ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Senator Pervaiz Rashid Tuesday said that the journalists and security forces had made great sacrifices in the fight against terrorism by laying down their lives.

Addressing the participants of a journalists organizations’ sit-in here in front of the Parliament House, he said without the sacrifices of security forces, journalists and media workers the year 2015 could not had been made safer than the year 2013.

He said Operation Zarb-e-Azb was enjoying the support of media too. The war against terrorism was being fought with the power of pen and gun. Their enemy is common and the war would continue till complete elimination of terrorism. Attacking any media person or law enforcer amounts to attacking all of them.
Peace in the country was impossible without complete elimination of terrorism, he said

Media, he said was the fourth pillar of the state. Attacking journalists is tantamount to attacking the entire state, he added.
Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif immediately after assumption of his office, underlined that elimination of terrorism was his top priority. The Prime Minister and Chief of Army Staff had also acknowledged the sacrifices of journalists in war against terrorism.

The National Action Plan (NAP), Zarb-e-Azb, media and every institution was playing its role in elimination of terrorism, he said.

Pervaiz said the state was duty bound to provide safe and secure environment to media persons in performance of their duty.

He said people should strongly condemn terror incidents in their respective areas and take out huge rallies to disseminate strong message to terrorists that nobody liked such abhorable acts.

He agreed with the suggestion that a special compensation package should also be announced for the martyred journalists in line with martyrs of security forces.
The government would announce special package for journalists in consultation with all stakeholders, he added.

He said the services of special prosecutors would be provided to journalists for pleading the cases of martyred journalists. The government is determined to completely eliminate the menace of terrorism, he added.

A committee headed by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had also been formed for the security of media houses, he said.

A meeting would soon be held in consultation with stakeholders concerned to review security arrangements. The provinces had also been asked to beef up security of media houses.

Business Recorder

“It is a message for the coalition…your men will end up in videos that are even more horrific and will do lasting damage to public opinion in your countries”. This is how Romain Cailet, a militant movements’ expert, has explained the motive behind Islamic State’s release of an over 22-minute long video showing the burning alive of Jordanian Pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh. In other comments and commentaries that have appeared on this horrible video, there is agreement that IS wanted to show audacity, power and more than that its destructive determination to go to any lengths in fighting what it believes is the ‘right war’.

Since its release the video has gone viral. The world reaction to it has been just as swift. From unqualified condemnation from important capitals, to expansion of the global alliance against IS, the video has been a game-changer in the Middle Eastern cauldron. Even here in Pakistan, a nation that has had more than its share of visual torture in the shape of exposure to lurid videos, images and news for more than a decade – remember the Baldia Factory fire, and videos of football being played with the chopped off heads of soldiers – most have described the visuals as despicable, sad, and saddening.

In this natural whirlpool of emotional outrage and outpouring of sympathy for the burnt pilot, the point is almost lost that IS would not have been able to create this effect had the video not been disseminated so widely. But stopping terror groups from getting propaganda mileage out of their atrocities is easier said than done. The post-9/11 information regime is exceedingly tough on traditional methods of circulating dangerous bits of data. Most international guidelines and domestic laws in different countries treat peddling of information, as IS now regularly sends out, as abetment in acts of terrorism. Media partners in the crime of propaganda warfare done by terrorists are marked for the same punishment as the beneficiaries of this propaganda.

In Pakistan, the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Protection of Pakistan Act besides several other legal strictures forbid all activities that in anyway promote or enable terrorists to spread fear and popularise legends of their brute power.

However, technology has blasted a massive breach in this legal, moral, administrative dyke against terrorists’ projection.

Social media is the new free port where terrorists and other criminal gangs unload their contraband and market them at the global scale. Chased out of the mainstream media and restricted in running websites, they use swifter methods of uploading their poisonous products.

Recent studies document a breathtaking change in the choice terrorists and extremists exercise in making statements about their actions or intentions. One study says social media is now an instrument “to recruit, radicalise and raise funds, and IS is one of the most adept practitioners of this approach. YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Internet memes and other social media networks are the pathways terrorists use to weaken hearts and influence minds.”

Twitter – the medium used by IS to post the Jordanian pilot’s macabre death and earlier the beheading of his Japanese co-captive Kenji Goto after releasing them through Youtube – is the most active of the entire range of social media outlets. Consider IS’ posting activity when they marched into the Iraqi city of Mosul: One reports documents this to be almost 40,000 tweets a day.

We all know about their hashtag heists, such as those relating to the recent referendum on Scottish independence or the last football World Cup in Brazil. This enables hateful messages to reach a far wider audience than the traditional following within its core following.

