MEDIA-PAKISTAN: State Draws Fire Over Journalist’s Detention

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Feb 9 2004 (IPS) - The government has drawn fire over its secret detention and prosecution of a Pakistani journalist accused of helping French reporters make a fake film about terrorist training camps.

Khawar Mehdi Rizvi faces possible life imprisonment on charges ranging from conspiracy to sedition and harming Pakistan’s international reputation. He has said he is innocent.

Rizvi stands accused of taking money from two reporters with the French weekly ‘L’Express’, Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau, to fabricate a report about a Taliban commander and a Taliban training camp near the Afghan border. Authorities said the charges were based on evidence in the form of seized videocassettes.

Epstein, Guilloteau and Rizvi were arrested here on Dec. 16, 2003. The Frenchmen were sentenced to six months’ jail time for visa violations but were released and deported last month under pressure from French diplomats. Authorities also had accused the French reporters of falsifying the film but produced no formal charges or indictment.

Rizvi was not so lucky. Accused of but not formally charged with the more serious offenses, he was held in secret detention as authorities denied they had him in custody.

Five weeks passed. Then, amid international pressure and after more than four failed attempts by the high court in Sindh province to force the government to produce Rizvi, he was brought before a court in Quetta, capital of the neighbouring province of Balochistan, on Jan. 31. He was charged and ordered held in custody to allow authorities to investigate.

The court moves followed demands by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and by international watchdog group Human Rights Watch, that Rizvi be properly tried or released immediately.

Local media also assailed Rizvi’s treatment. The daily newspaper ‘Dawn’ described the affair as ”proof of the propensity of certain elements within the government to act as if they are completely above the law. Besides, it does not behoove senior government functionaries to keep telling high court judges that they have no knowledge of an individual’s detention when there is documentary evidence to the contrary.”

The newspaper was alluding to state-run Pakistan TV’s airing of images of the journalist in detention even as the Federal Investigation Agency denied holding him in response to a habeas corpus petition filed by Rizvi’s brother on Dec. 30 at the Sindh High Court.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf also has been criticised for making public statements against Rizvi. Musharraf, a general, has said he holds the journalist ”in the poorest of opinion” and described him as ”a most unpatriotic man” undeserving of ”any sympathy whatsoever.”

Mazhar Abbas, president of the Karachi Union of Journalists, said the statements were prejudicial. ”It’s so unfortunate that the government passed the verdict even before the formal registration of the case,” he said. While some in the media have expressed resentment that a local colleague appears to have been hung out to dry while his alleged foreign co-conspirators were let off the hook, others said the matter highlighted ethical and editorial imbalances in the relationship between international media and their local partners.

Said Kamal Siddiqi, assistant editor at ‘Dawn’: ”The manner in which the two sets of characters have been treated seems to be a lesson to over-zealous Pakistani journalists intent on trying to facilitate foreign media interested in al-Qaeda or Taliban stories to cool it.”

Pakistani journalists are so underpaid that they often moonlight as ‘fixers’ for foreign media, said union leader Abbas.

The market for their services began to boom with the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan in late 2001, when hundreds of foreign journalists flooded the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan.

Many Pakistani journalists earned thousands of dollars arranging interviews and trips into Afghanistan for their foreign colleagues, Abbas said. It remains an open question how many of those interviews were genuine.

The government has sought to exploit that question. Said Siddiqi: ”The impression that the government has created, and that too quite cleverly, is that Mehdi (Rizvi) has been quite unethical. I don’t think he has. But the government has bracketed him with many other journalists who made money after 9/11 as they arranged fake interviews.” He referred to the U.S. terror attacks on Sep. 11, 2001.

Even so, Siddiqi added, the Pakistani journalist fraternity – usually a vocal crowd – have been somewhat muted in their response to Rizvi’s case beyond keeping the issue alive by persistently questioning officials, including Musharraf, about Rizvi’s whereabouts and condition.

The reasons may be many, and one of them might be that Rizvi joins a long line of journalists targeted for legal and physical intimidation because they have investigated prickly matters ranging from protests against local utility companies to alleged physical abuse of civilians by military personnel.

Still, Rizvi’s secret detention has rankled some. The ‘Dawn’, in a Feb. 6 editorial, commented: ”A state that does not respect its own laws and is often found acting in breach of them can hardly be expected to enforce the rule of law as a binding force for all, irrespective of all other considerations.”