Pakistan imposed new media restrictions this week that expanded its existing limitations on foreign journalists to domestic ones who cooperate with foreign outlets. Now anyone who reports on anything outside of Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore for foreign media must receive a “No Objection Certificate”. This move follows wider international awareness of the lethal clashes that have taken place in Pakistani-Administered Kashmir all across the summer and which were analyzed here late last month.
In brief, the recently banned “Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee” (JAAC) insists that its primary goals are fighting corruption, strengthening local democracy, and ensuring more central support for struggling businesses, but the government accuses it of being a foreign-backed terrorist group. Regardless of whatever one’s views may be about this localized political crisis, the fact of the matter is that it hitherto used to be Indian-Administered Kashmir that received a lot of bad international press.
Pakistan consequently amplified those reports for advancing its position towards the decades-long unresolved Kashmir Conflict by presenting Indian control over its half of this formerly princely state as an illegitimate occupation characterized by discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. This tactic is more important for Pakistan than ever amidst the global activism in support of Gaza because Pakistan hopes to pair that conflict with Kashmir for maximally legitimizing its position and delegitimizing India’s.
That hasn’t succeeded for some of the reasons that were listed here, but now it’s Pakistani-Administered Kashmir that’s receiving a lot of bad international press, with the latest example thereof being the BBC’s report here. They had just become “the first media organisation to gain access to (the besieged regional capital of) Rawalakot and speak to those at the heart of the protests”, during which time they also reported on a JAAC core committee member who claimed that the state has provocateurs in his group.
The day after their report, Pakistan imposed its new media restrictions. The BBC’s article about them mentioned that “Foreign media organisations received a WhatsApp message on Monday evening from the External Publicity wing, saying that anyone in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PAK) must ‘return back IMMEDIATELY’ and apply for an NOC.” They also reported that “Two Pakistani journalists told the BBC that they had been warned to stay away from the topic (of these clashes) by their editors.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse for Pakistan since it annually marks 5 August as “Exploitation Day” (sometimes reported as “Black Day” despite 27 October being officially marked as such by Pakistan) in protest of India revoking the special status earlier afforded to the former state of Jammu & Kashmir. Instead of spending all day amplifying bad international press about India, Pakistan is now frenziedly trying to suppress bad international press about itself, which questions its narrative about Kashmir.
While India’s half of Kashmir has some well-known problems, the world now knows that Pakistan’s half does too, unlike what Islamabad has always insisted. The conflict therefore isn’t anywhere near as clear-cut as Pakistan has framed it. That’s not to say that the people of Pakistani-Administered Kashmir want to join India, just that they’re now revolting against their own government in response to alleged serious human rights violations, thus significantly flipping the narrative against Islamabad for the first time ever.
