July 19, 1999
His Excellency Muhammad Nawaz Sharif
Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s Secretariat
Islamabad, Pakistan
Your Excellency,
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned by the ongoing persecution of Najam Sethi, founding editor of the English-language weekly newspaper The Friday Times.
On July 15, the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) summoned Sethi to appear before the court on July 28 in response to a petition filed by a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly seeking to disqualify him from ever voting or running for office. The petition–filed by Syed Zafar Ali Shah, a member of the ruling party–asks the CEC to determine Sethi’s religious credentials, and requests that his name be struck from the voter lists if he “does not fulfill the requirements of a Muslim” as defined in Article 260-3 of Pakistan’s constitution. The petitioner also charges that Sethi’s speech before a New Delhi audience on April 30 violates Articles 62(h) and 63-1(g) of the constitution, which prohibit people whose speech or actions are deemed prejudicial to the “Ideology of Pakistan” from holding any elected office.
Journalists in Pakistan have told CPJ that the case was filed at the behest of Senator Saifur Rahman, who heads the government’s Ehtesab (Accountability) Bureau and is widely believed to be in charge of the administration’s attacks against those in the political opposition, including members of the media.
Meanwhile, Sethi and his family are fighting more than two dozen of cases of tax evasion, all of which appear to be politically motivated. Successive administrations in Pakistan have often exploited the country’s tax code to punish journalists for publishing news perceived as critical of the government’s performance. CPJ noted this tendency most recently in the case of your administration’s pursuit of the Jang Group of Newspapers. By February of this year, Pakistan’s Income Tax Department had filed income and wealth tax claims against the company and its publisher totaling 2 billion rupees (US $40 million); the flurry of tax notices appeared to be linked to a government-sponsored campaign to suppress the Jang publications’ coverage of various financial scandals dogging the administration.
Sethi also has yet to receive written confirmation of his removal from Pakistan’s Exit Control List (ECL), which prevents him from traveling abroad.
Sethi’s persecution began on May 8 when he was arrested at his home in Lahore and detained for nearly a month in the custody of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the army’s intelligence unit. Government statements indicated that Sethi was being investigated for “anti-state” activities, including his New Delhi speech as well as alleged collaboration with Indian intelligence operatives. CPJ believes that Sethi was arrested because his newspaper has often called on your government to answer allegations of high-level corruption, and because he had recently assisted a BBC television team investigating these same allegations. Though Sethi was released without charge on June 2, he faces ongoing harassment.
As a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of our colleagues around the world, CPJ is gravely concerned by evidence that members of your administration have taken systematic action to deprive Najam Sethi and other Pakistani journalists of their internationally recognized right to report and publish freely. The latest actions violate assurances made to CPJ on December 19, 1998, by Ashfaq Ahmad Gondal, Pakistan’s principal information officer for the press information department. Writing in response to CPJ’s previous letters, Gondal asserted that “The Government has a clear, consistent, and categoric policy that ensures promotion, protection, and preservation of the freedom of press in the country.” Gondal further stated that such a government “cannot even for a moment consider steps that impinge upon freedom of expression.” Yet authorities in Pakistan appear to target journalists routinely for exercising their professional duties.
CPJ respectfully asks Your Excellency to demonstrate your commitment to press freedom by ensuring that the country’s legal and administrative machinery–including electoral regulations, civil and criminal statutes, and tax codes–are not used to punish journalists for their work. We further request written notification confirming the removal of Sethi’s name from Pakistan’s Exit Control List.
We thank you for your attention to these urgent matters, and we look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Ann K. Cooper
Executive Director
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His Excellency Muhammad Nawaz Sharif
Prime Minister
Prime Minister’s Secretariat
Islamabad, Pakistan