Twitter countered this social media storming of terror content by suspending more than 1,000 accounts with terrorist links. The effort had limited effect. New Twitter accounts got created in no time. The group’s media managers now upload videos and images that are then shared across the globe by common users and professional news organisations. Social-media monitor Recorded Future found that IS had succeeded in creating hype with a total of 700,000 accounts discussing the terrorist group.

The head of Government Communications Headquarters – a British intelligence and security organisation – Robert Hannigan says that IS in Syria and Iraq has “embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits”. More worryingly, he adds, terrorists are now able to hide their identities using encryption tools once only available to government agencies.

What does this mean for Pakistan? Any serious effort to choke terrorists’ information flows and their media reach must factor in social media. Pakistan, being the world’s sixth most populated nation, has one of the biggest youth bulges on the planet. It also has one of the fastest growing social media sector in Asia. Here opportunities for recruitment, radicalisation, and information bombardment to upend social and political stability are endless. This is partly because new media continues to be a secondary thought in all serious debates about how to counter terrorists’ narratives.

The Pakistani youth is plugged into social media. It is addicted to it. In the future this connection-addiction will become stronger and deeper. In the coming years, therefore, the battle for the hearts and minds of the public will be fought in this realm.

What makes Pakistan’s social media arena particularly attractive for terror groups is that this already has a vast, bad neighbourhood – crime and slime infested, habituated by gangsters, cyber snipers, cloak and dagger artists, conmen and women. Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts are countless. Hired labour is used to inflate followers. There are plenty of shady characters around who sell you ‘substantial following’ for a price. Motivated ‘trends’ are created and then made to ‘trend’. Sleaze, abuse, propaganda, lies and hoax easily piggyback on free speech.

The stench of hate that comes out of some corners of this sprawling jungle of opinion creates exactly the type of environment terror groups need for networking. Recall how terrorism in our midst started. In the beginning there was small-scale deviant behaviour, which when ignored repeatedly hardened into a monumental assault on our precious freedoms.

We cannot afford to pretend that social media freedom is a heaven whose pristine beauty can only be retained by letting it remain the way it is. Not long ago social media was a bewitching flower of the Arab Spring. Now, in the hands of terrorists, it is a weapon of mass message dissemination.

The state and governments here need to take a closer look at the turns life in social media is taking – both here and abroad. It can no longer be considered a ‘fun thing’ for the young, wild and free whose gushing energy requires unfettered freedom to express itself. It is far too serious a business to be left to such oversimplified constructions of reality.

Doubtless social media has given voice and identity to millions who were either left out or could not be represented by a top-down, expensive, and elitist mainstream media. True social media’s egalitarian and democratising effect on oppressed sections of society is most noticeable. Correct it is an outlet to let out information and views that get truncated and disfigured when floated through the usual streams of news and views. But like all transformational forces, this too is being hijacked and abused. Pakistan needs strong social media laws that promote transparency and user identification. Fake accounts have to be treated like fake national identity cards, fake votes, fake bank accounts, phone SIMs acquired through fake addresses.

If the state does not allow tinted car windows so as to deprive terrorists secure transport, how can it allow thousands of dubious accounts operated by devious, noxious characters? Let everyone speak, express, critique, opine. But let everyone be identified. Failure to enforce this rule can be a failure foretold in tackling the new ways terrorists are using to promote their agendas.

The News International

ISLAMABAD: For a democratic country, Pakistan ranks worryingly high when it comes to the number of attacks on journalists.

Even though it is much better off than countries such as Iraq, Syria or Somalia that are torn apart by civil war and internal strife, Pakistan’s numbers of violence against journalists are comparable to these countries, Bob Dietz, the Asia Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) told a sympathetic audience of journalists and media practitioners on Tuesday.

He was addressing the second international conference on Combating Impunity and Securing Safety of Media Workers and Journalists in Pakistan.

Also read: Report terms 2014 the worst year for Pakistani media

Mr Dietz deplored that the authorities in Pakistan had failed to move forward in this regard and had not been able to provide an environment conducive for journalists so far.

“Why can’t we make the situation better,” he asked, earnestly, adding that far too many journalists were getting caught in the crossfire between militants and the authorities. However, he recognised that the current regime had recognised the issue, referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s March 2014 meeting with representatives of the CPJ.

The government’s resolve was also evidenced by the presence of Information Minister Pervaiz Rasheed at Tuesday’s conference.

“We first met General Musharraf – who was the president at that time – and expressed concerns over violence against media. But he totally denied it and his minister termed the incidents ‘accidents’,” he said, adding that a similar response was seen when the matter was raised with President Asif Ali Zardari and the ministers of that era.

