Ever since coming to power, Pakistan´s Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf has gone out of his way to constantly reassure Pakistanis and the world that civil liberties will be respected under his rule. Most would agree that, albeit a few lapses, such as the detention without charge of various government functionaries loyal to ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf has on the whole honoured his word.
Journalists, however, remain cautious, having been avuncularly warned by the CE that the press should "play a positive and constructive role". A week after the 12 October 1999 coup, local newspapers reported that 20 journalists had been added to a list of citizens prohibited from travelling outside Pakistan. And on 21 October, a truckload of soldiers visited the Lahore offices of a leftist political weekly, questioned them about their reasons for publishing an issue headlined "No to Martial Law", and asked for information about the weekly´s publisher and printer.
These relatively minor incidents have been noted in a special report called "Pakistan —The Press for Change", released on 14 February by the New York-based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Notes the report: "On 26 January, Musharraf ordered all high court judges to swear an oath never to challenge decisions made by his administration. Many journalists feared that the general´s next demand might be the unquestioning loyalty of the press… While there have been no serious attacks thus far, journalists know that if they had few protections under Sharif, they have none under Musharraf… At year´s end, most journalists, like most citizens, were going along with Musharraf, and the balance of media coverage was overwhelmingly supportive of the army takeover.
The report adds, "But some journalists challenged the legitmacy of the coup and questioned the administration´s policies, without apparent repercussions." That is not strictly true. There have been cases where a few journalists writing independently on ´sensitive´ issues, have felt the pressure from agents of various intelligence agencies in the form of phones being tapped, being followed around, and so on. But since complaints to the military establishment have so far resulted in the press sure being immediately lifted, those affected have chosen not to go public on the matter.