(Freedom House/IFEX) – On 30 November 1998, a Freedom House specialist in international communications denounced the significant economic restrictions introduced recently against independent newspapers in Pakistan. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who will visit Washington shortly, was urged to end the restrictions and fulfill the ruling party’s declared commitment to freedom of the press. The affected […]
(Freedom House/IFEX) – On 30 November 1998, a Freedom House specialist in
international communications denounced the significant economic restrictions
introduced recently against independent newspapers in Pakistan. Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif, who will visit Washington shortly, was urged to end
the restrictions and fulfill the ruling party’s declared commitment to
freedom of the press.
The affected news media are the Jang group, Muslim papers, “Newsline”, and
other newspapers. They complain that they have been hit with unwarranted
income tax notices, demands to deposit large sums against future taxes,
frozen bank accounts, withdrawal of government advertisements, and other
acts which reduce the economic viability of the newspapers.
The All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) and the Council of Pakistan
Newspaper Editors (CPNE) have declared that singling out these papers “could
affect the entire newspaper industry.” The APNS and the CPNE have jointly
called upon the Prime Minister to “personally intervene and direct the
concerned government departments and authorities to end the victimization”
of the newspapers already targeted.
“Such new economic measures are a form of control of independent media and
violate the freedom of the press no less than more obvious forms of
censorship,” said Leonard R. Sussman, Freedom House’s Senior Scholar in
International Communications. He cited the complaints of the APNS and the
CPNE, and their plea to the prime minister to fulfill his pledge to support
freedom of the press. Current economic pressures, Sussman asserted, “are
contrary to Pakistan’s status as an electoral democracy.”
Freedom House rates Pakistan as a Partly Free country in its annual survey
of political rights and civil liberties.
