Silence of the Lambs

On 5th June, 2014 PTA con­nived with Face­book to ban a num­ber of promi­nent pro­gres­sive, sec­u­lar and lib­er­al pages in Pak­istan. Their ‘crime’ was cam­paign­ing for a Pak­istan where val­ues of democ­ra­cy, human rights, social jus­tice, and egal­i­tar­i­an­ism are observed.

The irony is that anti-state, Tal­iban pages oper­ate with impuni­ty in Pak­istan while the voic­es of mod­er­a­tion, reform and san­i­ty are silenced by the PTA, the state organ respon­si­ble for reg­u­lat­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The blocked pages include Laal (Red), a left lean­ing, pro­gres­sive page run by the famous Laal band. It right­ful­ly calls itself South Asia’s largest left lean­ing Face­book page with a mam­moth fol­low­ing of more than 400,000. Laal’s Face­book page high­lights issues of human rights, ter­ror­ism, reli­gious intol­er­ance and socioe­co­nom­ic inequal­i­ties.

The ban on Laal’s page led to an enor­mous online back­lash cov­ered by both local and inter­na­tion­al media lead­ing to lift­ing the ban on Laal with­in two days. It is prob­a­bly the first time that PTA retract­ed a ban on any Face­book page.

Rosh­ni (Light) was anoth­er sec­u­lar and lib­er­al page which was banned, not the first time but the 3rd time by the state. Rosh­ni in many ways has been the pio­neer of online pro­gres­sive activism. It address­es the audi­ence in the native Urdu lan­guage which adds to its val­ue in the eyes of the audi­ence. Rosh­ni com­mand­ed influ­ence on hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, hence it finds itself on the PTA’s ban list after every 6–10 months. Rosh­ni took on a wide array of issues like per­se­cu­tion of minori­ties, Ara­biza­tion of Pak­istan and civ­il mil­i­tary rela­tions in a coun­try which has a his­to­ry of mil­i­tary rules.

Oth­er banned pages include ‘Saeen’ and ‘Lala Ji’ both of which were rad­i­cal­ly sec­u­lar and lib­er­al. These pages encour­aged peo­ple to think freely of dog­mas in every sphere of life and walk shoul­der to shoul­der with the world. These pages also addressed the audi­ence in native Urdu lan­guage. Bhen­sa (Buf­fa­lo, bull­doz­ing your igno­rance) and Lashkr e Bhangvi (par­o­dy of Al-Qae­da affil­i­ate sec­tar­i­an ter­ror­ist out­fit, Lashkr e Jhangvi) were also the pages PTA felt mer­it­ed a ban for hav­ing a sar­cas­tic take on reli­gious cler­gy, reli­gious intol­er­ance, Ara­biza­tion of Pak­istan and sec­tar­i­an­ism.

Tal­iban are Zal­i­man (Tal­iban are oppres­sors) was anoth­er page which was banned by PTA for appar­ent­ly lam­bast­ing a banned ter­ror out­fit Tehreek-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP) and decon­struct­ing its tak­feeri ide­ol­o­gy. Inter­est­ing thing to note here is that the Pak­istani state is fight­ing TTP mil­i­tar­i­ly since the year 2007. It appears as if the state is giv­ing a mes­sage here that if you stand against an ene­my of Pak­istan, we silence you.

Although the ban on Laal’s page has been lift­ed, the remain­ing six pages remain blocked till date.
Pak­istan is a coun­try haunt­ed by a trou­bled past. Its decade’ long involve­ment in Afghan Sovi­et war had bom­bard­ed the sim­ple­ton with all sorts of ratio­nales advo­cat­ing for pick­ing up arms to fight the god­less com­mu­nists in neigh­bor­ing Afghanistan. This has tat­tered Pakistan’s social fab­ric; soci­ety is deeply rad­i­cal­ized reli­gious­ly and the space for pro­gres­sive dis­course has been shrink­ing over the years.

