Khalid Hussain: Another Casualty for Pakistan’s Freedom of Press

Posted on September 30, 2019 by Haroon Riaz

Source: Khalid Hussain/The Nation

Pakistan is probably seeing perhaps the worst year in press freedom under the Bajwa-Imran regime in an age in which communications are supposed to advance.

The Nation, one of the traditionally conservative English language newspapers, which had taken a turn for a more liberal narrative in recent years, fired its political cartoonist about a week ago or so. Muhammad Khalid had drawn a satirical cartoon highlighting the toothlessness of Prime Minister Imran Khan, whose megalomania has created an illusion of his person becoming an important statesman capable of resolving long-time international disputes.

The context of this caricature is President Trump offering to mediate between Pakistan and India to help resolve the Kashmir issue.

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Here is what The Nation Apology reads:

We would like to apologize deeply for a cartoon that appeared on our pages. The artwork fell short of our editorial standards and does not reflect our editorial policy. It should never have appeared.

We are proud to be a nationalistic paper and we regret sincerely the attention taken by an artwork that was inappropriate, especially at the time of the UN General Assembly session taking place in New York.

The necessary steps have been taken to ensure our internal procedures. And once again, we humbly extend our sincere apologies and regret.

This dismissal may sound like the prerogative of the editor of the publication, who paradoxically had published it, but this is becoming all too common in the self-censoring media in Pakistan. The Nation, an about-to-collapse publication which has been heavily infiltrated with the sympathizers and representatives of the military establishment, could obviously not bear to support such expression on its pages.

The curbs on media freedom in Pakistan have taken a turn for the worse under the Imran-Bajwa regime and several international observers, including Reporters Sans Frontiers, have critiicized the administaration for falsely denying it. Recently, Dawn’s iconic magazine The Herald also closed its operations and several other printing publications are under the threat of vanishing in the country.

Speaking to Gandhara, Khalid Hussain said, “I don’t know how long they will not be printing my cartoons or whether they will ever print my cartoons [again].” He further clarified what he wanted to convey in the cartoon. “I didn’t aim to hit Imran Khan personally. But as the prime minister of the country, he symbolically represents the country he rules,” he said. “What I felt was that Trump has repeatedly assured Pakistan to mediate between India and Pakistan. But he later said that Modi has not agreed to [his mediation].”

Khalid may still try making his political caricatures independently but can never be sure how he is going to pay his bills. This concern has become the biggest moral compass for many professionals in the journalism industry in Pakistan, which increasingly deprives them of fair and timely wages (if they are paid at all) and editorial protection.

This is yet another casualty for freedom of the press in perhaps one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. But then again, the truth being a casualty in Pakistan is just another day in the war-like theocratic Sultanate.

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Imran Khan’s Global Priorities and the Entertaining UNGA Address

Posted on September 29, 2019 by Haroon Riaz

Source: Waseem Altaf

The moment had finally arrived. Perhaps the moment for which Imran Khan had been dreaming to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The moment, which in his mind and in the mind of his followers, had been preordained and predetermined by the Divine power. Perhaps his most remarkable mark on world history, his address to the United Nations General Assembly. And perhaps one of the most entertaining UNGA addresses, right up there with Arafat, Netanyahu, and Gaddafi.

Starting this historic address with his party’s fascist slogan of “eeyaka naabudu wa eeyaka nasta’een” (Thee alone we bow to and thee alone we seek help from), the Prime Minister immediately reminded of his partisan agenda on the global forum. Going well above his allotted time on the forum, the Prime Minister continued to speak for about 51 minutes to make a point, and his self-important mannerism was evident from the start.

However, to the credit of Imran Khan, very few speeches on the forum would have been so personal and passionate. He passionately presented the case for the plight of the people of Kashmir, while taking jabs at the fascist Modi administration. While only Imran Khan could have delivered such an emotional speech, and while Kashmir was one of its more appreciable highlights, it was not without its diplomatic flaws.

Senator Sherry Rehman, the former ambassador to the United States, had criticized the speech for not covering Kashmir in greater detail, as well as failing to remind that it is disputed territory between India and Pakistan. Imran Khan’s speech treats Kashmir as an Indian state in which human rights were suspended. There was no specific mention of the UN Resolutions about Kashmir which had provisions to hold a plebiscite in the disputed state under certain conditions, which included demilitarizing parts of Kashmir occupied by both Pakistan and India.

