THE withdrawal, by popular international demand, of the emergency at the weekend does not, in two significant senses, restore the status quo ante.

The arbitrarily reconstituted Supreme Court remains intact (with a number of the notable judges who refused to take oath under the now ostensibly obsolete PCO still under house arrest), and the media restrictions reinforced last month remain in place.

It has, furthermore, been decreed that every unconstitutional measure taken cannot be challenged even in courts of law that are loyalist more or less by definition.

All of this is a reflection of the incumbent regime’s level of confidence, which has steadily been dwindling for much of the year. It took its first tentative steps against independent television channels by amending the Pemra ordinance back in June, when deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s campaign for restitution took an ominous turn, partly because his activities and those of the lawyers who supported his efforts, as well as the deplorable actions of the state’s repressive apparat, were finding their way into every living room. Inevitably, the manoeuvre backfired. The offices of Geo and ARY were earlier attacked in March and May respectively.

The declaration of emergency in November was accompanied by a blackout of the cable channels that have proliferated in the Musharraf years. Whenever the regime was chided for its authoritarianism, these freewheeling channels were held up as a counter-example. Their independence eventually became intolerable, however. A code of conduct was introduced that put paid to popular talk shows where a wide variety of views could freely be aired. Only channels that agreed to abide by the restrictive rules were permitted the luxury of returning to air. Only Geo, to its considerable credit, has thus far refused to take the bait.

The press, although technically subject to the same rules about not bringing into disrepute figures in authority, has not faced the same degree of restrictions, partly because the government is well aware that in a semi-literate milieu, TV is inestimably more influential. Furthermore, permitting freedom of expression in the English-language press in particular enables the regime to deflect criticism from its western benefactors. However, as this newspaper’s experience suggests, even in this sphere there is a fairly large gap between the facade and the nitty-gritty.

The suspension of government advertisements to publications that refuse to toe the official line is a time-dishonoured method of discouraging dissent that almost every regime in Pakistan has sought to deploy.

It would nonetheless be ungracious not to admit that as far as the print media are concerned, conditions thus far have broadly been more conducive to objective reporting and reasoned comment than under previous regimes, both civilian and military. Arguably the worst transgressions against freedom of opinion and the reporting of facts were recorded in the murky days when General Ziaul Haq ruled the roost, a time when not only were the words of Mohammad Ali Jinnah considered subversive, but there were even curbs on reproducing the utterances of Zia (given the contradictions inherent therein).

The pre-censorship that resulted in embarrassing blank spaces in newspapers and magazines (until these spaces, too, were deemed expressions of dissent and therefore outlawed) eventually made way for press advice, which served much the same purpose in a marginally less uncivilised manner. The pattern followed with an amazing degree of precision the tactics adopted by Pakistan’s first military regime.

Much of the nation’s press was at Ayub Khan’s beck and call when he became chief martial law administrator and, soon afterwards, president in October 1958. There were, however, exceptions. The most prominent among these were the organs of Progressive Papers Limited (PPL), notably its dailies The Pakistan Times and Imroze.

The Pakistan Times stood out on account of the fact that it not only opposed, within the limitations imposed by censorship, the advent of military dictatorship, it was also hostile towards attempts to ensconce Pakistan firmly in the American camp in the context of the Cold War. Time magazine had offered it a backhanded compliment by describing it during the 1950s as the best-edited communist newspaper in Asia, which wasn’t entirely accurate. Although its stalwarts were, in the main, inclined towards Moscow rather than Washington, the paper declared its preference for neutrality during the Cold War.

More significantly, its unequivocally anti-imperialist stance included unstinting opposition to the Anglo-French-Israeli Suez misadventure, which the Suhrawardy government had decided to support.

Inevitably, it also opposed Pakistan’s all-too-eager participation in the US-led Seato and Cento alliances, and found plenty of cause to excoriate the corruption and venality of politicians across the political spectrum. It clearly wasn’t a newspaper that attracted the approval of those who stalked the corridors of power. Until 1959, however, official retribution consisted chiefly of cases that could be argued in courts of law. Martial law facilitated a different tack.

Before going any further, it would only be fair to declare a personal connection: The Pakistan Times’ editor at the time was my father, Mazhar Ali Khan. I hadn’t been born but was, so to speak, on my way when the fledgling junta decided to take over PPL. It opted, characteristically, for a military operation rather than formal charges that, as my father noted many years later, “would have been thrown out of court even by a third-class magistrate gifted with a modicum of honesty and elementary knowledge of legal procedures”.

The operation was entrusted to two of the field marshal’s ministers: General Khalid Sheikh, who happened to be my father’s brother-in-law, and a rising star by the name of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The latter, to his credit, was remarkably courteous. On the night of the operation, he visited our family residence at an unearthly hour to intimate Mazhar Ali Khan about what was happening and to persuade him to stay on, with vastly improved remuneration.

The majority of shares in PPL belonged to Mian Iftikharuddin, a progressive landlord who had helped to found the Azad Pakistan Party and the National Awami Party after stints in the Indian National Congress and the Pakistan Muslim League. The absurd charge against him was that PPL publications were being sustained by funds from abroad. No names were named, but China was deemed to be the main culprit — which is fairly ironic in view of the role Beijing subsequently played in sustaining the Ayub dictatorship.

Anyhow, a concerted effort was made to persuade Mazhar Ali Khan to stay on as editor. He refused to countenance that indignity, and The Pakistan Times and Imroze progressively lost all credibility as they turned into outlets for official viewpoints. Perhaps the saddest part of the episode was the fact that almost every other newspaper of note — including this one — enthusiastically endorsed the state’s first serious conquest of the press.

Nothing of comparable audacity has been attempted since. Yet the occupation of PPL barely rates a mention in history books — it is ignored altogether, for instance, in Lawrence Ziring’s apologia for the Ayub regime in Pakistan in the Twentieth Century. One thing that hasn’t changed in all these years is the expectation that all patriotic journalists are obliged to sing from the same hymn book. The forthcoming ‘democracy’ is unlikely to reverse the trend.

The writer is a journalist based in Sydney.

mahir.worldview@gmail.com