Pak­istani pro­gres­sives opt­ed to stay low on the radar of the gen­er­al pub­lic which was being fed with all sorts of para­noid non­sense about pro­gres­sive ele­ments and their ‘dubi­ous’ loy­al­ties to the state of Pak­istan. There is no doubt that with each pass­ing day since the day of Zia’s repres­sive regime, the soci­ety has become less recep­tive towards pro­gres­sive dis­course. Fanati­cism in Pak­istan remains just anoth­er day.

Over the years, broad­band inter­net pen­e­tra­tion began to see a stel­lar rise in Pak­istan under Gen­er­al Per­vez Mushar­raf’s reign. This devel­op­ment blessed the embat­tled pro­gres­sive Pak­ista­nis with an unpar­al­leled oppor­tu­ni­ty to chan­nel their nar­ra­tive to a much larg­er audi­ence and that too with lit­tle fear of per­se­cu­tion in a soci­ety where being aligned with lib­er­al thought alone mer­its one’s life to be tak­en away. This was pri­mar­i­ly because the web offered a cer­tain degree of anonymi­ty.

Soon social media, Face­book in par­tic­u­lar, began to see sprawl­ing pro­gres­sive pages, dis­sem­i­nat­ing pro­gres­sive nar­ra­tive in the soci­ety, call­ing out for social reform and tak­ing to task government’s dis­crim­i­na­to­ry or unjust poli­cies.

The social media start­ed giv­ing a new pic­ture of things ear­li­er obscured from the sim­ple­ton because of a vari­ety of fac­tors includ­ing state cen­sor­ship. ‘Incul­cat­ing many of these real­i­ties should have been the state respon­si­bil­i­ty in its basic school­ing, a task which pro­gres­sives start­ed doing’, men­tions a lead­ing human rights activist Beena Sar­war. The increas­ing spread of aware­ness through social media poten­tial­ly has the abil­i­ty to con­tribute towards a change in the sta­tus quo.

Due to the effec­tive­ness of this media in spread­ing alter­na­tive nar­ra­tives to the peo­ple, the forces of sta­tus quo in Pak­istan Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Author­i­ty (PTA) act­ing like the heirs of Zia’s lega­cy approached Face­book and entered into an agree­ment with the lat­ter under which any blas­phe­mous page or a page crit­i­cal of gov­ern­ment could be banned by Face­book at the plea of PTA.

This is a plea to all the con­cerned peo­ple any­where around the globe that in this hour of need, be the voice of Pak­istani pro­gres­sives. Be our voice in the wake of naked state cen­sor­ship of dis­sent­ing pro­gres­sive voic­es. You could do the fol­low­ing to help your fel­low Pak­istani pro­gres­sives:
1. You could write to tabloids and if you are an author your­self, op-eds in your local papers high­light­ing this bla­tant attempt at state cen­sor­ship, men­tion­ing how Face­book is being a par­ty to it.
2. Blog­gers could use their words and blog about the mur­der of free speech in Pak­istan.
3. Media out­lets and rights orga­ni­za­tions could be engaged and asked to high­light such inci­dents in your respec­tive coun­tries.

Every­one is enti­tled to the fun­da­men­tal human right of free­dom of thought, con­science and speech. Pak­istan has a long his­to­ry of sup­press­ing dis­sent­ing voic­es. This con­ven­tion has to be chal­lenged and changed for the bet­ter. Embat­tled Pak­istani pro­gres­sives can’t do this mam­moth task alone, we need your sup­port.

Arti­cle 19 of UNDHR states: “Every­one has the right to free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion; this right includes free­dom to hold opin­ions with­out inter­fer­ence and to seek, receive and impart infor­ma­tion and ideas through any media and regard­less of fron­tiers.”

Block­ing of pro­gres­sive Pak­istani Face­book pages with­out a notice by PTA is a breach of arti­cle 18 and 19 of the Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights.
Today, Pak­istani pro­gres­sives need their brethren out­side Pak­istan, let us tru­ly be glob­al cit­i­zens and fight state repres­sion togeth­er.