Journalists and activists in Pakistan faced an increasingly hostile climate in 2015 due to harassment, threats and violence from both the state and militant groups, according to Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday.

In the 659-page World Report 2016, which has reviewed human rights practices in more than 90 countries, HRW says the government imposed new restrictions on free speech and funding of civil society groups in 2015 due to the security situation faced by the country.

Asia director of Human Rights Watch Brad Adams said Pakistan should not curb freedom of expression and association under the threat of extremism.

“Pakistan should reverse course and repeal or amend laws curbing freedom of expression and association,” he said.

“The government should never use the threat of extremist violence as a pretext to violate the rights of independent voices.”

Similarly, the report claimed, Taliban and other armed extremist groups threatened media outlets and targeted journalists and activists for their work.

Media was also deterred from reporting on or criticising human rights violations in the country’s counter-terrorism operations, it added.

According to the overview by HRW, since the Army Public School attack in December 2014, the government has responded with National Action Plan to combat terrorism, established military courts for terrorism cases and ended the unofficial moratorium on capital punishment, which led to execution of 327 people in 2015 alone.

Following the attack, thousands of Afghans living in Pakistan returned to Afghanistan or fled elsewhere due to subsequent backlashes.

Violent attacks and persecution of religious minorities from extremist groups were also reported.

The “Policy for Regulation of INGOs in Pakistan” required all international non-governmental organisations and domestic groups receiving foreign funding to register and obtain prior permission to carryout any activities and restricted their operations.

Cybercrimes bill allowed the government to censor online content, the report said, criminalise internet user activity, and access internet users’ data without judicial review.

“Pakistan’s government should take urgent steps to create an enabling environment for free expression and association,” Adams said.

“Pakistan needs to fight terrorism, but denying its citizens fundamental freedoms and due process rights is an unlawful and extremely misguided approach.”

Express Tribune

ISLAMABAD – The raid by a paramilitary force on a journalist’s house is just the latest attempt by Pakistan’s security agencies to intimidate journalists who criticise the government and military, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement issued from New York.
On January 12, soldiers from Pakistan Rangers entered and, without a warrant, searched the house of Salman Masood, a journalist working for the New York Times, said the statement.

The Interior Ministry issued an apology later that day and ordered an inquiry into the raid on Masood. The government asserted that the action was part of a broader search operation in the neighborhood. However, only one other house was searched, raising serious concerns that the raid’s purpose was to harass and intimidate Masood, Human Rights Watch said. Masood has reported extensively about government policies and the role of the military.

“The Pakistan Rangers’ warrantless search of journalist Salman Masood’s home is an outrage, but only the latest security force outrage against journalists in Pakistan,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “A raid on a journalist’s home demands not just a government apology, but also a serious government investigation of the security forces’ intimidation of journalists.” The government should rescind official policies that shield the military from criticism and instead ensure that space for public debate and free speech is protected both from extremist groups and the security establishment, Human Rights Watch said.

ATTACK ON TV STATION HIGHLIGHTS PERILS FACING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: The grenade attack on the offices of ARY TV in
Islamabad represents yet another strike against freedom of expression in Pakistan, underscoring the growing peril faced by media workers in the course of their work, Amnesty International said yesterday.

“This is the latest, depressing addition to a series of brazen attacks in which media workers in Pakistan have been targeted for doing their jobs,” said Champa Patel, Director of Amnesty International’s South Asia Regional Office, in a statement.

“Pakistani media workers can now add being bombed at their desks to a list of occupational hazards that already includes abduction, arbitrary arrest and detention, intimidation, killings and harassment by State and non-state actors,” Champa Patel said. “The purpose of these attacks is to intimidate and censor the Press as a whole, cracking down on freedom of expression.”

The Nation

New York: Pakistani authorities should conduct a prompt and impartial investigation into the killing of journalist and rights monitor Zaman Mehsud, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday.

Gunmen fatally shot Mehsud on November 4, while he was riding his motorcycle in the Tank, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “We killed him because he was writing against us. We have some other journalists on our hit list in the region, soon we will target them,” Taliban commander Qari Saifullah Saif has claimed the responsibility for the attack in a statement to Reuters.

