The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International has opened up secrets that everyone already knew: the military and the ISI have launched an unprecedented wave of intimidation on the Jang Group and its employees.AI has said that the military is playing a key role behind the closure of 80 percent of Geo/Jang-run TV channels and print editions. The process continues with Geo still missing from the airwaves almost everywhere in the country and another attack staged on a van carrying Jang Group newspapers in Rawalpindi on Friday. In an open letter, AI joined in by nine other organisations – Article 19 (UK), Human Rights Watch, Committee to Protect Journalists, Freedom House, International News Safety Institute, Internews, Pakistan Coalition on Media Safety, Pen International and Reporters Without Borders – has asked the government of Pakistan to ensure that the military keeps its hands off the media in the country. Reference was also made to Saleem Shahzad’s murder and the whitewash of an investigation that followed. Amnesty International wants that case to be reopened and the attempt on Hamid Mir’s life not to be ignored either. The longer the government goes without finding those who have targeted journalists, the more the public will begin to believe that those responsible wield unaccountable power.

What is happening is of huge significance. Traditionally, the agencies have controlled a lot of the affairs of our nation from behind the curtains. They have now attempted to do so again. Their approach is neither very savvy nor very sophisticated. It is crude and damages our country in many different ways. Liberty to access free information should be protected and the institutions in the country must be able to operate as they should. Efforts to stop them through violence and other means should simply be unacceptable in a democracy. The only possible parallel to the situation is Musharraf’s crackdown on the media in 2007, but at least then the media houses were united in the fight. Today the Jang Group struggles and suffers alone, with its distribution trucks being torched, its staffers harassed and the ISI using any means at its disposal – pressuring cable operators to take the group’s channels off the air and using influence on certain Pemra members to have its licences cancelled – to inflict hurt on the organisation. The statement from Amnesty International plainly states these facts and calls on the government to play its part. The government may be trying to prevent the situation from getting worse but perhaps a bigger and stronger stance is needed to ensure it can succeed. We note that Supreme Court orders for restoration of Geo on the cable have been openly flouted but the government has done nothing to check this violation of court orders. The government, despite having the power to revoke licences of those cable-operators who are clearly in contempt of court, has not moved to take action against them.

One wishes it could be said that other media organisations have been deafening in their silence over the treatment meted out to the Jang Group. Regrettably some of them have been even worse than that, acting as the B-Team of the ISI. Groundless accusations have been gleefully repeated and words of such violence spoken and printed that these organisations have become complicit in the persecution of the Jang Group. A voice as respected as Amnesty International has spoken out against this repression and pointed out the lack of solidarity in the media. Should the media as a whole keep doing what it has been doing when international attention begins to be paid on this assault on media freedom? The matter is larger than the Jang Group and has grave implications for democracy in the country. If the Jang Group is silenced, attention will be turned to other institutions that ‘need’ to be controlled. The AI statement may or may not be responded to, but the actions against the Jang Group say everything about the agenda being pursued. Those who watch from the sidelines and find refuge in silence, or gladly become puppets in the hands of the persecutors, should make no mistake about what this is going to mean for not only the media at large but our society as a whole.