Peeping through The Past

Najam Sethi, editor of the Friday Times , was arrested at his home in Lahore on May 8 and held without charge for nearly a month by Punjab Police on the instructions of  Nawaz Sharif. Government officials stated that Sethi was being held in connection with a speech he had delivered in New Delhi in April. The Friday Times claimed the real reason for his arrest was a series of editorials he had written about loan defaults by senior government officials and an interview that he gave the BBC team. The Lahore High Court dismissed a habeas corpus petition filed by Sethi’s wife, Jugnoo Mohsin, ruling that it did not have the jurisdiction to “interfere in the affairs of the armed forces.”
The government finally charged Sethi on June 1 with sedition, promoting communal enmity, condemning the creation of Pakistan and advocating the abolition of its sovereignty, and violating the Prevention of Anti-National Activities Act. The charges were withdrawn a day later, after the government failed to produce evidence before the Supreme Court justifying Sethi’s detention and following condemnation of Sethi’s detention by the international community. Although Sethi was released on June 2, authorities subsequently seized his passport and his wife’s bank accounts. On June 24, Zafar Ali Shah, the parliamentary secretary for parliamentary affairs, filed a petition with the chief election commissioner seeking an inquiry into Sethi’s religious status. Shah suggested that if Sethi were found to be a non-Muslim, he should lose his right to vote.
Two other journalists who had cooperated with the BBC team were also subjected to official harassment and intimidation. In April, M.A.K Lodhi, a journalist with the News International was briefly arrested and questioned about the nature and extent of his collaboration with the BBC team. On May 4, Hussain Haqqani, an opposition leader and columnist for The Friday Times and the Urdu-language daily Jang , was arrested by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency under a two-year old corruption charge on which he had already been exonerated. However, his detention was also suspected to have been related to interviews he gave to the BBC. He was finally released on July 25, after allegedly being brutally tortured and interrogated.
During late 1998 and early 1999, the government persistently tried to prevent the Jang group of newspapers from publishing. The Karachi-based group includes Jang , Pakistan’s largest circulation Urdu newspaper, and the News International , the country’s second-largest English-language newspaper. The Federal Investigation Agency raided Jang ‘s Rawalpindi bureau in mid-December 1998, the day after Jang published a story on a financial scandal involving the Ittefaq group of companies owned by Prime Minister Sharif’s family. Prior to the December raid, the government had frozen the Jang group’s bank accounts, placed deadlines upon it to pay large taxes, ceased government advertising, and withheld supplies of government-regulated newsprint. The government’s harassment of Jang continued into early February.
Najam Sethi,  said in Friday Times that among all the men of authority – some three dozen of them – to whom the infamous letter about him was sent, Musharraf was the only one who asked to see a copy of his actual speech and then refused to let the Pakistan Army Intelligence categorise Sethi a spy. Who, in this macabre world, is the “democrat”: the elected Prime Minister who frames an innocent journalist, or the Chief of the Army Staff who refuses to su bscribe to the frame-up?

Now, Nawaz Sharif and his cronies are also targetting and intimidating  Najam Sethi on various internet blogs. Nawaz Sharif who now claims to be champion of Human Rights and saviour for national economy, may read following extratct from UN statement on state of affairs in his government and should be ashamed of hisself that he again leading the country towards confrontation. This time, whole political process and politicians will be discredited for a longtime  and unfortunately, there would be no support from world community as they have already started discrediting politicians and especially Nawaz Sharif for hampering by political process in Pakistan.

Following is an extract  of UN statement released in 1999 on the performance of Nawaz Sharif and his government.

A UN statement on Gender discrimination in Pakistan released on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that Majority of women in Pakistan do not enjoy many of the recognised rights laid in the Universal declaration of Human rights.
According to the statistics released by Pakistan Govt. in the Pakistani senate the Jan – March 1999 period saw 1086 people killed and 364 women raped in Punjab.The figures for NWFP was 633 killings and 34 rapes. In Sindh it was 434 killings and 75 rapes. It is a country where a former Prime Minster and her husband have been convicted of corruption and sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and fined 8.6 million dollars.The present Prime Minister and his family face allegations of corruption and malpractice. The London high court ordered the brother of the PM who is also the Punjab chief minister and his father to pay a sum of $32.5 million to a company. Allegations of kick back in construction of Prime Minister’s secretariat have been made. 49 parliamentarians are charged with power thefts.
In its outlook report of 1999 the Asian Development Bank has said that Pakistan’s growth has been impeded by poor governance , sectarian violence, weak policy implementation and lack of private dynamism. 34% of the population was under poverty line in 1994 as against 25.2 % in 1990.and income distribution has worsened. Pakistan’s total external debt is estimated at 31billion $ which is half of its GDP. Including the domestic debt the figure is a staggering 66.5 bn. Dollars . 77% of the budget is consumed by debt servicing and defence spending. Pakistan ranks third in the world in its debt service ratio (interest and principal payments as % of its exports ) after Argentina and Brazil. The Govt. with other spending constraints is practically left with no money for development. According to some reports the Govt, is contemplating to request the AID Pakistan consortium to write off the loans.
The pathological anti Indianness is so acute that Pakistan is not even willing to sell surplus power ( estimated to be around 3000Mws ) to India , losing in the process Rs.2.5 Billion a month as cited by NEWS quoting official sources. Foreign Direct Investment had dropped by 41.2% to 222.2 million dollars in the first seven months of the fiscal year 1998-99
An OXFAM report on education and poverty published early this year says that of all the poor 104 countries it has studied , Pakistan comes out the worst going by the criterion of the resources it invests in education in relation to its national income. Pakistan spends six times more on defence than primary education.and only one third of the Pakistani students complete primary education.
The World bank has said that growth rate in Pakistan is expected to be barely 3% in 1998-99 a sharp decline from 6% the previous year . It has to import 5.5million metric tonnes of wheat due to poor agricultural policies and mismanagement. This will further strain its already precarious balance of payment problem.

Majid