By the time this editorial had started being written, the topic under discussion was the unfair and arbitrary closure of BOL News, a television channel most critical of the incumbent government. By the time it was filed the government had outdone itself and had, prima facie, blocked YouTube across the nation’s internet during a massive rally of former prime minister Imran Khan.
The powers that be just don’t learn. During the previous government, they had taken worse steps. The decision on BOL has at least come through a PEMRA notification. That decision is justiciable, just the way IBC Chief Justice Athar Minallah had overturned the one on ARY. But during the previous government, channels used to simply go off air in certain parts of the country without explanation; enabled by an arm-twisting of the cable operators, some of whom are more than ready to oblige without any pressure. And then, there was the unannounced ban on certain newspapers being distributed in certain areas; censorship tactics that had fallen behind the times by the second half of the 20th century.
In the case of BOL News, the reason cited, that of a lack of security clearance, seems to have been realized at a rather convenient time. Akin to an airline pilot’s credentials being revoked after 10 years, only when he started raising his voice against management.
There is no way a democracy and modern polity can be run this way. The freedom of expression- and access to information- is an inalienable right of citizens in any democracy. It is about time we got that out of the way. Nations that merely hold elections, and those, too, in a shadowy and opaque manner, cannot be called democracies. And the spirit of the Argumentative Indian, as Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen calls it, renders us unable to accept anything other than an open democracy, one the lends itself to open debate.
Let the newspaper routes, the airwaves, and the internet gateways, be free from state suppression, if not regulation.