“Though there were some assurances made by the prime minister and his team, but I see that journalists are still not satisfied with the government’s measures,” Mr Dietz added.

Earlier, addressing the inaugural session, the information minister said that the whole nation was united in the fight against terrorism and the government was trying its best to find solutions.

“I would like mediapersons to come forward and help identify the culprits,” Mr Rasheed said.

His answer to almost all queries and criticism was swift and crisp.

“We would like to hear from the (journalist) community what the solutions should be,” he said.

When veteran journalist and former Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists president Mazhar Abbas questioned the minister about low salaries and job insecurity in media organisations, the minister invited him to a high-level meeting to guide the government on what it could do.

He also announced that a bill aimed at improving access to information under right to information principles would be presented in the next cabinet meeting.

Senior journalist Mohammad Ziauddin said the Afghan war actually came to Pakistan after 2005, but the media was not ready to cover it.

“At the same time, militants wanted to show their presence and pushed for space in the electronic and print media,” he said.

“The same method was adopted by ethnic, nationalist and sectarian parties – now the environment is dangerous and no place is safe.”

Senior anchorperson Hamid Mir quoted several anecdotes from his career, from 2006 onwards and narrated his own ordeal before and being attacked by unidentified gunmen in Karachi last year.

“A hit-list of journalists in Balochistan was floated by pro-establishment militants and this list was published in a report by the PFUJ, but even then, five of the people on the list ended up dead,” he said.

He said that it was time the government passed a law for the protection of the media.

“I do not say it will end the trouble, but it will be a first step towards a solution,” he added.

Representatives from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), as well as other countries from the region, such as Nepal, Afghanistan and Indonesia also participated in the subsequent panel discussion.

Ujjwal Acharya, South Asia regional coordinator for the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said that in Nepal and Pakistan, a lot of people believed that the media was not credible. Talking about the importance of perceptions, he said that there was a need to build people’s trust in the mainstream press.

OSF’s Maria Teresa shared her experiences of working on journalists’ safety in Colombia and Mexico.

Daily Dawn

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is asking the Ummah to unite and sue the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, which continues to offend the Muslims, by moving court against the publication and also seek an apology from it.

Pakistan, while strongly condemning the publication of the blasphemous caricatures in the French magazine, according to the spokesperson at the Foreign Office, says, “We believe that freedom of expression should not be misused as means to attack or hurt public sentiments or religious beliefs.

“This is an attempt to divide peoples and civilisations. There is a need to promote harmony among peoples and communities instead of reinforcing stereotypes and making people alienated in their own countries.”

In this regard, Adviser to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz has written a letter to the OIC secretary general while recommending legal action to seek an apology from the French magazine and joint action by the Ummah to get criminalisation of all acts of Islamophobia.

The spokesperson, in a statement, said that echoing the sentiments of the people of Pakistan, the president and the prime minister had strongly condemned the publication, which had caused great offence to the Muslims by hurting their sentiments and religious sensibilities all over the world.

The National Assembly and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have passed resolutions condemning the blasphemous publication, which hurt the core belief of all the Muslims.Protests against giving licence in the name of freedom of expression to insult Muslims are being held all over Pakistan and the Muslim world.

The News

LAHORE: World media outlets give mixed reaction to attack on Paris weekly last week.

BBC writes: “Three million copies of Wednesday’s edition are being printed. Normally only 60,000 are available each week.

” Prestigious international media houses like the Reuters, Bloomberg and Fox News etc have also reported that up to three million copies of Charlie Hebdo could hit newsstands today. US newspaper “TheWashington Post” has published the latest cover of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, despite criticism from conservative Muslims that such depictions were blasphemous and offensive.

The “Washington Post” Executive EditorMartin Baron is said to have approved the controversial publication.

Baron had said lastweek that the paper’s policy was to avoid publication of material that was “deliberately” offensive to religious groups but later said that the new Charlie Hebdo cartoon did not meet that criterion.

Caroline Fourest, a former employee of the satirical French paper Charlie Hebdo had said: “There will be more cartoons. And we all decided, the journalists who did survive and the excolleagues of Charlie Hebdo we all decide together to publish together the new, the next Charlie Hebdo because there is no way even if they kill ten of us, there is noway that the newspaperwon’t be out next week.

” While the Cable News Network (CNN) had decided not to exercise its freedom of expression on the issue of Charlie Hebdo shooting a week ago, various newspapers and television channels in theMuslimcountries like Egypt had demonstrated against the attacks.

