- Bracketing critics with terrorists would harm the country
After trying to muzzle the print and electronic media through PMRA, the information ministry is after social media which had played a big role in bringing PTI to power.
It was interesting to hear Fawad Chaudhry talking about the need to encourage discourse and debate in the country and then saying this was not possible in the presence of people threatening each others’ lives over differences of opinion. He referred to terrorist groups that want to forcibly foist a system of their own choice on the rest of the population. One thought he had in mind the TLP or perhaps the TTP or Daesh. Few would have disagreed with the interior minister if he was to clamp down on networks of the sort despite his mysterious silence earlier when the TLP went on rampage.
It appears however that there is more to Fawad Chaudhry’s outburst than meets the eye. As the information minister put it the government is about to initiate a comprehensive crackdown on social media. The move appears have a grand design i.e., to silence all voices of dissent in the social media. While many will readily agree that propagation of violence is illegal and must be stopped, criticism of government leaders, departments, institutions and agencies can by no stretch of mind be called hate speech aimed at instigating violence. The way law-enforcement agencies resorted to the cold-blooded murder of a family and their friend in Sahiwal was rightly condemned all over the country. Do statements issued over the incident amount to spreading hatred against the state institutions? In Balochistan relatives and friends of the persons who have been made to disappear have accused the agencies and campaigned against their disappearance. Is this to be considered spreading hatred? There are people in tribal areas and outside who have protested against ethnic profiling or grave mistreatment . Do they deserve sedition charges? There are others who consider government leaders responsible for their miseries. Are they too to be branded terrorists? The government must not put on its plate more than it can chew. First PMRA and now this peculiar muzzling of social media would be hard to sell.