ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has rejected as misleading a report released by the government declaring political opponents and journalists anti-state elements on the basis of assumptions.

Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, PML-N senior leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the so-called “Anti-State Trends Deep Analytics Report” had been released to divert the attention of the nation from the real problems facing the country, including the government’s failure on economic and diplomatic fronts.

He said the voices of dissent had been branded as anti-state on the basis of the data of a Canadian company, which said it never sold the data to Pakistan.

Fawad says nobody from Pakistan declared anti-state

He said the names of politicians known for raising voice for supremacy of the Constitution, including Afrasiab Khattak and Farhatullah Babar, had been mentioned in the report.

He said even former wife of Prime Minister Imran Khan — Reham Khan — had not been spared.

He said speaking about corruption within the government and talking about scandals had become a national security issue.

“Under martial law, political leaders and journalists are called traitors... what is the difference between [martial law] and a political government that brands political parties and patriots as anti-state?” Mr Abbasi asked.

The former prime minister said the government had shown Kashmir as part of India on six or five different occasions in the report and maintained that “had the Centre even read the report, they would have been more responsible”.

Mr Abbasi said the document claimed that three million tweets were posted, but failed to mention what were they about and did not even indicate whether the tweets were against the country or pro-Pakistan.

“If this government has expertise in anything, it is lying,” he said, asking why the government had clubbed journalists and the opposition together with India and Israel on the basis of “mere assumptions”.

“A large portion of the report is against Pakistan’s political parties,” he said, adding that it failed to determine whether the tweets were in favour of Pakistan or against its interests.

“Struggling for democratic rights and talking about supremacy of the Constitution and freedom of expression have been declared anti-state acts,” he said.

Meanwhile, federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said that nobody from Pakistan was declared anti-state in the information ministry digital media wing’s (DMW) analytic report, issued just a couple of days ago.

“The analysis of Rana Sanaullah, Khurram Dastagir and Shahid Khaqan Abbasi reflects that they are not aware about latest technology and don’t have enough knowledge about it,” he said in a statement.

He said that unfortunately the political parties did not have their research wings to help their leadership understand an issue in depth.

The DMW in its report provided data of 150 trends running on social media networking site Twitter, he said, adding that a total of 3.7 million tweets were posted to build an anti-Pakistan narrative.

People of India, Afghanistan and others took part in the campaign to push that narrative online, he said. India also used bot technology to promote anti-Pakistan tweets, he added.

Mr Chaudhry said the report did not comment on the people living in Pakistan, clarifying that “if someone is taking part in #SanctionPakistan trending right now on social media and opposing it, then it does not mean that he is indulging in an anti-state activity”.

The media wing of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) had been busy in spreading and posting anti-state trends on social media, the minister said. The data about PTM’s role in supporting the anti-state narrative was included in the DMW report which could be analysed by people themselves, he added.

He said the real issue was who was posting and supporting anti-state narrative. PML-N leadership should better hire the services of an expert to educate them about the contents of the report. The leaders unfamiliar with technology could also contact the information ministry’s digital media wing that “has been set up to guide them”, Mr Chaudhry said.

Published in Dawn, August 14th, 2021