Apparently fearing Muslim wrath, CNN’s Editorial Director Richard Griffith had sent an internal memo reading, “We are not at this time showing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Prophet that have been considered offensive by many Muslims.

” In addition, while the Charlie Hebdo attack was still considered “Breaking News,” CNN’s leading anchorperson Christiane Amanpour had actually called the murderers “activists.

” China’s “Global Times” had argued in its own editorial: “The international community must jointly defend the magazine editors’ rights to personal safety, but this doesn’t mean they side with their controversial cartoons.

” Approximately 60 leading journalists and editors from Egypt’s mainstream newspapers like the “Masr Al-Arabiya” and “Al-Masry Al Youm” etc had staged protests outside Cairo’s Press Syndicate to express solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. On the contrary, some Turkish newspapers had blamed Charlie Hebdo for the shooting incident.

‘Islamic slaughter it suffered’ was the headline of a leading Turkish newspaper “Yeni Akit” had read: “Attack on the magazine that provoked Muslims.” Meanwhile, the headline of another leading Turkish newspaper “The Turkiye Gazetesi” had read: “Attack on the magazine that published ugly cartoons of our Prophet.” The first sentence of an article published by the “Turkiye Gazetesi,” had noted Charlie Hebdo’s long history of publishing unflattering depictions against the Muslim faith. The Iranian government’s official newspaper — named Iran, and which reflects Iranian President Hassan Rohani’s government policies – had offered the most visible coverage, dedicating most of its front page to a large photo of the event, with the headline: “Bloody showof terrorists in Paris. However, another top Iranian newspaper the “Sharq” had slated the French satiricalmagazine for publishing the blasphemous cartoons.

This newspaper had stated: “It is not acceptable that the President of France defends the freedom of speech in his speech after the attacks. This popular journal had published an insulting illustration of the Prophet of Islam.

” Widely-circulated American newspaper “Wall Street Journal” had asserted: “The satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was the conscious heir to a French intellectual tradition with a long history: radical anticlericalism.

Before the Charlie Hebdo era (the magazine dates from the late 1960s), France’s most influential anticlerical thinkers trained their fire on Catholicism-for centuries the country’s state religion. As a rule, however, these individuals objected not so much to precise points of religious doctrine as to the fanaticism, ignorance and persecution that, in their view, tended to accompany “true faith.

” The opponents of doctrinaire Catholicism used caricature, irony and humorous blasphemy- thus setting the tone for Charlie Hebdo’s later fight with jihadist Islam.” Israeli top newspaper “The Haaretz”writes in its January 13, 2015 edition: “The big question in the wake of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is whether the slaughter will bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror.

France has seen some appalling crimes – including attacks against Jews – that could be linked, broadly, to the global war against Islamist terror. But the attack on the satirical weekly takes, by dint of its body count, things to a new level. It’s hard to see howFrance, or any country, will be able to revert to the status quo ante. The magazine has been particularly unbridled in its mocking Islamists from a left-of-center perspective. It stood, courageously in the view of many, for the right of satire in thewake of the publication of the Danish cartoons.

” The headline of an “Al- Jazeera” report had read: “Why Charlie Hebdo attack is not about Islam?” The report’s catch line/shoulder had stated: “Charlie Hebdo massacre is rooted in generations of violence, hypocrisy and greed.

” The “Al-Jazeera” report had furthermaintained: “Twelve people were massacred in Paris on Wednesday merely for expressing their opinion through art. Many might not like the art that prompted the carnage. Theymay consider it obscene and even an attack on their faith. But in the 21st, 15th or 57th century – whatever your religion, calendar, or country – there is no excuse or justification for responding to art with murder.

” The “Al-Jazeera” had gone on to air: “But there is a clear and frightening explanation for this violence, one that demands not merely outrage at the act itself, but at the system that has made it both predictable and inevitable. The problemis that this system is hundreds of years old, implicates most everyone, and has only become more entrenched in the last several decades as the world has become ever more globalised.” Here follow some more reactions:— Dalil Boubakeur, Imamof a Paris Mosque: “This is a thunderous declaration of war. The times have changed. We’re entering a new phase of this confrontation… we are horrified by the brutality and the savagery.

