Priorities in the wrong order again

Of late the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has been extraordinarily muddled about the latest crackdown on social media users, many of them activists of one political party or the other. The government has ordered the arrest of those who have posted or shared offensive content online and any material against the country’s institutions, yet it insists it is not going to impose restrictions on social media. It now says it wants to draw up a code of conduct for social media users. This is more than just a case of doublespeak. It indicates, if anything, that a strategy was being developed along the way and that the crackdown plan was purely coincidental; it wasn’t carried out with any degree of purpose, except with the motive of creating a scare among the masses.

This is another example of putting the cart before the horse. The code of conduct should have been drawn up and put in place first before FIA action was ordered. The next logical step should have been to devise a mechanism for the monitoring of social media by appointing a body of experts from all spheres of society. Once blatant violations of the code are recorded, only then should a crackdown have been mounted by the authorities. Such an approach would have deflected much of the criticism levelled by opposition parties and rights activists.

Service providers of social media, according to the minister, will be asked to establish their offices in Pakistan and some standard operating procedures are to be finalised with these providers.

The interior minister’s unapologetic tone on the crackdown had justifiably ruffled a lot of feathers. In fact, far from sounding conciliatory and attempting to emphasise the limits to such surveillance, Chaudhry Nisar had vowed to step up efforts to track internet users’ activities online and to hunt down ‘undesirable elements’. And he went further by asserting that he wanted to clamp down on online anonymity, adding that authorities had proposed that each person’s social media accounts be connected, by law, to their cell phone numbers. To justify these actions, the minister claimed that the Federal Investigation Agency’s campaign against ‘blasphemous’ posts had brought a visible reduction in offensive content online.

The government’s move has resulted in protests by the opposition parties who allege that the former’s true motive is to crush political dissent rather than to curb any undesirable behaviour. Amid the protests, the PTI’s Peshawar office was ransacked with many pointing the finger at the FIA, allegations the agency has strongly rebutted. What has made matters worse is that the FIA action against social media activists has come after last year’s controversial passage of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Bill (PECB) 2015 which many had criticised as containing language that left it open to abuse by law-enforcement agencies and the government.

The time has now come for the courts to play their essential role in protecting the rights of the public and ensure that innocent social media users are not punished. One of the key responsibilities of the judiciary in any country is to preserve, protect and defend the basic rights of the citizenry — and the right to free speech is one of the most basic of them all.

The government also says it wants to frame a new code of conduct for the media with regard to coverage of national security issues. One hopes that some more brainstorming exercises are undertaken on drawing up such a code so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. The media as a whole is convinced that instead of allowing any government body to investigate the media, it would be better if media organisations started policing themselves. Otherwise, it may end up encouraging the government to launch a witch-hunt. And in a witch-hunt, things can and will go awry.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2017.

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