Harried Sharif gets tough on the press

Newsline ran a series of reports on the assets of the Sharif family, including the family farm in Raiwind, near Lahore. In response, Hakim says, the government “has launched a campaign to victimise and terrorise the magazine.”

Speaking to The Indian Express, Hakim said the reason the magazine decided to issue a statement was because things were getting out of hand. “Tax harassment was something that we thought happens to most publications which writeagainst the government. But goons coming into our office and asking us all sorts of questions is unacceptable.”

Many journalists say they aren’t surprised given that the Government is insecure. “This is not the first time. Nawaz Sharif has resumed his old habits. Using the methods that one would associate with dictatorial regimes, Sharif’s message to journalists is not to dig any deeper into the scandal,” says M. Ziauddin, Islamabad editor of Dawn, a respected English-language daily.

Ziauddin said that in his previous government, Sharif had ordered the ransacking of the house of Shaheen Sehbai, the paper’s then parliamentary correspondent.

In her statement, Hakim said that since the PML-N government couldn’t unearth legal grounds to exert pressure, it was using “intimidatory tactics.” This includes an investigation into Newsline‘s tax records.

“While our records speak for themselves, it is common knowledge that documents can easily be doctored and loopholes found to accommodate theagenda of the powers that be.”

She alleged that the private and professional lives of certain members of the Newsline staff were being investigated by the government. The editor said that for the past two days, police officials had been arriving at the offices of the magazine and badgering the staff for their residential addresses and other details.

Columnist Irshad Haqqani, who was information minister in the caretaker government of Meraj Khalid, wrote in his Friday column in the Daily Jang, the country’s largest circulated English-language daily, that he had also been made a target of the government’s ire. The owner of the Jang group, Mir Shakil Ur Rehman, held a press conference in Islamabad to protest against the pressure on his publications.

For his part, Information Minister Mushahid Hussain has been vocal about a press council which would evolve a “code of ethics.” This proposal came after Sharif said, at a public rally, that journalism in Pakistan was “shameful.”

Manyjournalists are against this idea. “While newspaper owners may be forced into it, any council which has a government representation is out of the question. It should comprise editors, publishers and journalists and should be voluntary,” says Najam Sethi, the editor of Friday Times, a Lahore-based weekly which is very critical of the government.

Sethi, who served in the Cabinet of Malik Meraj Khalid’s caretaker government, said that after ousting the President and the Chief Justice, the PM’s next target was the press. “We also received huge notices. And we are fighting them out in the courts,” said Sethi.

Meanwhile, Sharif told reporters at Islamabad airport that he had no intention of taking the London-based Observer to court. The newspaper had recently carried a report on the “illegal wealth” of the Sharif family. “It is a cock and bull story,” said Sharif adding that Benazir Bhutto was behind it.