Musharraf muzzles a voice on the margins

KARACHI, NOVEMBER 27: On Pakistan's independence day (August 14) this year, hundreds of men from Gilgit and Baltistan, two sensitive place...

KARACHI, NOVEMBER 27: On Pakistan’s independence day (August 14) this year, hundreds of men from Gilgit and Baltistan, two sensitive places in Pakistan’s Northern Areas, brought out a protest in Islamabad to demand their political rights, which have been denied to them for decades. The protesters called Pakistan’s independence day a “day of deprivation” for the people of theNorthern Areas.

Back in the Northern Areas, a political weekly, K-2, named after thehighest peak that stands tall in this mountainous and largely barren area,covered the event to the satisfaction of many readers. Most of them are from the area and are upset over the fact that they can neither vote to elect their representatives nor have any representation in the centre.

But the authorities were having none of that. Last month, the Governmentclosed down the paper and had the editor arrested. But this is not thefirst time that the paper’s editor and owner, Raja Hussain Maqpoon, has been arrested. It has been an uphill battle for him ever since he brought outthe newspaper in 1996. However, this time round, the Government cancelledthe declaration of the paper — thereby taking away the permission ofMaqpoon to continue publishing K-2.

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Protests by newsmen all over the Northern Areas resulted in the release ofMaqpoon, but the paper remains closed as the Government has said that it isnot willing to allow the publication to restart. The reason for theGovernment’s nervousness is that K-2 is one of its kind in the NorthernAreas. As a weekly political newspaper, the publication has got atremendous response from people of the Northern Areas, including thoseliving in cities like Karachi and Lahore.

“I received over 5,000 letters in the first few months of publishing thepaper in 1996,” recalls Maqpoon, who sold his ancestral lands in theNorthern Areas as well as taking loans from his relations to set up thepaper. But K-2‘s popularity and its policy did not go down well with theauthorities in Islamabad, who control the Northern Areas directly.

Maqpoon said that since he has brought out his paper, he has beenconstantly harassed and the administration initiated several cases againsthim. Maqpoon said that he faced various problems like theft of newspapersfrom the post office as well as distribution problems.

In July 1996, Maqpoon was abducted from his office and released after eighthours. In August, he was again taken into police custody and freed after 16hours. He claims that a murder attempt was also made against him in Gilgit.

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But K-2 has continued to be harsh in its criticism of the bureaucracy inthe Northern Areas and criticised the federal government for not grantingpolitical rights to the people of the region. It demanded a constitutionalstatus for the Northern Areas — detaching them from Kashmir and mergingthem with Pakistan as a separate province.

Maqpoon has been regularly targeted by the intelligence agencies and hispaper’s coverage of the Islamabad protest was considered the last straw.Now K-2 is no more but Maqpoon is challenging the military government to honour its commitment to a free press by allowing his paper to be published.

The Pakistan government argues against a change in the status of theNorthern Areas, the cause closest to the heart of Maqpoon. Since theseareas are historically a part of Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistani officials saythat the government is bound by UN resolutions not to change their statusuntil the final settlement of the Kashmir issue. If it does so, it willlose its stand vis a vis India for a UN-sponsored solution of the Kashmirproblem.