Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leaders on Friday took shots at the federal government’s Anti-State Trends Deep Analytics Report, highlighting the issue including journalists and political opponents within the report.
National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf and Minister for Information Fawad Chaudhry had unveiled the report in a press conference two days back.
PML-N senior leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, while addressing a press conference flanked by other party leaders in Islamabad on Friday, said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government had declared its opponents anti-state in the report for exposing its incompetence.
“Under a martial law, political leaders and journalists are called traitors […] what is the difference between [those allegations] and a political government that implicates political parties and patriots as anti-state?” Abbasi asked.
“If this government has expertise in anything, it is lying,” he said, questioning why the government has clubbed journalists and the Opposition together with India and Israel based on “mere assumptions”.
“A large portion of the report is against Pakistan’s political parties,” he said, adding that it failed to determine whether the tweets were in favour of Pakistan or against its interests.
“The names of several journalists have been included in this report and when they were are asked for evidence, they said it was based on assumptions,” Abbasi continued.
“Is it a crime to speak out against inflation and government performance?” the PML-N leader questioned.
Shahid Khaqan also stated that the report showed Kashmir as part of India on the map of Asia and the Middle East. He added the Canadian firm made this revelation in a statement given to Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Sath‘.
“This shows that the government in Pakistan either stole the data or made it up on its own,” he alleged.
On the other hand, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain on Friday said nobody from Pakistan was declared anti-state in the digital media wing’s analytic report, issued just a couple of days ago.
“The analysis of Rana Sanaullah, Khurram Dastigeer and Shahid Khakan Abbasi reflected that they were not well aware of the latest technology and having lack of enough knowledge,” he said in a statement.
He said unfortunately the political parties did not have their political [research] wings so that they could help their leadership to understand an issue in depth.
The wing, in its report, provided data of 150 trends that were running on social media networking site-twitter, he said, adding a total of 3.7 million tweets were posted to build an anti-Pakistan narrative.
People of India, Afghanistan and others took part to push that narrative online, he disclosed.
He said India did use bot technology to promote anti-Pakistan tweets.
Fawad said the report did not comment on the people living in Pakistan, clarifying that “If someone will be taking part in #SanctionPakistan trending right now on social media and opposing it – then it does not mean that he indulged in an anti-state activity.”
The media wing of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement had participated in spreading and posting anti-state trends on social media. The data about PTM role in supporting the anti-state narrative was included in the DMW report which could be analysed by people themselves.
He said the real issue is, who was posting and supporting anti-state narrative. PML-N leadership should better hire the services of any expert to educate them about the contents of the report. The leaders unfamiliar with technology could also contact the ministry’s digital media wing that was set up to guide them.
With additional input from APP
