Tidbits from the Southasian region

 Mediafile
If you plan on watching live coverage of the upcoming Pakistani elections on your favourite private Pakistani TV channel, you are in for a disappointment. All private Pakistani TV channels recently received a warning letter from the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), banning live television reports about the national elections. President Musharraf's decision will deprive Pakistanis of all programmes, talk shows, reports, coverage of press conferences or anything else that could be construed as relating to the election. An attempt to breach the ordinance could land a journalist in jail for three years, with fines of up to PKR 10 million rupees (about USD 165,000), and would immediately cause the cancellation of the broadcaster's licence. As the secretary-general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Mazhar Abbas, noted, the new action might well be yet another attempt by the government to try to impose a complete ban on all non-state media before the elections.

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On a refreshing note, after Pakistani channels Geo News and ARY One were forced off the air following the imposition of the state of emergency on 3 November, both were subsequently allowed to resume transmissions from Dubai later on that month. This certainly must have made the days for those few back in Pakistan lucky enough to have satellite receivers – though only that 'few', because the Islamabad government has now banned the import of satellite receivers. In any case, it is high time that President (non-retd) Musharraf realises that bans do not work, and that the truth, eventually, will out. Rather, such heavy-handed approaches fuel support for what they target, as shown by the now-regular public gatherings at the aptly re-named Azadi Street in Karachi, to show solidarity with Geo. Popular support has no doubt played a role in getting Geo partly back on the air in Pakistan. On 20 December, two Geo channels – Aag the youth channel, and Geo Entertainment – were allowed back on the cable network, while the Geo management hopes that the News, Sports and other channels will likewise be allowed once more. Chhetria Patrakar hopes so too.

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Even as the news they report doesn't seem to be getting much better, the news for journalists in Afghanistan continues to be dreary. Ali Asghar Akbarzada, a producer with Afghanistan Radio Television (ART), has two cars' worth of unidentified gunmen chasing him. Omar Mohammadi, a radio journalist for Salam Watandar, was verbally and physically abused by police on 4 December while he was trying to report a suicide attack on the airport road in Kabul. Meanwhile, Ehsanullah Shahidzai, a journalist for the state-run ART Laghman radio station in eastern Laghman Province, was detained for a week on charges of having links with the Taliban and expressing anti-government sentiments. International press-freedom groups issued their statements, but CP gets the feeling that something more is clearly needed to create an atmosphere in which Afghan journalists can report the news – while not becoming news items themselves.

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The average Indian seems to be quite confused about their feelings about press freedom, at least if surveys are anything to go by. Contrary to global opinion, most Indians say that they think that 'social stability' is more of a priority. In a recent poll conducted by the BBC World Service, a startling 48 percent Indians surveyed supported controls to ensure peace. Ironically, 55 percent of the same group also thought that they should have a say in what gets reported. How's that for inconsistency? Indian respondents also differed from their counterparts in other countries on how they felt about publicly funded media, the performance of which was rated 'good' by 57 percent Indians compared to 39 percent globally. Shabaash, Doordarshan!

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There is just never a shortage of bans to write about in Southasia! This time it is in Burma, on artists and writers. The junta has banned the work of 19 artists and writers on the grounds that they were "unpatriotic" and had supported the protesting monks during the September uprising. Now, other artists' works will be censored as well, should they mention the name of any of the blacklisted 19 – quite inconvenient in some cases, given that a ban on a particular actor's movie would mean banning everyone involved in its production, too. Simply attending the birthday celebration of the banned writer Ludu Daw Ah Mar led poet Nwe Sein Wai to be questioned by authorities. Some of the savvy artists and writers have now acquired pseudonyms, but this hasn't seemed to help either – the government's censorship board requires that a writer's biographical information must accompany their work! So for now, the frustrated artists and writers are trying to find alternative means of earning an income, until they are allowed to return to their real professions.

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Speaking of endless statements, when UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura issued a statement in early December condemning the air strike on the Voice of Tigers (VoT) radio station, government of Sri Lanka was not pleased. Stating that VoT was an illegal broadcast directly operated by the LTTE – by no means 'civilian' – Sri Lanka's Ambassador to France Chithranganee Wagiswara promptly lodged a protest. Equally swiftly, the director-general gave an assurance that he would "re-examine the entire issue". Amidst all the hot air, CP would like to remind the public that the air strike left nine persons (including six civilians) dead, and wounded several others.

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The Indian judiciary, meanwhile, seems to be wary of 'too much' press freedom. It appears that hidden cameras and sting operations are getting to be too much for the Delhi High Court, which has suggested that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting form a committee to pre-screen sting operations that are planned for airing on television. The Editors Guild of India dutifully expressed its shock at the suggestion, and hopes that judicial authorities will withdraw the order. From Chettria Patrakar's view of the matter, why not an effective in-house mechanism for this purpose, instead?

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After years of being accused of being the devil incarnate by media activists around the globe, Rupert Murdoch has gotten religious! Fox Entertainment, part of the News Corp conglomerate, recently bought Beliefnet, a rapidly expanding website that hosts a vast amount and spectrum of content on an assortment of faiths and spirituality. The finances of the deal were not revealed, but CP assumes that someone has felt as though the heavens have suddenly descended.

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 "A good cartoon tells the story of human stupidity. A cartoon should provoke people; it should make people think seriously," said Danish cartoonist Bob Katzenelson on a recent visit to Nepal. And who should know better than Katzenelson just how strongly cartoons can provoke people? In September 2005, his controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad, for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, was one of several that triggered violent protests worldwide. The consequences were enough for Danish cartoonists to stop outright creating cartoons in any way related to Islam. With Islamic fundamentalists having announced a bounty of USD 10,000 for his head, Katzenelson understandably has anxious moments. Travelling to Nepal to conduct a workshop on 'democracy visuals', the cartoonist says that he first had to try to suss out his popularity on the ground before boarding the flight to Kathmandu.

–Chhetria Patrakar