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Journalist's Journal

By Mazhar Abbas Posted Jun 16 2009

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On Nov. 3, 2007, I was preparing for a live show on ARY OneWorld (a Pakistani news channel) about the speculations of a possible emergency rule when one of my colleagues announced, “Emergency has been promulgated.”

Another colleague rushed to the office and said, “All channels are off air in Islamabad and other cities across the country.” I got similar calls from my colleagues working in FM-99 and FM-103.

At around midnight, I got a call from an intelligence official saying, “Don’t try to come out on the roads to protest, as there is a zero tolerance policy towards you and other leaders of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists,” he said. “We have orders to arrest anyone who tries to come out on the streets, including journalists. This is my friendly advice to you and your friends.”

I don’t know whether it was a threat or just some advice, but I did not tell my wife or my two daughters, as my youngest had seen the dangers of my job firsthand. A year ago, she was with me when I found a brown envelope pasted on my car window holding real bullets.

The next day, I received another call, this time from an anonymous caller, repeating what the intelligence official had said the previous day. But my colleagues and I were determined to resist the pressure in the tradition of PFUJ, as it is Pakistan’s most vocal journalist body and has resisted previous military regimes since its inception 50 years ago.

The leaders of the union decided to meet at the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club situated in Rawalpindi. I was not expecting many people because Aaj TV office had been raided on Nov. 3 and Nov. 5 and arrests had been made. Though it was an emergency meeting of the PFUJ Federal Executive Council, leaders from various parts of the country attended and unanimously decided to resist the ban. They urged other media stakeholders to join them in action against the emergency rule and ban on the media.

When the union announced its plan to protest against the ban on media, demand a lifting of the emergency alert in the country and reinstate sacked judges, it put the government into a frenzy. Soon after the first big rally in Islamabad, which started in the Melody market but culminated in front of The Prime Minister Secretariat, a First Information Report was registered against 200 journalists, including myself, on charges of attempting to attack the Prime Minister House. I inquired from the then Information Secretary Anwar Mahmood about the FIR, but he denied that any case was ever registered. However, it was later confirmed that the case was indeed registered.

The move was an attempt to pressurize me and other PFUJ leaders from carrying out any such protests in the future, but the authorities failed to stop us, and the movement continued for 78 days. Journalists from around the country participated and showed unanimous support for the freedom of media in Pakistan.

Pakistan is an interesting country of 16 million people. It is the only Muslim country in the world where you will find a vocal and vibrant media thriving with minimal support from the government. In a majority of Muslim countries, the media remains under strict government control with few exceptions. Over the years, intolerance has increased in the Pakistani society due to economic deterioration. The situation has gotten worse in the last 30 years after the imposition of the 1977 Martial Law and a rise in extremism post 9/11. I remember the time in early 1981, when I started off my journalism career as a reporter, when some student activists of a religious and political party detained me for some time and abused me for reporting against one of their leader’s fake educational degree.

I survived the physical abuse thanks to the timely intervention of a fellow colleague who was a teacher at the Mass Communication Department of the university. During his student days, he was also part of the same party, but those were the days when political opponents were more tolerant and accepting of one another’s viewpoints.

In my 28 years in journalism, I have had many serious life threats that not only put my life in jeopardy, but the lives of my family members as well. In 1992 came the worst attack on my two-bedroom apartment. At the time, I was working in the morning for The Star, a tabloid of the leading Pakistani English daily DAWN. When the attack took place, I was in my office. At around 11:30 a.m., I received a call from a friend saying, “Your house is under attack.” I called my house number, but no one answered the call. The publisher of DAWN, Hameed Haroon, called me and asked me to come over to his office. I rushed over and he said, “Calm down, no one has been seriously hurt in the attack on your house.” My older brother, Zafar Abbas, who was then the BBC correspondent in Karachi, was injured and taken to the Aga Khan Hospital. My two younger brothers were also beaten. One of them, Azhar Abbas, is now heading the private news channel GEO news, while the other is a computer engineer in the U.S. My father was not at home when the attack took place, so he luckily survived the ordeal, but it proved fateful for our maid as she suffered a miscarriage.

My father gave all of us the strength we needed at such trying and uncertain times. Despite requests made by the newspaper management to relocate us from our house to a safer place, my father said, “I will not go into hiding or surrender to the acts of such attacks, as such a move will provide encouragement to the attackers.”

From the mid-80s to mid-90s, Pakistan’s commercial hub Karachi was in the grip of a series of ethnic and sectarian violence. It was a period when a journalist’s identity, whether ethnic or religious, became a threat. I was once attacked while covering a sectarian riot in Liaquatabad, a place located in the center of Karachi. At the time I was traveling with a BBC correspondent. Some of our colleagues then decided to move around in groups to cover riots. During this time, around 5,000 people lost their lives in ethnic and sectarian violence.

A senior intelligence officer of the Sindh province once inquired about my news report that included an interview with the Al-Zulfiqar terrorist group, which was active against the then military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq. They wanted me to disclose the source, but I refused to do so.

Threats to journalists have increased manifold since the invasion of private TV news channels and increased terrorism-related incidents in the country. Many journalists report on terrorism along the Pak-Afghan border as well as in the turbulent tribal areas of Pakistan. This, along with investigative reports on government activities, has put broadcast journalists in a very vulnerable position. Working for tabloids or as the bureau chief of AFP-Karachi is one thing; anchoring a talk show or speaking your mind in programs that focus on controversial subjects is quite a different and dangerous game. People can recognize you, and if they are not happy with what you are projecting or speaking, they can target you, and these targets have proved fatal numerous times in the recent past.

Even as an AFP correspondent, it was difficult for me to report from the high-conflict zone of Karachi. I used to receive several anonymous calls for “unknown reasons,” but what helped me survive these constant threats was keeping my tone and response as cool as possible. My name was put on the list of “hated journalists” released by the Karachi-based ethnic group Muhajir Rabita Council in 2007. What I have learned in the 28 years I have spent as a journalist in Pakistan is that you have to maintain a cool attitude, as this is the only thing that helps you survive in trying times.

Today, Pakistani journalists are facing a very difficult time when reporting on the tribal areas of NWFP bordering Afghanistan, Swat Valley and Baluchistan. These areas, described as conflict zones, have faced insurgency and have resulted in the deaths of several journalists. The assailants allegedly have been militants or intelligence personal, but we may never really know who detains, tortures, kidnaps or murders the journalists who cover these areas.

I have survived all these years in my profession as a journalist in Pakistan and have seen great moments and crushing tragedies, faced personal threats and seen many colleagues killed for the freedom of press in Pakistan. But I strongly believe if journalism is a passion, as it is for me, one will always enjoy even the hardships and the defeats. It is a risky profession, but the urge to tell people the truth and bring them out of ignorance is worth all the pain and the threats that is a big part of journalism.