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The Dish and Emergency

It seems ludicrous that in this day and age of satellite television, Internet connectivity, and mobile telephony a regime can actually think it can black out the media. But from the news and images emanating from Pakistan it appears that President Pervez Musharraf has attempted to do just that. He has once again laid the speed-breakers in the path of his country’s new emerging private satellite channels, which had just begun to make an impact.

Earlier this year, at a talk in the London School of Economics, Imran Khan observed that the most happening thing in recent times in Pakistan was the new home-grown 24x7 news channels on satellite television. “People are relishing independent news for the first time in the country,” the cricketer-turned-politician stressed before an elite academic gathering.

Today the situation is dramatically altered. The news channels are off the air and Mr. Khan has gone into hiding, avoiding arrest and harassment as a staunch political opponent of the Musharraf regime.

Minutes after President Musharraf suddenly proclaimed Emergency, the predictable happened. The plug was pulled, and the private satellite channels went off the air, leaving only the state-run Pakistan Television (PTV) beaming out government sponsored news. Years of fighting by news organisations for their turn to participate in the satellite revolution that had invaded South Asia since the mid-1990s, once again suffered a setback.

The President’s statement shown on PTV that he had allowed these channels to come up and therefore had the right to turn them off as well only added insult to injury.

Ironically, the blackout has been a good opportunity for the TV channels in Pakistan to publicise the cruel censorship to the world. General Musharraf may have pulled the plug on the satellite channels within his country, but he could not prevent them from beaming abroad. While Geo TV one of the best known among private television channels in Pakistan today cannot be watched in the parent country, Geo World TV is being beamed to audiences in the United Kingdom and other countries. The channel has been showing scenes of demonstrating journalists being arrested by the police in front of the Karachi Press Club, as well as pictures of the lathi-charge and arrest of striking lawyers and demonstrators.

Yet it was the same President Musharraf who during the famous Agra summit had projected himself as extremely media-savvy. Dropping his military uniform in exchange for a fashionably tailored civilian suit he charmed not only Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee but virtually walked off with the trophy from the Indian satellite channels as well. The Indian channels could not stop talking about the General’s “body language.”

Although General Musharraf seemed to thoroughly enjoy giving interviews on India’s satellite channels, it took him a long time to allow the air waves to free up in Pakistan, despite the huge demand and pressure that had been building up in the country. The earlier licensing authority known as RAMBO (Regional Authority for Media and Broadcast Organisation) had paved the way for PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) but it took a while before privately broadcast news was finally allowed. In recent months, the government has felt the heat of independent news coverage on incidents such as the President’s spat with the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the Red Mosque siege, the dramatic arrival of Nawaz Sharif in Pakistan and his almost immediate expulsion to Saudi Arabia, and finally the arrival of Benazir Bhutto and the horrific blasts that claimed more than 130 lives at her rally.

In fact, Pakistan was the last country to allow privately run news channels on television in South Asia. It came virtually a decade after such channels had gone on air in India and several years after even smaller countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal got such channels. In fact, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) the advent of satellite television had been greeted by burning of television sets.

In 2000 when I was travelling across South Asia to film a documentary on the impact of satellite television on the region, I hit documentary gold in Peshawar during an interview with Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam leader Maulana Fazlur Rahman. It was Mr. Rahman’s maiden interview to an Indian journalist, and he glibly justified the burning of TV sets. “As long as you continue to affront our culture, we will continue to burn the TV sets,” he said. “The loss is for the person burning his television set. Why do you feel bad about it?” the turbaned and bearded leader asked me provocatively.

The same person came to India the very next year and gave endless soundbites to Indian satellite TV channels, the same technology he had rejected for his people and country. Mr. Rahman is today a politician with huge clout in Pakistan; and now the United States wants General Musharraf, Ms Bhutto and Mr. Rahman to work together for the next election according to political pundits.

It is only a matter of time before Pakistan’s satellite channels are back on air. The Emergency will go down as a black chapter in the country’s history, just as the regime of press censorship in India during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi will always haunt her legacy.

(Since writing this, two channels have been restored namely the CNBC-Pakistan and Business Plus. All other channels are off the air. An increasing number of journalists are among those arrested by the Musharraf regime.)

(Nupur Basu is an independent journalist and documentary film maker.)

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