Pakistan fails to combat impunity of crimes against journalists
Chehra WebDesk
ISLAMABAD,
Two years after Pakistan became the first country in the world to specifically
legislate on safety of journalists, the state is still failing to use this
important legal instrument to combat rising impunity of crimes against journalists,
reveals an annual report on the state of impunity against media practitioners
in Pakistan, issued here on Sunday.
Since the
promulgation of safety laws for journalists first by the Sindh government and
then the federal government in late 2021, Pakistan continues to record an alarming
increase in persecution of journalists, especially by government authorities
and state agencies, including kidnapping, physical assaults and serious legal
cases against them including on unproven charges of sedition, treason and
electronic crimes, in the two-year post-legislation period, according to
Freedom Network annual report marking the International Day to End Impunity
falling on November 02.
Pakistan made
history in 2021 passing two special laws to protect journalists. The Sindh
Assembly passed the “Sindh Protection of Journalists and other Media
Practitioners Act-2021” while the National Assembly passed “Protection of
Journalists and Media Professionals Act-2021” in space of few months. Azad
Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
and Punjab have not passed a similar law for their jurisdictions.
According to
the Freedom Network report titled “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back –
Pakistan Legislates on Safety of Jorunalists, But Still Fails to Protect Them,”
at least 37.5 per cent of the violations in Pakistan – 93
out of total 248 cases in period between August 2021-August 2023 – were recorded
in Islamabad alone. Sindhwas the second worst region in Pakistan with 22.5% of the violations
(56 cases), the report
said, adding that it is ironic that most attacks against journalists happened
in this period in regions that legislated for their safety.
Eleven
journalists were also killed or lost lives in line of duty during the same
period. Additional detailed statistics are included in the report available on
Freedom Network website.
Pakistan was ranked157 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without
Border’s World Press Freedom Index in 2021 before the laws were passed. In 2023,
the country had improved its media freedom rank to 150 due to the two laws – a legal
framework that reflected an acknowledgement by the country that it needed to
tackle the problem of violence against journalists and combat impunity through
legal guarantees. But that is
where the progress stops.
“It is very
disturbing to see the good work of the two legislatures – the Sindh Assembly
and the federal parliament – diluted by not making the laws fully operational
to provide protection to journalists,” Iqbal Khattak, the Executive Director of
Freedom Network said while releasing the report. “Both the federal and Sindh
governments are responsible for effectively dysfunctionalising their own laws
and therefore delaying and effectively denying justice to journalists,” he
added.
The federal Protection of
Journalists and Media Professionals Act was passed unanimously by the National Assembly when
Imran Khan was prime minister in 2021. After he was voted out, Shehbaz Sharif
became the prime minister in 2022 until the parliamentary tenure expired in
August 2023.
“In these two
years, both the Khan and Sharif governments failed to establish a safety
commission mandated by the law which meant that in effect the federal law
remained non-operationalized and hence failed to help a single of the 93
journalists in Islamabad that were killed, attacked, injured, threatened or
harassed in the two years since its enactment. The two governments also failed
to enforce the law,” the report said.
A somewhat
similar situation prevailed in Sindh. The Sindh
Protection of Journalists and Other Media Practitioners Act was passed in June
2021 by the provincial assembly and notified officially in August 2021, but the
Commission for the Protection of Journalists and other Media Practitioners (CPJMP),
proposed by the law, was only notified one year late in December 2022 with
respected jurist Rasheed A Razvi appointed its first chairperson.
“Even after the Commission was set up to ensure
enforcement of the law, the Sindh government until August 2023 had failed to
provide either an office, staff or a formal budget for its operations, thereby procedurally
hampering its operations and severely restricting the Commission’s ability to
provide protection, relief and justice for the growing number of violations
against journalists and media entities in Sindh province,” the report notes.
To Commission Chairperson Razvi’s credit, without any
operational resources, he was able to come to the aid of several journalists in
Sindh who were either kidnapped or attacked by issuing notices to the
provincial authorities, including law enforcement agencies, to either recover
or safeguard the journalists. “His orders were complied, indicating that if
resourced properly, the Commission can help reduce impunity of crimes against
journalists and media in Sindh,” according to the report.
For
Pakistan to benefit from the promise of two legislations on journalists’
safety, the report makes three recommends: (i) urgent formation of a safety
commission under the federal Protection of Journalists and Media
Professionals Act, (ii) appropriate and adequate resourcing, including budget,
office and staff for Sindh’s Commission for the Protection of Journalists and
Other Media Practitioners, and (iii) enactment of similar journalists’ safety
laws by Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab after legislative assemblies
are elected in these provinces in the 2024 provincial elections.
“Pakistan has a golden opportunity to become one of
the strongest global performers in combating impunity for crimes against
journalists with
presence now on its statute books of the two specialist journalists’ safety
legislations, thanks to the efforts of many stakeholders over several years,
especially the Pakistan Journalists Safety Coalition,”the report said.
“But for this promise to materialize, these three recommendations must be
implemented on priority.”
