Pakistan bows to journalists'
pressure By Malik Ayub Sumbal
ISLAMABAD - The Pakistan government has
formed a judicial commission headed by a Supreme
Court judge to probe the murder of Asia Times
Online Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad,
after journalist organizations staged an
unprecedented protest.
A commission headed
by Justice Main Saqib Nisar, a sitting judge of
the Supreme Court, has been formed to investigate
the causes and circumstances of Shahzad’s death,
according to a notification issued by the Law and
Justice Ministry. The reporter's battered body,
bearing signs of torture, was discovered in a
canal about 150 kilometers southeast of Islamabad
on May 31, two
days after he vanished in the
capital as he drove to a television interview.
''The commission will inquire into the
background and circumstances of the abduction, and
subsequent murder of Saleem Shahzad,'' said the
ministry's notification. ''The commission will
also recommend measures to prevent the recurrence
of such gruesome incidents against journalists in
the future.''
Pakistani media on Wednesday
boycotted parliamentary proceedings and began a
24-hour sit-in outside Parliament House to protest
the murder, which has been widely interpreted as a
threat to reporters covering the complex and
covert ties between militant groups and the
country's security establishment. The protesters
had demanded an independent investigation into the
death of Shahzad and justice for 70 other
journalists killed since 2000. They were also
objecting to the government’s initial decision not
appoint a Supreme Court judge.
The
demonstration ended on Thursday morning after
Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told the
Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ)
leadership that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
had signed documents at 3am to appoint Justice
Nisar.
According to the Law and Justice
Ministry's notification, the commission was to
start its inquiry immediately and submit its
findings within six weeks. As well as Justice
Nisar, the five-member panel will consist of
Justice Agha Rafiq Ahmed Khan, chief justice of
the Federal Shariat Court, two senior police
officials from Punjab and Islamabad, and the
president of the PUFJ.
However, the
commission hit a legal snag as Justice Nisar said
the appointment of judges to a commission should
be at the discretion of Chief Justice Iftikhar
Muhammad Chaudhry prior to nominating him but he
hadn't been consulted. Justice Nisar also said
that, although he hadn't been asked before the
commission was announced, he would be happy to
serve should the chief justice agree to his
appointment, in line with legal norms.
Dr
Firdous responded that consultation with the chief
justice was not required for setting up the probe
commission. She cited the example of the
investigation into the circumstances of the death
of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden in a United
States raid in Abbottabad, where a sitting Supreme
Court judge, Justice Javed Iqbal, was appointed
without prior permission from the chief justice.
Analysts cited by the Nation newspaper
said that by not consulting the chief justice, the
government had deliberately tried to politicize
the matter. The decision to form the commission
had been taken under the pressure of protests by
journalists, but the government was not serious in
bringing the culprits to justice, they said.
Journalists have alleged that the Pakistan
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was
behind the death of Shahzad, who went missing two
days after he had published an article on the
possible infiltration of al-Qaeda operatives into
the Pakistan military (see Al-Qaeda
had warned of Pakistani strike, Asia Times
Online, May 27, 2011), saying the married father
of three had been tortured in order to extract the
source of his article.
Human Rights Watch
cited a "reliable interlocutor" who said Shahzad
had been abducted by the ISI. The ISI issued a
rare rebuttal to what it described as "baseless"
media claims that it had targeted Shahzad for
assassination.
The International
Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has welcomed the
move by the government of Pakistan to accept
PFUJ’s demand to appoint a judicial commission
headed by a Supreme Court judge. "The IFJ is
relieved that the government of Pakistan has
agreed with the demands of the PFUJ and local
journalists for the inquiry into Shahzad’s
murder," IFJ Asia-Pacific director Jacqueline Park
said in a statement on its website. "We reiterate
our position that the inquiry must be conducted
promptly and transparently, and provide firm
recommendations to bring to justice the killers of
Shahzad."
In a report released on June 1
titled "Getting Away With Murder", [1] the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) ranked
Pakistan as the 10th most dangerous country in the
world for journalists. Iraq topped the list with
92 unsolved journalists' murder cases between
January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2010.
"The
findings of the 2011 Impunity Index lay bare the
stark choices that governments face: Either
address the issue of violence against journalists
head-on or see murders continue and
self-censorship spread," CPJ executive director
Joel Simon said.
During their protests,
senior media and union leaders in Pakistan openly
called for the protection of the journalists from
the ISI. Pakistan Muslim League leader Mian
Muhammad Nawaz Sharif also criticized hidden
forces torturing journalists when speaking at
their demonstration this week.
Pervaiz
Shaukat, the PFUJ president, warned the government
of another sit-in protest if the Judicial
Commission failed to get results and thoroughly
investigate Pakistan's unresolved journalist
deaths.
Asma Jahangir, the president of
the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan,
summed up popular feeling in Pakistan in a
television interview last week, saying, "The
intelligence agencies of Pakistan should now stop
these tactics of torturing, harassing and killing
of the innocent people because every one knows
about the torture cell of ISI, even in the small
localities of the various cities."
Malik
Ayub Sumbal is a freelance investigative
journalist based in Islamabad, Pakistan. He has
worked for more than eight years for a number of
national and international newspapers, magazines,
journals, wire services and television channels.
He can be contacted at ayubsumbal@gmail.com
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