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Since intellectual and moral dishonesty is the hallmark of the Pakistan Government, so they always conveniently ignore the human rights abuses committed by the Pakistani state. Imran Khan, however, takes it to another level by pretending that India-Pakistan history started with his assumption of office. He again reminded about his disappointment on Modi refusing to reciprocate his gesture for peace. There, of course, was no concrete measure of taking action against terrorism.

Here is the UNGA address of Prime Minister Imran Khan in full.

Only he could have made this speech, though momentarily his mind always wandered to the protest container. He only stopped short of ranting endlessly about the opposition complaining about the corruption in the country and instead attacked the ideas of tax havens, while conveniently forgetting those in his parties holding such secret accounts, especially the ones funding his campaigns, including himself. However, he made an interesting point about wealthy countries not doing enough to block the flow of wealth from poor countries.

He appreciably reminded the world about the problem of Islamophobia and Muslim communities being targeted for their faith around the world. However, he skipped both the mention of Uighur Muslim communities in China and also the Apartheid-like treatment of non-Muslim minority groups in Pakistan.

However, the biggest revelation in Imran Khan’s speech was that blasphemy had become such a major global crisis. As he has done before, he outrageously compared it to Holocaust denial and called on the Western world to sacrifice their ideals of free speech to prevent hurting the feelings of the Muslim community. But for his concern about the offense of Holocaust denial, he was hanging out with the perfectly wrong people during his tour.

During his UN mission to the United States, Imran Khan got together with Turkish President Recep Teyyip Erdogan and Malaysian President Mahathir Muhammad, both of whom had their own theatrics to display at the forum. With folk such as Erdogan and Mahathir with their remarkable record on antisemitism, Imran Khan found the perfect company to launch a campaign for the cause.

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They got their heads together and decided that the best solution to fight Islamophobia around the world was to establish a BBC type English language TV channel to highlight Muslim issues. As if Al-Jazeera English was not enough.

But probably here’s the reason why we need a new channel to fight selective Islamophobia. She probably forgot the mentions of Yemen.

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Coming back to his UNGA address, while his message on Kashmir was on point, as India’s martial raw deserves global condemnation, he may be sabotaging the cause with his constantly bringing up nuclear war. He said he expected “bloodbath in Kashmir” and “another Pulwama,” while criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the “Nazi-inspired” RSS, of which he was a lifelong member. Following the mention of nuclear war, he went a step further by creating a hypothetical scenario of a 7-times smaller Pakistan having no choice but to attack India with nuclear weapons to defend itself. And that the confrontation in Kashmir will lead to it. He mentioned that the nuclear war will eventually impact the whole world. He said that “our belief was “la ilaha il Allah” or “There is no God but Allah.”” Who knew what he meant by this.

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Who knew if Imran Khan was trying to intimidate the world or impress them with his brand of “peacemaking” but someone should brief him that the world is more concerned about Pakistan’s nukes, not India’s. This irresponsible threat on such a forum was seen as a brave display of force by many loyalist nationalists back home.

Since Imran Khan is known to be prone to gaffes and emotional impulses, you would expect that saner heads must prevail in the bureaucratic government. However, the Government of Pakistan felt compelled to report and publish the bizarre threat by Imran Khan in writing in this tweet to double down on it.

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Perhaps, those celebrating his hyperbolic speech could learn a thing or two from India’s composed but solid reply to Pakistan’s narrative.

In Pakistan, Imran Khan’s speech is being seen by his nationalist liberal and conservative followers as the irrefutable evidence of his competence as a global statesman. They are also insisting that the military establishment has done the greatest favor to Pakistan by selecting Imran Khan. Despite the dismal performance of his government so far, which has reduced the growth rate of the country by more than half since last year and has seen a surge in foreign debts, his role as a divinely sanctioned Messiah, not only of Pakistan but that of Muslim Ummah, is being reinforced and any opposition to him is seen as traitorous behavior.

Even the otherwise composed military officials cannot contain their partisan excitement by, something which clearly reflects their political involvement and partisan bias. Here is the DG ISPR in full troll mode in response to criticism of Imran Khan’s speech by Muhammad Taqi and Gul Bukhari.

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The totalitarian nationalists celebrating his speech will fail to even acknowledge the media curbs and the worst crackdown on dissenting opposition in recent history in Pakistan. They probably would like those authoritarian measures to become even worse against anyone who dares to criticize the divinely “selected” Imran Khan.

Imran Khan recently made a comment expressing his disappointment over the lack of response from the international community on Kashmir. As citizens of Pakistan, we are disappointed by world leaders too. For not calling out Imran Khan on his hypocrisy.

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