Speaking Across the Border: Conversations with Pakistani Journalists
- After the DGISPR Speech: Fear and Silence in Newsrooms
- Arrests, Disappearances, and the Shadow of Arshad Sharif’s Killing
- When Journalists Become Pariahs
- The Role of the Pakistan Army in Media Suppression
- Accusations, Surveillance, and the Cost of Speaking to Indians
- A Lone Courage: Saluting Journalists Who Still Speak the Truth
- A Personal Note from a Former Judge and Press Council Chairman
An eyewitness account by Justice Markandey Katju on fear, censorship, arrests, and the growing silence of Pakistan’s media under military pressure…..
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| Sohrab Barkat |
The plight of the Pakistani media
By Justice Markandey Katju
I used to often speak on WhatsApp to Pakistani journalists, many of whom took my interviews. The latest ones by Munir Memon, a journalist based in Karachi, are given below.
But after the hardline speech of Lt Gen Ahmad Sharif, the Pakistan army DGISPR, and the crackdown on the Pakistan media thereafter, including arrest of the brave journalist Sohrab Barkat (who had often interviewed me), a wave of terror has spread across the entire Pakistani media community. Consequently, I have become a pariah to the Pakistani journalists who were earlier in touch with me, and they are not taking my calls, probably fearing dire and dreadful consequences if they did, as happened to the well-known Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif, who was murdered.
One Pakistani journalist, who had interviewed me several times in the past, told me when I spoke to him a few days back that he is afraid of going to his office or residence, apprehending that the police may arrest him there, and hence he is speaking to me from a place he would not like to disclose. Thereafter, he never took any of my numerous calls, and I do not know what has become of him.
This refusal to take my calls is probably because Pakistani journalists who have been in contact with me have been warned by Pakistan intelligence agencies of ominous and terrible consequences if they continue their association with me, a person they possibly suspect of being a RAW agent ( or something akin ), who has often said the truth which no one in Pakistan, or even elsewhere, has ever dared to say : that Pakistan is a fake, artificial country created by a British swindle called Partition in 1947 on the basis of the bogus 2 nation theory, to prevent India from emerging as a modern industrial giant, like another China, and thus another big rival to Western industry, that Pakistan is part of India, which it was for over 500 years since the time of Mughal Emperor Akbar, that Indians and Pakistanis share the same culture, and that Pakistan is bound to be reunited with India one day under a secular government, like West and East Germany, or North and South Vietnam, however much time it takes.
I have said that the Pak army is a vampire which has looted & sucked the blood of the people of Pakistan
I have also said that the Pakistan army is not a protector of the Pakistani people, but its oppressor
Since telephone calls between Indians and Pakistanis must be being tapped by the Pakistani intelligence agencies, and since hostility between India and Pakistan has increased after Operation Sindoor, it is understandable that few Pakistanis would now dare to take my calls, for fear of being branded, arrested, and incarcerated in jail ( or even worse ) for allegedly being in cahoots, and hand in glove, with India.
However, while most mediapersons have prostrated themselves before the Pakistan Establishment, there are still a few brave persons like Sohrab Barkat who dare to speak the truth. My salute to them.
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman, of the Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
