Pakistan ranks 157 out of 180 countries in Reporters without Borders' global press freedom ranking in 2022 due to a crackdown on dissident journalists. According to a report based on the UNESCO Journalist Safety Indicator, journalists need continuous training and technical skills to work in the field and protect themselves. While it is clear from the report of the international organisations, the journalists of such a situation are facing similar problems at the national and local levels, in which the government institutions are unable to provide justice due to fewer resources.
Pakistan's constitution guarantees freedom of the press and access to information, but true freedom of journalism is missing. Although not only the government institutions are responsible for the pressure faced by the media, local level pressure groups are also responsible. Something like this happened to a resident of Tehsil Kabirwala, Dist. Khanewal, Amjad Nadeem, a resident of Kabirwala, has been associated with press and electronic media for the past 14 years. He was associated with SAMAA News as an outstation reporter from March 2018 to July 2020. While reporting local issues and routine work, he came under the target of various mafias. Unknown social media IDs started impersonating him on social media and revealed his personal information on the same posts with fabricated chats, due to which he started receiving threatening calls to kill him and his children from inside and outside of the country. Let’s explore what problems Amjad had to face and the stress he went through in this matter.
Amjad’s friends informed him on the afternoon of May 15 2020, about the social media posts and tweets along with the screenshots of a chat between him and an unknown local woman allegedly posted and tweeted by unknown IDs. It was alleged that he was harassing a girl by presenting himself as an influential person based on his journalistic connections and community and forcing her to develop relationships and extort money from the girl. This became viral within no time on Twitter.
The news was no less than a tragedy for him, which damaged his reputation as the woman was revealed to be from the Syed family and the Syed community in Kabirwala has enough influence. So he became afraid and feels his life is under threat. The unknown IDs attempted to associate this matter with a religious label with the purpose to evoke immediate emotional reactions and harming himself as much as possible.
Amjad explains that the alleged tweets and posts were shared thousands of times which led to immediate backlash but he bravely controlled his nerves when he was branded a blackmailer and an atheist.
Amjad made a video immediately in this regard in which he expressed his indifference to the matter and requested the district administration heads to investigate the matter and assured them of his cooperation to prove himself clean. Considering the sensitivity of the matter, the district administration registered FIR No. 182/20 against unknown persons under the Telegraph Act, 1885 Section No. 25-D, and Section 506 T.P. in the police station City Kabirwala on 21 May 2020 in the favor of complainant Mr. Muhammad Amjad, who requested civilian security personnel while registering FIR.
According to the spokesperson of the district police department, Imran Chaudhary, cases related to social media do not come under the jurisdiction of the police department and the police department does not have any modern equipment, software, and trained staff related to it.
According to Amjad, the only cybercrime cell that works under the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Multan, he submitted a request for an investigation into the matter. He had visited four times to the FIA office so far after almost two years have passed. Even the accused who committed the crimes could not be identified, while legal proceedings are far away. ASI Muhammad Shehzad, FIA Cyber Crime Wing Multan, admitted that the agency does not have any devices or procedures to track social media accounts run by proxy. To know the current status of the case, the said official was called several times and also requested information through SMS, but no response was received from him after the first call.
The District Police Department and Federal Investigation Agency were requested to provide information on August 21, 2022, by e-mail referring to Muhammad Amjad Nadeem's request and FIR under Right to Information, but no response was received. After 17 days, on September 6 2022, a reminder was sent again and requested to provide information, on which no response was received from both institutions despite the passage of 15 more days. Although, this request is forwarded to the federal information commission to redirect the departments to respond to the requests.
Amjad says that he was knocking on the door of every department in search of justice for four months after this incident, while SAMAA News removed him from the post of an outstation reporter (OSR) of Kabirwala and also removed from a certain group of OSR.
In this regard, Amjad discuss the matter with the Bureau Chief of SAMAA News Multan Aamir Iqbal Bhutta and informed him that he has been removed from the organisation after his social media allegations came to the knowledge of the director news of the channel. He continued to give clarifications to the management of the channel in this regard and finally, after a year and a half, he decided to go to the Karachi office of Samaa News and meet the director of news. In this regard, when Amir Iqbal Bhutta was called to know his point of view regarding the matter, he declined to talk about the incident.
This journey and effort did not work for Amjad as he went to the office every day to meet the news director of Samaa News for four days and returned unsuccessful in the evening. Still, Amjad is hopeful that the organisation will restore his OSR ship because for him this issue is important in terms of economic position as well as social repute. Amjad was associated with Samaa news for more than two years, but he was not provided with any written contract, so he could not file any case against the organisation.
In this regard, when the writer contacted the Samaa News Karachi office, it was found that two news directors have been changed after this incident, while the current news director Faisal Ayub is not aware of this incident. According to current assignment editor Saqib Maniyar, no one in the current staff, including him, is aware of the incident.
Muhammad Amjad says that if he does not get a positive response from the organisation, he will have to create his own channel on YouTube and continue journalism so that he will not be a victim of financial and social exploitation by other organizations in the future and he will be free to continue his work.
According to the information available on the internet regarding the performance of FIA, 110,938 complaints were registered in 2021, out of which 1332 cases were registered while inquiring into 17,102 complaints, of which 591 cases were challan, 1411 arrests were made, which were based on financial crimes, harassment, defamation, harassment of women, child pornography and high profile cases successfully solved. While in total more than 100,986 complaints were resolved in 2021. While 94,227 complaints were registered in the year 2020, in addition to the remaining 17,754 complaints of 2019, a total of more than 112,181 complaints were resolved in 2020.
Similarly, the number of complaints received by FIA in 2021 was 95,567. About 20 percent of the total complaints in 2021 were related to online blackmailing and harassment on social media/the internet. While 205 FIRs were registered and 178 arrests were made regarding online defamation.
According to High Court lawyer Rana Tariq Mehmood, the accused involved in this incident with Amjad are guilty of cybercrime clause 10-A (inciting hatred) and 14-A (misusing the identity of another) of cyber terror. While looking at the performance of the institutions, it is clear that cybercrime complaints are increasing daily, for which the local police stations should have a cybercrime wing equipped with modern devices and software for timely and basic investigation. And this cell transfers the case to FIA for necessary legal action after investigation.
District reporter Khanewal 92 News Ruman Choudhary says regarding the difficulties faced in journalism that there is no doubt that as a journalist he is requested not to print the news, to hide the facts through the people from his social circle by the others and when their news is shared on social media, in the general comments of people, journalists are called blackmailers, which is certainly painful, but so far he has been safe from this kind of serious behavior.
Deputy Director District Khanewal of Directorate of General Public Relations Punjab Salman Khalid says that his department does not provide any help to journalists in this regard but it is the responsibility of the concerned channel or newspaper, not to leave their representative alone in any difficulty and provide regular support to him based on merit.
Sajjad Akbar Shah, Vice President of Press Club Kabirwala, says that the press club immediately took the notables of the area into confidence about the incident that happened with Amjad and also informed them about the possible motives of this incident and what kind of people are responsible for this matter so that no such provocation spreads in the city and the matter can be resolved amicably.
According to former Tehsil President of Khanewal Union of Journalists, Sajid Khan, the mafias in the society at present have a very effective method of impersonating a journalist to silence him. The biggest tragedy is that in such a situation, the news organisations that employ the local journalist also leave him. While in the case of Amjad, the journalist organisation had convinced the district administration that it is their responsibility to provide timely protection to the journalists in such cases, due to which any possible harm was avoided in this case.
If such incidents are not dealt with in a timely and real sense, a certain community of the society which is playing an important role in the improvement and reformation of the society will vanish.