Always a bad sign…
Juliette Terzieff, Chronicle Foreign Service
Islamabad, Pakistan – President Pervez Musharraf got a bit of welcome news over the weekend, when the nations of the Commonwealth lifted a four-year suspension of Pakistan imposed after the military coup that installed Musharraf in power.
The implication was that Pakistan is now moving toward greater democracy – a trend that Musharraf says he will cement by stepping down from his post as chief of the military by the end of this year.
But try telling that to Sami Yousifzai, the latest journalist to fall afoul of Musharraf’s government and who has been locked in legal limbo for more than a month.
Known to his friends as a hard-nosed, no-nonsense reporter with a quirky Afghan sense of humor, Yousifzai has fought hard before and after Sept. 11, 2001, to sniff out the truth of what is happening in his beloved homeland.
Working from Pakistan, where he has lived as a refugee for the last 20 years, the ethnic Pashtun gained a formidable reputation for his ability to penetrate secretive Pashtun tribes straddling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where support for the Taliban and al Qaeda remains strong. He returned time and time again with exclusive material few others would dare try to gather.
“He is one of the best journalists I know – smart, savvy and determined,” said Ron Moreau, the Islamabad bureau chief for Newsweek, one of Yousifzai’s employers, along with the BBC and the Pakistani daily the News.
Yousifzai was last seen on April 21, when he was detained with American freelance journalist Eliza Griswold and their hired driver, Mohammad Salim, at a military checkpoint near the unmarked border between Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier province and the autonomous tribal areas.
The news agency Pakistan Press International reported Griswold’s arrest the next day, claiming the government had “foiled another plot woven by Western media to malign the country at an international level.” Security authorities held Griswold for questioning for several hours in Peshawar before releasing her.
But Yousifzai and Salim remain in detention, with neither lawyers nor family members allowed access to them. No formal charges have been filed, nor has the government given any details of what the two men are suspected.
Karim Arif, a Peshawar lawyer representing both men, said, "Wrongful detention is nothing new here – in fact, since Sept. 11, it happens more than anyone would like to think … and that is particularly bad news for journalists.
“Authorities had to release the American because they know they can’t get away with treating foreigners that way, but for locals the standard is different.”
Musharraf’s government received strong international criticism in December when two French journalists and their local translator were arrested while investigating reports of Taliban resurgence in Pakistan’s southwest. The two were released and sent home within weeks.
But their local counterpart, Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, was held for months and eventually charged with sedition, conspiracy and impersonation – charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. Authorities allege Rizvi paid locals to impersonate Taliban members to satisfy his foreign colleagues. Rizvi was released on bail in March, but the charges against him still stand.
Arif filed a habeas corpus petition at the Peshawar High Court last week, arguing that the detention of Yousifzai and Salim was illegal on the grounds that the authorities have failed to formally charge them or produce them in front of a judge as required by Pakistani law. The court gave the government seven days to answer the petition.
But Pakistani authorities have transferred the pair from a prison in Peshawar to one in Miran Shah, inside the North Waziristan tribal agency – which as part of the autonomous tribal areas does not fall under the jurisdiction of Pakistani courts and is governed by separate legal and criminal codes.
“If they are tried in the tribal agency, we have no opportunities for appeal,” said Arif. “I’m afraid we will not be able to help them as much as we should under the laws that exist in the books.”
Despite repeated claims by the government that media are free from interference, Pakistan is ranked worst in the region in a survey released earlier this month by the South Asian Free Media Association.
The report chronicled 59 cases of killing, harassment, detention and official threats against journalists, putting Pakistan far ahead of Bangladesh, whose population is of similar size but has logged only 32 documented cases.
“Journalists’ physical safety is under constant threat, affecting their ability to work independently,” said Hussain Naqvi, one of the report’s authors.
Promoting a free press is a tricky challenge for Musharraf, who is eager to prove his democratic credentials to a skeptical populace and the world at large.
But journalists routinely dredge up information on the darker side of Pakistani politics – for example, the army’s longstanding support for the Taliban, which many believe continues today, and the government’s apparent tolerance of the nuclear proliferation activities of bomb designer A.Q. Khan.
Such revelations have consistently created trouble for Musharraf on the international front.
Observers say the detentions of Yousifzai and Salim are meant as a further warning for any journalists who may not have gotten the message earlier.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/25/MNGIV6R5C21.DTL