” —A top Indian newspaper “The Hindu” had published: “Charlie Hebdo was brutally attacked for its dark sketches of humour; for apparently talking satire to power. Cartoonists in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo sketched the incongruity of a pencil and a gun. But what explains this incongruity?What is it about satirical humour that can invite such anger or can justify its protection, even through socalled “legitimate” state violence? Novelist Salman Rushdie, a victim/perpetrator of such violence, calls this “art of satire” a “force of liberty against tyranny.” —”The Economist” had viewed: “It seems that satire especially riles those most ripe for it. Those who murder in the name of God, or other high ideals, are monstrous, but also, somehow, ridiculous! In the gap between the true-believer’s moralising self-righteousness and the vicious reality ofwhat he defends there is a fog of delusion. The satirist minds that gap, despises the fog and shines a merciless hot light on the nonsense. The wider the gap, the greater the sustaining delusion, and the more damaging, and dangerous, the satire will be felt to be.”

Othermedia houses that condemned the Charlie Hebdo incident included Britain’s “Daily Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, the Times of India, the Indian Express, India’s NDTV, American Fox Television, the Liberation (France), Le Monde (France) and Le Figaro (France) etc. Apart from heads of state of innumerable Western and Muslim nations, other organisations/ individuals who deplored the Charlie Hebdo attack also included the Al-Azhar University of Cairo (a 1000-year old seat of religious learning respected by Muslims all over the world), Muslim Council of Britain, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR), the French Muslim Council, Union of Islamic Organizations of France, Arab League [a regional organization representing 22 Arab countries, all ofwhich have a majority Muslim population], the Muslim Advisory Council to the New York Police Department, the Islamic Cooperation Organization, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Canadian Council of Imams and Muslim Canadian Congress etc.

The News

After hours of deliberating over a move that could cost him his reputation, job or life, a journalist in Pakistan decided not to write an article because of concerns that he might offend someone.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” a source privy to the development told this scribe. “But after several hours of heated conversations relating to questions of sensitivity with friends belonging to various political and religious backgrounds, as well as informal consultations with editors, a lawyer and his parents, he decided that writing an article would cause more harm than good and it might be a better idea to go to sleep.”

Experts say Mr Dilawar Dabang’s concerns are not unfounded. “Every time you write a line, you cross one too,” according to the director of the Institute for Preservation of Sanity. “You may cause personal offense to a politician, irk the Taliban or other terrorist groups, anger a rights activist with a large number of Twitter followers, or seem to have challenged the mighty military establishment. If you make an attempt not to offend one of them, you end up offending the other.”

In a country deemed among the most dangerous in the world for journalists, Pakistan’s reporters and editors have found themselves in a fix after the military’s decision to go after all terrorist groups including those it previously used for leveraging in regional politics. “After serving Pakistan’s nationalist interests my entire journalism career spanning 22 years, I woke up one morning to find Pakistan’s national interests have changed,” said a veteran reporter from Lahore. He has not been to work since.
“Liberal activists are saying the military is telling lies,” said a young journalist who is now on leave without pay after receiving threatening phone calls from terrorists residing in Pakistan’s lawless regions in the northwest in the city of Peshawar. “If they are correct, I do not want to even start gathering courage to write against the Taliban just yet. When I go back to my job, I would rather be writing horoscopes.”

According to insiders, one newspaper editor has decided to limit the content of his newspapers to paid content relating to public interest issues like male pattern baldness, aphrodisiacs, breast enlargement, and weight loss.

But even that may not resolve Mr Dilawar Dabang’s dilemma. “He had resorted to writing film reviews, and in a recent article he expressed unfavorable opinion of The Battle of the Five Armies,” another friend told me. “Hours after it got published, an angry The Hobbit fan left a comment on the website reminding Mr Dabang that he belonged to a minority sect, and furnished evidence of various kinds that the sect was beyond the pale of Islam.”

“I knew it was dangerous to openly criticize bearded killers in newspapers,” the journalist told his friend. “I just did not know Gandalf was one of them.” Due to fears that he will be beaten up by a mob, dragged in the streets and burned to death, he asked for his article to be removed from the website.

A web editor in the publication said Mr Dabang’s article about baldness in men also received impolite feedback. “Frustrated by his argument that male pattern baldness is untreatable, a visitor to our website accused him of unfairly targeting the Prime Minister and being on the payroll of opposition leader Imran Khan.”

Disappointed, he further limited the scope of his writing to classified job ad copies. “The job was simply clerical,” a senior colleague in his organization revealed. “He was literally working with templates,” he said, “happily using words like ‘driven’, ‘hardworking’ and ‘handsome package’; but his happiness was short lived.” A friend called him up a week later and told him a feminist group had threatened to boycott his newspaper because he did not use gender neutral job titles.”

Dilawar Dabang realizes that women and liberals are easy to ignore in Pakistan, but he does not know what to write. Analysts and experts believe the safest way for him to be a journalist is to not write anything at all. Or at least not write anything meaningful.

The Nation