'Hand Over Your Broadcast Equipment': Pakistan Stifles Media, Cuts Phone Lines

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4, 2007 — -- As Pakistanis awoke Sunday to a strict new political reality, the most visible sign of emergency rule was the harsh clampdown on the private media.

Pakistan's Electronic Media Regulating Authority (PEMRA) issued an order that bans the media from making any reports "that defame or bring into ridicule" President Pervez Musharraf, his administration or the military.

Any editor who violates the order can face up to a year in jail or a 5 million rupee fine ($83,000).

In a speech to the nation on Saturday night, Musharraf said he invoked emergency powers in a bid to control a pro-Taliban insurgency that's spinning out of control here. But immediate actions by his government instead appeared to target the media, opposition politicians and the judiciary.

About half a dozen judges were arrested after they refused to take oath under his new regime. Meanwhile scores of human rights activists, lawyers and pro-democracy agitators were put under house arrest, according to local news reports.

Editors at local television channels and newspapers said their phone lines had been cut, their broadcasts interfered, and one station got raided overnight by about two dozen armed cops, who tried to make away with their broadcasting equipment.

"A magistrate arrived at our bureau with about 24 police, all of them armed, and he told me, 'You need to hand over your broadcast equipment to us'," said Talat Hussein, the head of news at Aaj Television. "I said, 'Under what laws?'"

The magistrate then replied, "We can do this the right way or we will do it our way," Hussein said.

Local media soon flocked to the Aaj Bureau and surrounded the entrance, preventing the police from removing any equipment. Hussein said the station moved its satellite truck to an undisclosed location and continued to broadcast uninterrupted.

Most private Pakistani channels actually broadcast from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, so as not to fall victim to government interference here.