ISLAMABAD, 29 October 2023: Two years after Pakistan became the first country in the world to specifically legislate on safety of journalists, the state is still failing to use this important legal instrument to combat rising impunity of crimes against journalists, reveals an annual report on the state of impunity against media practitioners in Pakistan, issued here on Sunday.
Since the promulgation of safety laws for journalists first by the Sindh government and then the federal government in late 2021, Pakistan continues to record an alarming increase in persecution of journalists, especially by government authorities and state agencies, including kidnapping, physical assaults and serious legal cases against them including on unproven charges of sedition, treason and electronic crimes, in the two-year post-legislation period, according to Freedom Network annual report marking the International Day to End Impunity falling on November 02.
Pakistan made history in 2021 passing two special laws to protect journalists. The Sindh Assembly passed the “Sindh Protection of Journalists and other Media Practitioners Act-2021” while the National Assembly passed “Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act-2021” in space of few months. Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab have not passed a similar law for their jurisdictions.
According to the Freedom Network report titled “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back – Pakistan Legislates on Safety of Jorunalists, But Still Fails to Protect Them,” at least 37.5 per cent of the violations in Pakistan – 93 out of total 248 cases in period between August 2021-August 2023 – were recorded in Islamabad alone. Sindh was the second worst region in Pakistan with 22.5% of the violations (56 cases), the report said, adding that it is ironic that most attacks against journalists happened in this period in regions that legislated for their safety.
Eleven journalists were also killed or lost lives in line of duty during the same period. Additional detailed statistics are included in the report available on Freedom Network website.
Pakistan was ranked 157 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Border’s World Press Freedom Index in 2021 before the laws were passed. In 2023, the country had improved its media freedom rank to 150 due to the two laws – a legal framework that reflected an acknowledgement by the country that it needed to tackle the problem of violence against journalists and combat impunity through legal guarantees. But that is where the progress stops.
“It is very disturbing to see the good work of the two legislatures – the Sindh Assembly and the federal parliament – diluted by not making the laws fully operational to provide protection to journalists,” Iqbal Khattak, the Executive Director of Freedom Network said while releasing the report. “Both the federal and Sindh governments are responsible for effectively dysfunctionalising their own laws and therefore delaying and effectively denying justice to journalists,” he added.
The federal Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act was passed unanimously by the National Assembly when Imran Khan was prime minister in 2021. After he was voted out, Shehbaz Sharif became the prime minister in 2022 until the parliamentary tenure expired in August 2023.