“The Taliban’s claim of responsibility for killing of a journalist showed a cruel disregard for human life and free speech,” said HRW Asia Director Brad Adams. “Pakistan’s government needs to move to bring the perpetrators of attacks on journalists to justice if these crimes are to stop,” he stressed.

Mehsud was a monitor for the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in South Waziristan. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may have killed Mesud for his reporting on the armed conflict and human rights situation in South Waziristan, the HRW said. The attack occurred a day after the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.

Pakistan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. More than 35 journalists and media workers have been killed in Pakistan because of their work since 2010. On the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Global Impunity Index, Pakistan was ninth on the list of countries in which the most journalists were murdered without the attackers being prosecuted. Pakistani journalists routinely face harassment, intimidation, assault, kidnapping, and arbitrary arrest and detention.

On September 9, unidentified assailants gunned down Aftab Alam, a senior journalist, near his home in Karachi. In April 2014, unidentified gunmen attacked Hamid Mir in Karachi. In January 2011, Wali Khan Babar, a 28-year-old reporter, was shot dead in Karachi. While the trial court convicted those accused of killing Babar, at least five people associated with the investigation, including a witness, police informers, police officers, and a prosecutor, have been murdered.

In 2011, Saleem Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and for Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, disappeared from Islamabad. His body, bearing visible signs of torture, was discovered two days later. The circumstances of the abduction raised concerns that the ISI was responsible. The commission of inquiry constituted to investigate the killing failed to identify those responsible.

The Pakistani government has recently adopted measures that further constrict the space for free expression, Human Rights Watch said. On October 1, the government announced a restrictive policy on international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), mandating that they register and obtain prior permission from the Interior Ministry to work in the country in specified fields and geographical areas. The INGO policy has provisions that facilitate arbitrary restrictions on the rights to freedom of association, expression, and assembly, rights protected under the Pakistani constitution and international law, it added.

“The Pakistani government, by clamping down on free expression and fundamental rights, is creating an environment that makes journalists and human rights defenders even more vulnerable,” Adams said. “The first step toward protection of journalists and rights defenders is to enable an environment of free expression. The Pakistan government needs to start by providing protection for at-risk journalists, while revising and repealing its restrictive laws and policies,” added Adams.

Daily Times

The 25th edition of the report reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries. In his introductory essay, the group’s executive director Kenneth Roth urges governments to recognise that human rights offer an effective moral guide in turbulent times, and that violating rights can spark or aggravate serious security challenges.

“Pakistan’s government did little in 2014 to stop the rising toll of killings and repression by extremist groups that target religious minorities,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government is failing at the most basic duty of government — to protect the safety of its citizens and enforce rule of law.” The report notes that “institutionalized discrimination” fostered violent attacks on religious minorities.

Karachi remains a hotbed of sectarian violence, with at least 750 sectarian targeted killings in Karachi from September 2013 to September 2014, the report notes.

Across the border, incidents of violence against religious minorities, particularly Muslims, in India spiked in 2013 in the run-up to national elections, the report states, as 133 people were killed and 2,269 injured in 823 incidents.

Balochistan

Ongoing rights concerns in Balochistan related to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture remained unaddressed in 2014, HRW said. A lack of government response to continuing rights abuses in Balochistan fostered a long-standing culture of impunity and the human rights situation in the province is described as “abysmal”.

Women’s rights

Abuses against women and girls – including rape, ‘honor killings’, acid attacks, domestic violence, and forced marriage – remained common in 2014 in Pakistan. In July, religious extremists committed a series of acid attacks on women in the Balochistan province.

Women who are members of religious minorities are noted to be “particularly vulnerable”, the report states, adding that “at least 1,000 girls belonging to Christian and Hindu communities are forced to marry male Muslims every year”. The coercion often originates from the prospective bridegrooms’ families, and failure to comply can prompt serious violence against the girls and their families. The government has failed to act to stop such forced marriages, HRW said.

Operation Zarb-e-Azb

On June 30, the military launched an offensive involving more than 30,000 troops against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan in North Waziristan and the report states, “Civilian casualties remained hard to assess due to severe military restrictions on independent media access to the conflict zone.”
HRW estimates that the conflict has displaced nearly 1 million people in squalid camps where the government has “failed to provide adequate supplies of potable water, sanitation facilities, and health care”.

