Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman: The man the world forgot

The world’s media raises concerns over the arrest of a journalist, accused of illegally purchasing property over 30 years ago.

Photo by Aswin Deth on Unsplash

In the UK, upon arrest, the police have the right to hold you for up to 24 hours before they have to charge you with a crime. Even if they suspect you of a serious crime - murder, for example - the police can only hold you for up to 96 hours. 

Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman has been imprisoned in Pakistan, at the time of writing, for more than 4,000 hours without charge or trial. Despite being a civil case, rather than criminal, Rahman has been denied bail on two different occasions.

On March 12, the CEO, owner and editor-in-chief of Pakistan’s Jang Media Group, Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, was arrested by Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB), a branch of the government that deals with corruption. The arrest concerned a case involving allegations that he illegally acquired land in 1986, although no charges have been filed against the media mogul. Journalists across the world have labelled Rahman's arrest as a "politically motivated" attack on press freedom - a way for Imran Khan’s government to set an example for other media groups.

Pakistan’s broadcast regulator cut distribution of Geo News, owned by Mr Rahman, on March 13, following his arrest. The managing director of Geo News, Azhar Abbas, commented that “the country’s broadcast regulator contacted cable distributors throughout the country and ordered them to stop transmitting GEO TV or else switch its broadcasts to a higher channel that is harder for viewers to find.” 

Mr Abbas wrote in March that “this clearly looks like the outcome of the personal venom expressed time and again by none other than Prime Minister Imran Khan against Mir Shakil.” For the international communities of journalists, this acted as further evidence of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s grasp on the freedom of press in Pakistan. 

Steven Butler, the programme coordinator of The Committee to Protect Journalists in Asia, said in a statement that “this arrest over a 34-year-old land deal makes a mockery of Pakistan’s claim to be a democracy that upholds freedom of press.”

The International Press Institute (IPI) expressed concerns over the arrest, noting that although “charges have yet to be filed against him, the Lahore High Court (LHC) denied him bail on April 7.” The IPI’s Deputy Director Scott Griffen penned a letter to the prime minister, writing that the arrest “has come at a time when independent media in Pakistan is under severe political and financial pressure.” 

Simon Spanwick, chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) added that the organisation is “deeply concerned that Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman has been detained in contravention of both Pakistan and international law.” 

This is not the first attack on Rahman and his media company. In 1998, the then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif used allegations of tax evasion to prevent Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman from launching the country’s first 24-hour television news channel; Geo TV was eventually launched in 2002. In 2014, a campaign was launched by another Pakistani media group, ARY News, resulting in Shakil-ur-Rahman filing a defamation suit against the corporation in London where a court convicted the ARY owners of slander and libel. 

When the words of the great Noam Chomsky fall on deaf ears, the world is ignoring a call to arms by one of the leading activists and academics. He commented that the arrest of Shakil-ur-Rahman “has taken place without a free trial or a conviction against him.” He further added: “Let him be arrested if he is found guilty after a trail. This is what fundamental rights are about. This is what an elected government that claims to be democratic should ensure.”

Less than two weeks after his arrest, on March 24, Doughty Street Chambers, celebrity barrister Amal Clooney’s law firm, lodged an urgent appeal “on behalf of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and a second complaint has been made to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.”

They called for the UN to take immediate action to ensure that Imran Khan’s government and the NAB comply with international law and release Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. They claimed that the arrest not only violates their client’s rights “but this is part of a wider pattern.” It is possible that the arrest is part of Imran Khan’s personal vendetta against Mr Rahman. 

Further calls on the Pakistani authorities to release Mr Rahman have been made by senior leaders and politicians, such as Pakistan’s leading religious scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani who commented that “keeping someone behind bars without a case is against the Islamic principles of justice.” 

Time Magazine called the situation “one of the 10 ‘Most Urgent’ cases of threats to press freedom in the age of coronavirus.” As a result of the devastating global pandemic, when prisons and detention facilities have become coronavirus hot spots, the One Free Press Coalition called for the immediate release of jailed journalists, stating that “in light of the threat posed by coronavirus, their freedom is now a matter of life or death.” 

Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman’s daughter, Anamta, told Pi that Geo News, had it not been silenced by the government, would have been able to educate the poorly educated population about the virus, in turn possibly limiting the spread. Ms Rahman also noted that Imran Khan’s government halted official advertisements on all Jang Media Group platforms, cutting off a substantial flow of revenue for the company.

During the pandemic, we had the time to take part in countless pub quizzes, we taught ourselves how to bake banana bread, we even had the time to watch the entirety of Netflix. We did not, however, remember the individuals whom the world’s media has forgotten, individuals like Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. 

This article was amended on September 1, 2020.