Hate speech flourishes, history is distorted and curriculum is disfigured in the name of religion while freedom of expression is stifled in the name of national security, so called morality and contempt of the court. This was stated by PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar at a seminar on media regulations at a hotel in Islamabad on Wednesday.
The 18th Amendment in 2010 has made right to information a fundamental right by inserting Article 19-A in the Constitution. All the provinces had legislated RTIs. However, the federal government had failed to legislate RTI despite the Senate Information Committee has finalised the draft RTI and the government also promised to adopt it as government Bill, he said and asked Why?
He disclosed that when the Senate Committee began its work on the RTI in 2013 it asked all the stakeholders including the Defence Ministry to give their views on the draft legislation. While all the stakeholders participated in the deliberations the Defence Ministry instead of giving its view asked the Committee not to legislate RTI without obtaining NOC from it.
The Senate committee of course dismissed this contemptuous direction of the Defence Ministry in the name of national security and proceeded to finalise the draft law, he said. "I leave it to your imagination to conclude as to why federal RTI is not being legislated". We have to strike a balance between considerations of 'security interest' as defined by the security establishment and the larger 'public interest'.
The "national security" is so all pervasive and ingrained in the psyche that the media also resorts to self censorship. Giving examples he said that despite the availability of visuals the media initially declared that Mullah Mansoor had been killed in Zabul inside Afghanistan and not in Pakistan because it was the state narrative in the name of national security.
Mainstream media exercised self imposed censorship in the matter of punishment of senior military officers for corruption despite the fact that the reports were not contradicted by the ISPR. The proposed Cyber Crimes Bill in its present form was also a threat to freedom of expression as well as to privacy, he said. He proposed for a regional conference on "Right to Dissent, Right to Information & Freedom of Expression" including expression of religious beliefs.-PR