Protection of Pakistan Act

The report notes that the PPA, passed in July, is “an overly broad counterterrorism law that violates international human rights standards and provides the security forces a legal pretext for abuses with impunity”.

Freedom of expression

It is also noted that freedom of expression was curbed significantly in 2014, as journalists in Pakistan who cover counterterrorism issues faced increasing threats. The report cites attacks against journalist Raza Rumi in March and Hamid Mir in April. Pakistan fares better than Afghanistan in this respect as the report notes that there were 68 attacks on journalists in the first six months of 2014 in Afghanistan, compared to around 41 attacks in the same period in 2013.

Express Tribune

For the past 15 years, Muqtida Mansoor has been taking his life into his hands simply by writing.

His column, which appears twice weekly in the Urdu language Daily Express newspaper based in Karachi, Pakistan, has brought insults and death threats from extremists.
The Sunday Edition

This has not deterred Mansoor from defending freedom of speech and challenging the rising tide of Muslim fundamentalism in his country.

In 2010, the press freedom group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Pakistan was the deadliest country on the planet for journalists. Some were gunned down, others were tortured.

Mansoor takes precautions, but he does not have a bodyguard or a weapon.

“People who have guards, they are killed in open daylight,” he told Michael Enright, host of CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition. “My pen is my weapon and I write with my pen.”

He has surrendered the freedom of socializing with friends in restaurants and other public places, opting instead to spend most of his time in the safety of his home.

“Everyone who is daring to write, daring to speak on the television, they are doing it on their own risk. This is the tragedy of this country,” he said.

Muslim fundamentalism has been growing in Pakistan since the rule of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who amended the country’s blasphemy law to add the death penalty.

In its 2014 World Report, Human Rights Watch said this about Pakistan: “Abuses are rife under the country’s abusive blasphemy law, which is used against religious minorities, often to settle personal disputes.”

In his conversation Enright, Mansoor described the scourge of what he called religious fascism.

He said people often are arrested under the blasphemy law without any investigation and are not tried in the courts because judges live in fear. Some have been threatened and killed. In rare cases when a judge releases a prisoner, he is often murdered outside the court house.

“The time of death is fixed,” Mansoor said. “It may be on the bed or by the bullet of another person, this doesn’t matter. I shall continue writing and there is not any kind of hesitation in my mind.”

Listen to The Sunday Edition interview with Mansoor in the player at the top of this page.

CBC News

According to the website of Human Rights Watch:

The grants are named for the American playwright Lillian Hellman and her longtime companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett. Both were both questioned by US congressional committees about their political beliefs and affiliations during the aggressive anti-communist investigations inspired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Hellman suffered professionally and had trouble finding work. Hammett spent time in prison.

Bios for the two Pakistani awardees are below.

Malik Siraj Akbar (Pakistan)

Malik Siraj Akbar is a journalist whose work has appeared in prominent publications, including Dawn and The Daily Times in Pakistan and The Hindu and The Times of India. His online newspaper Baloch Hal was blocked by Pakistani authorities due to its coverage of human rights violations in Balochistan by Pakistan’s military and security forces. Following numerous arrests and apparent executions of Baloch journalists, activists, and intellectuals, and death threats to himself, Malik fled Pakistan for the US and was granted political asylum. He lives in Washington DC, where he maintains the Baloch Hal website and writes as a freelance journalist. In 2011, Malik wrote the book, The Redefined Dimensions of the Baloch Nationalist Movement.

Zubair Torwali (Pakistan)

Zubair Torwali is a journalist from the Swat valley in Pakistan. As a college teacher in Islamabad, he began writing op-ed articles for daily newspapers in Pakistan. He first wrote about the nearly-extinct Torwali language, and later began to criticize militancy in Swat and abuses committed by both the Taliban and Pakistani government forces. He was targeted by the Taliban for his writing, faced numerous death threats from the Taliban and from the Pakistani military, and had to flee Swat for safer locations within Pakistan. Zubair continues to write op-ed articles for Pakistani daily newspapers, despite having restricted movement and a low profile because of the threats he and his family continue to face.

Pakistan Press Foundation