Let them say their piece

“If you don’t stick to your values when they’re being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.” –Jon Stewart.

It is my belief that despite the mammoth funeral procession of Mumtaz Qadri, the majority of the people in this country abhor what he did. But when I use the word belief, I use it in the sense that religious people use it; that is, I don’t really have much of a basis for it. I mean have you, dear reader, seen the sheer size of those remembrances held in his honour? Those opposed to what he did must be a part of some silent majority that really bottles up its feelings well. Or so I keep foolishly hoping.

Chances are, however, that you wouldn’t have seen the Qadri rallies. Why? Because the country’s broadcast media watchdog, PEMRA, placed a ban on their coverage.

That provides the country’s liberal intelligentsia with a bit of a conundrum. On one hand, they realise the problem that live coverage of the event can prove to be. A well-crafted funeral sermon, replete with fire, brimstone and the kitchen sink, can have the potential to cause some serious damage. And the ensuing discussion on the media can pack a punch of its own.

But, on the flipside, banning such coverage is going to wrest away from the religious right the very things that we are supposed to be enticing them with. The freedom of expression. Democracy. The freedom to associate over your political beliefs.

It would be difficult to overcome the impulse of putting a gag order on the supporters of Qadri, not just for the country’s liberals but also for those large numbers of conservatives who nevertheless very much believe in the rule of law. But being part of a modern state means some tough, unpalatable decisions. We have to eat our vegetables, so to speak.

For liberal democrats to be supporting such restrictions on the media is akin to the light-in-the-head “liberals” who believe dictatorship is bad but Musharraf was good. It is only when you realise that their hatred of Zia-ul-Haq stems not from his taking over a democratically elected government and executing a prime minister but only because he was socially conservative, do you realise that they are not really anti-Zia after all.

Hate speech, certainly, is to be banned. So is incitement to violence. And there are many techniques that can be used to ensure that such offending segments are immediately filtered out. And that should be good enough.

Two channels, Samaa TV and Neo TV, have been slapped with a fine for giving coverage to the funeral. Though these channels should have still obeyed the law, it is unfair that they should have had to go cough up this money or even be censured like this.

In the presence of such a blanket shut-down, the reactionary forces are gaining ground, not losing it. Take the example of former Justice Nazir Akhtar, whose flimsy arguments challenging the legality of the case against Qadri, are being made viral online. Though they might be taken on by social media activists from the other side of the spectrum, it still isn’t enough. It would have been effective if, in a live TV discussion, analysts had blown such arguments to bits.

Also of immense importance in the whole psy-ops thing would have been the broadcast of the murderer’s appeals for mercy. He also filed, within one of the mercy appeals, a false claim that he was the only breadwinner in his entire household. This would have killed off the romantic image of the unrelenting hero, unbroken in the face of death, in the impressionable minds watching TV.

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The ban on the speeches of Altaf Hussain is another such problem. Though one that cannot be placed at PEMRA’s feet, since it is only a response to a court order.

It really should be challenged, not by the MQM but by public interest litigants, who see the principle involved.

The MQM aren’t a friendly neighbourhood committee that gets together to talk about what flowers to plant in the local park. But their illegal activities themselves should be clamped down on, in the real world; no sense in slapping a gag order on their leader.

The blanket coverage given by the channels to his speeches is the decision of the channels. They are covered because they make for “good TV”. And if there is a nagging suspicion that the blanket coverage is a result of the party twisting the arms of the media houses, well then the judiciary is treating the symptom, not the disease here.

The MQM’s lily-livered response to the presser by Mustafa Kamal was nowhere near what Dear Leader would have managed.

Moving away from the matter of principle, what those opposed to the MQM don’t realise is that every time the party leader opens his mouth, it tarnishes away whatever brand equity the party has.

Even estranged leader Mustafa Kamal agreed that the gag order has helped the party, as online readers can see from the video below.