The details emerging out of Pakistan are still somewhat sketchy but some facts are clear; more than 30 people are dead and over 115 injured. The Chief Justice of Pakistan was unable to address the Sindh Bar Association and was forced to go back to Islamabad and the private television station Aaj TV, which has been in the forefront of covering pro-judiciary and anti-Musharraf protests, was attacked by armed gunmen. This is indeed another dark day in the checkered political history of Pakistan.
It is now well past time for the Musharraf regime to go. This government has now lost the last shreds of moral authority required to govern. I salute the men and women of the civil society of Pakistan and the courageous independent media who are leading this struggle for the supremacy of the law and freedom of expression at grave risk to their life and limb.
As tragic and sad as events in Karachi are, this political moment is of historic import for the people of Pakistan and even on this day of darkness I see some hope for a better future. Since the sacking of the CJP on March 9th, the heroic struggle of the lawyers has germinated greater democratic desire and decisively strengthened Pakistan’s civil society and its beleagured independent media.
In the face of relentless governmental coercion there have been heartwarming displays of peaceful resistance, none more evident than in the historic journey of Justice Chaudhry through the heart of Punjab. Those in Pakistan and abroad who desire an eventual constitutional democratic polity rooted in a rule of law have to be encouraged by these developments. The conclusion of this episode, however, remains highly uncertain because no political sagacity can be expected from those who have brought us to this pass.
This grassroots peoples’ movement has also forced the politicians of all hues to make a choice; they either stand on the side of the rule of law or for the perpetuation of a dangerously unstable, one-man military banana republic. Mainstream politicians (despite all their historical shortcomings) clearly seem to grasp the national mood and the King’s men who are standing up for the present dispensation to save their personal fiefdoms will hopefully pay a steep price whenever they face the electorate in a fair election.
MQM more clearly exposed itself today than it ever has in its sordid history (thanks to private TV channels). The party that started with great hopes, rooted in the educated middle classes has over the years just become a collection of vicious thugs. It is wielding its fascistic tactics on behalf of people who seem to believe they have a divine right to perpetual power and who originally nurtured this party as a counterweight to PPP. MQM has shown itself the mirror image of the worst of MMA; both groups want people to acquiesce to their ideologies by force. Neither believes in nor has any fundamental respect for a constitutional rule of law.
Pakistan stands at a critical juncture as it has so many times in its unfortunate 60 year independent history. I would urge all Pakistanis and their well wishers to lend thier support to the struggle of Pakistan’s revitalized civil society. Let’s hope that the forces of peaceful democratic activism led by the country’s courageous lawyers ultimately emerge victorious and we can close this latest chapter of the military’s recurring era of authoritarian and unconstitutional misrule without further human suffering.
Fawad is a California-based literati-at-large and writes the blog ‘Moments of Tranquility,’ where a version of this was first posted.
Watch the footage on Aaj TV and you will feel sick. See the gunmen brandishing Kalashinkovs and the police mobile units are patrolling with them.
I do not know whether you have seen Aaj TV news. I have just subscribed Jump TV which shows Aaj Tv on the internet. Here in the UK Aaj TV is not on the sky.
I heard Farooq Sattar of the MQM ‘apologising’ from the media and Aaj TV for what happened to them. But just wait and listen to this gutless spokesman of Altaf. He says that who ever has committed this act will be punished. He never admitted that they were MQM thugs who were firing with Kalashinkovs for many hours on the staff of Aaj TV.
MQM is really a fascist organisation. They always apportion blame to others. The other thing which you would have noticed that they are potraying themselves the victims of the opposition party activists and are reporting burning of their offices by PPP activists. I will not be surprised if MQM itself is creating scenes like that to show to the world how peaceful organisation they are and they are being attacked.
Bravo, Altaf. You are really a fascist of the highest orders. Even Nazis of Germany would salute you.
and this is my own column from Sunday (but written well before May 12)
RIPPLE EFFECT
And they say the media is free
By Omar R. Quraishi
This is precisely what I said to myself last weekend while trying to watch the chief justice’s now-epic journey from Islamabad to Lahore. Those who attended it say that they haven’t seen anything like this since Benazir Bhutto returned from exile in 1986. A road journey that takes at the most five or six hours to make took around 25 — of course there were numerous diversions, in addition to the road blocks placed at various points by the ever-friendly and helpful Punjab police.
I should add at this point that my extreme consternation — and hence the ‘what-the-hell’ phrase was not actually about the unprecedented size of the reception the chief justice’s presence managed to garner but rather in response to the fact that for several hours I couldn’t get any coverage of the rally on TV. It began with calls to our newspaper offices by some people who said that they couldn’t get three major news channels — Geo, ARY and Aaj TV — and were wondering why. They said that they could get most other channels but not these. This was easily confirmed by myself — in fact all of Geo’s four channels were not being shown, not even the music and youth-oriented channel Aag.
Quite expectedly, suspicion veered towards — as it would — the electronic media regulator but it immediately came out with a public statement that it had nothing to do with the blockade. Still, there was lingering doubt because governments in Pakistan sometimes tend not to own up to such acts of censorship, mistakenly thinking that this strategy of obscuring information and indulging in double-speak would actually fool the public. By this time it became apparent, mainly telling from the various reports on the local channels that were still on air, that this censoring was mostly confined to Sindh.
True to one’s reporting instincts, I rang up my cable provider — apparently the largest in all of Karachi and probably the whole country as well — and spoke to a representative. First he told me that the channels were off because their signals were not being received. Now this made no sense given that the channels had by now complained that they have been taken off air and I told the representative this. He tried to hide a laugh and then said that that was all the information he had. I asked him if the electronic media regulator was behind this and he said the same thing: “Sir, this is all I can tell you”.
A friend and columnist messaged then to say that probably the MQM was behind this, and that it had ordered the cable operators to do this. This didn’t make any sense — “Why?” I asked — “what could it possibly achieve by doing this?” I asked her. Soon enough, one of the party’s MNA publicly denied that the MQM had anything to do with the censoring of the TV channels.
By late evening, cable operators resumed service of the three channels in question, though apparently in phases. Also, it turns out, what my friend had said about a particular political party being behind the sordid censoring of the electronic media, sort of began unfolding. An MQM press release on the matter denied that it was behind any such thing but then went on to say that the channels could have been taken off air because of the reaction of the ‘awam.’ It also launched into a complaint saying that the electronic media — presumably the three channels in question, especially — did not give any coverage to a rally that it has organised outside the Karachi Press Club the same day as the Chief Justice’s Lahore journey. It claimed that attendance at this rally was ‘ten times more’ than that at the Chief Justice’s reception and hence this action on the part of the TV channels was proof of their malice.
On Sunday, however, any mention of this link was ignored by the prime minister who said at a press conference that the TV channels were taken off air because of some issues between them and the cable operators. This would mean that any TV channel which protested against the forced closure was either misinterpreting what happened or was lying.
The prime minister also said, as he has many a time in the past, that the media was free to report whatever it chose to. Well, from what happened on Saturday afternoon that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. And the worst part is that who-ever is behind it will get away scot-free-again.
The writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News.
Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk
smk is right — its only expats like you (most of you I presume) who have no idea of what the situation is who think that the media is cowering down as we speak
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_…..sp?Id=7829
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=5582 1
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id= 7825
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id= 7828
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id= 7824
and refer to the other threat
http://pakistaniat.com/2007/05/12/karachi-burning- civil-war-firing-dead-violence-mqm-aaj/#comments
and scroll right down to the bottom —