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The trial ended in a few minutes: Four lashes would fall on the body of Khawar Naeem Hashmi, accused of defacing the mausoleum of Mohammad Ali Jinnah on Pakistans independence day in 1977. He was, arguably, lucky the other journalists who had joined him in a public protest against military dictatorship were sentenced to five lashes each. Lines were drawn on their backs to ensure the whip would fall with precision; army officers, Hashmi later recalled, would amuse their families by bringing them along to watch.

Lashings seemed to have become popular amusements in General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haqs time. A hundred thousand people gathered in a Karachi park to watch the punishment of Mohammed Kaleem, convicted of raping a child.

Earlier this week, newspaperowners and editors were called into meetings with Pakistans military brass and ordered to cease covering establishment darling-turned-insurrectionary Imran Khan. During his own term as Prime Minister, Imran and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorateused enforced disappearances, torture, and false criminal cases to terrorise journalists,evendriving some dissidents into exile.

Absar Alam was shot outside his house,expert Lynn ODonnell records. Asad Ali Toor was bound, gagged, and beaten inside his own home. Exiled critics even found themselves targeted for assassinationoverseas by hit squads alleged to have been hired by the ISI.

This time around, Imran has been made to wear the muzzle and chain he gleefully used on his opponentsand thats bad news for Pakistan.

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Like much of the Indian media, the news industry of Pakistan was born in the ideological crucible of the freedom movement.Dawn, founded by Pakistan movement patriarch Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was converted from a weekly to a daily newspaper. Mir Khalil-ur-Rehmans Jang, Hamid NizamisNawa-i-Waqt,and Mian IftikharuddinsPakistan Times would drive the emergence of a new generation of post-independence media conglomerates.

Even though an organised media flowered,historians Saima Parveen and Muhammad Nawaz Bhattiremind us, it was not free to defend the democratic values; instead they were working to praise government policies. National interests, the glory of Islam, and the Ideology of Pakistanwerecatchphrases used to extend support from the press for the government.

General Ayub Khans military regime institutionalised this informal censorship. The Left-leaningPakistan Times,Imroz,andLail-o-Nahar were nationalised. The three mass-circulation newspapers run by former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos family Musawat,Hilal-i-Pakistan, andNusrat also ended up in the hands of the State-owned National Press Trust.

ThePress and Publication Ordinance introduced by General Ayub and which, among other things, penalised the publication of crimes of violence or sex in a manner likely to excite unhealthy curiosity as well as information calculated to cause public alarm, frustration or despondencyprovided a powerful tool where gentler persuasion failed.

Future historians might debate just how significant censorship was as a tool of regime survival. The law, notably, could not stop Dhaka newspapers from publishing special supplements on 23 March 1971,theanniversary of the Muslim Leagues Pakistan resolution as Emancipation of Bangladesh Day.

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Following his installation as President after the 1971Bangladesh war,media expert JM Williams noted, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started using more subtle kinds of coercion. The supply of newsprint was a State monopoly, and major advertisers like Pakistan International Airlines were also public-sector entities. The new President had promised to dissolve the National Press Trust earlier but rapidly concluded that the tyrants tool could serve its ends too.

The government moved to cancel the newsprint quotas ofJang,stopped advertising for Dawn, and bannedThe Sun.

General Zia, who seized power in 1977, tightened State control over the media. Even journalists were jailed. Four more Masudullah Khan, Iqbal Jafri, Khawar Naeem Hashmi, and Nisar Zaidi were flogged for organising apro-democracy hunger strike. As during Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhis Emergency, pre-censorship of content was introduced in Pakistan.

Even though Zias regime modelled itself on the revolutionary Islamism of Iranian mullahs and the monarchical concentration of power of Saudi Arabia, those regimes managed to use their resources to address at least some of their economic and social problems. The same cannot be said of the Islamism of Zia,Ibrahim Karawan has noted.

FormerPrime Minister Benazir Bhutto did initiate an opening-up of media freedoms in the democratic revival that followed,buteditor Imran Aslamrecorded that her government routinely sought to buy off critical journalists. The military, for its part, maintained its own list of client writers as it battled the Prime Minister for control.

The Nawaz Sharifgovernmentrestored the use of blunt tools. The owner ofThe News, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, famously released taped conversations of two prominent government officials seeking to blackmail him into sacking critical journalists by threatening tax prosecutions.

Former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf cast himself as a defender of the free press and enabled the rise of private television news broadcasting. Even under Musharraf, though, journalists who crossed the establishment faced severe consequences. The journalist Syed Saleem Shahzadwas murdered, allegedlyby military agents.

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Lessons for India

To Indians familiar withtheir ownmedia history, much of this story will be depressingly familiar. Like in Pakistan, a powerful illiberal impulse ran through Indian democratic institutionsafter Independence. Enraged by what he claimed was a partisan and communal media, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru cracked down on press freedoms. Terrible, something terrible, he said of Indian journalism to the visitingscholar Michael Brecher. We put an end to it.

In 1950, the Supreme Court shot down the Government of Madras ban on the Left-wing weeklyCrossroads. Then, the court stopped the Delhi government from pre-censoring the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs (RSS) magazineOrganiser. The government responded by resurrecting colonial-eraanti-free speech laws.

The Indian State also created a system of pelf and patronage to ensure it controlled the media. Even though the media sometimes fought back, it has rarely enjoyed genuine independence from the government.

Even though few of Imrans opponents have reason to shed tears for his fate, liberals fear whats passed for a democratic transition is coming to closely resemble military tyranny. Thecommentator Omar Warraich, among others, has thoughtfully noted that the real lesson is that the Generals need to be evicted from Pakistani politics. The chokehold of the military on ideas and debate has created a republic of fear.

For Indians, the crisis in Pakistan ought to be a reminder of just how fragile democratic freedoms areand how difficult they can be to resurrect when they have been allowed to crumble.

The author is National Security Editor, ThePrint. He tweets @praveenswami. Views are personal.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)

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Pakistani Generals have a history of censoring media. Imran Khan is ... - ThePrint