Jang-Geo group ran a vile campaign against
Asma Jahangir on the eve of her election as president Supreme Court Bar
Association. They have run similar campaigns against politicos/public officials
(Raja Rentals, Mr 10pc, etc) and condemned them in media trials for being
corrupt or unscrupulous, without presenting opposing viewpoints. Not only have
they gotten away with partial journalism, once the hallmark of evening rags,
the practice is now entrenched and followed by most media groups.
It isn’t that journalists and media houses don’t know how to
do it right. The practice of slander is deliberate, as the power to scandalise
is what is used to extort and exert influence. Geo’s news desk could have run
Amir Mir’s accusation without putting the DG ISI on trial with sound effects
and all. It could have presented the response from the DG ISI or his office
simultaneously. It could have highlighted the need to investigate the serious
allegation and moved on to other aspects of the story instead of cultivating
the melodrama for hours.
Just because media houses have gotten away with slander in
the past, doesn’t make it right. Slander is condemnable, period. And not just
when it involves the DG ISI. The media was wrong when it presented Khawaja
Asif’s 2006 speech critical of the army as one delivered by him in 2014 to put
Khawaja in the dock, or when it ran a campaign against Hussain Haqqani; just as
Geo wasn’t right in drumming up charges against the DG ISI in the Mir case.
“I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death
your right to say it”, Evelyn Beatrice Hall had written in Voltaire’s biography.
No matter how unpleasant or abhorrent Geo’s presentation of accusations against
the DG ISI, it is nowhere close to being as abhorrent as the attack on Hamid
Mir.
Geo can be prosecuted for defamation and slapped with heavy
penalties if convicted in accordance with the law, but it must not be condemned
as a traitor or banned just because it had the audacity to voice a victim’s
suspicion against a ranking general.
The ludicrous claim that Geo or Hamid Mir is a national
security threat is a matter of opinion. What is a matter of fact, however, is
that someone executed a plan to kill Hamid Mir, who wound up injured in
hospital with six bullets in his body. What is a fact is that 29 journalists
have turned up dead in Pakistan in the last four years and many more have been
attacked for exercising their right to speak freely.
What is a fact is that intelligence agencies threaten
journalists with dire consequences for reporting unpalatable stories or
expressing undesirable opinions. What is a fact is that almost all studies
analysing abuse of power by intelligence agencies (starting from Air Marshal
Zulfiqar Ali Khan report in 1989 to the Missing Persons, Saleem Shahzad and OBL
commission reports recently) highlighted that powers exercised by intelligence
agencies were liable to abuse and needed to be subjected to effective checks
and balances. What is a fact is that our khaki-controlled security
establishment has not heeded any such recommendations.
This old game of branding as traitors those critical of
failed conceptions of national security and national interest has not served us
well. A doctrine of national security that condemns citizens who seek to speak
their minds and aims to instil fear in the hearts of dissenters brash enough to
point fingers at holy cows cannot possibly help a country in need of urgent
reform.
The writer is a lawyer.
sattar@post.harvard.edu
Twitter: @babar_sattar
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