No punishment or threat of punishment was severe enough for the government authorities to brandish before the media this year. Sedition, disclosing official secrets, treason, public nuisance – journalists were charged with all this and more. On July 31, 2004 , Sarwar Mujahid, reporter for daily Nawa-i-Waqt , was arrested at his home by police under the Maintenance of Public Order Act, which states that a person may be detained for three months if the government feels they represent “a threat to public order.” His crime was reporting the conflict between the army and agricultural laborers in Okara region of Punjab province, who for years have been cultivating land belonging to the army and are refusing to leave their farms. The same month Human Rights Watch released a report condemning military repression, including torture, against the peasants in Okara district. He was released on bail on October 12, 2004 . On November 4, 2004 , Ghulam Shehzad Agha, editor of Kargil International magazine, was arrested from Skardu in the north and charged with backing autonomy for Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the country's dispute with India . His magazine was banned on September 8, 2004 for allegedly carrying seditious and unpatriotic news.
On June 8, 2004 , freelance journalist Khawar Mehdi Rizvi went on trial in an anti-terrorism court in the southwestern city of Quetta on charges of sedition, conspiracy, and impersonation. The charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and stem from his work as a fixer for two French journalists, Marc Epstein and Jean-Paul Guilloteau from the newsweekly L'Express, in December 2003, researching a story about Taliban activity along Pakistan 's border with Afghanistan . After the three returned to Karachi on December 16, 2003 , the authorities arrested the French journalists on visa violations. Rizvi was also held but the authorities officially denied holding him until January 24, 2004 when he was formally charged with fabricating video footage of Taliban activity in Pakistan . Rizvi throughout claimed innocence and said he was tortured in custody. He was released on bail on March 29, 2004 and fled the country. On April 23, 2005 , the court acquitted Rizvi of all charges against him citing insufficient evidence of guilt.
On August 13, 2004 , Raja Khawar Nawaz, the editor of Nawa-i-Hurriyat magazine was arrested in Muzafarabad on orders of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Supreme Court chief justice. He had appeared before the court after being served a contempt notice for publishing “libelous and fictional material with a view to lowering the prestige and harassing the members of the superior judiciary.” Nawaz tendered an unconditional apology saying he had “printed the write-ups at the behest of and on the basis of a file provided to him by an intelligence agency personnel without personally investigating or verifying it.” On February 5, 2005 , Afzal Nadeem, senior reporter of daily Awam , was booked under the Official Secrets Act in Karachi for reporting the contents of a letter by the National Crisis Management Cell. The letter, sent to the top bureaucrat of each of the four provinces of Pakistan , sought their intervention in stopping an ethnic party from forcible collection of donations for the Asian tsunami victims from businesses and public forums. The Act carries punishment ranging from one year imprisonment to death.
The government also moved to tighten laws applicable to the media this past year. On August 19, 2004 , the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan 's bicameral parliament, amended the controversial Defamation Ordinance 2002 despite objections from the media and opposition political parties. The penalties for those found guilty of slander or libel were dramatically enhanced from a minimum fine of Rs 50,000 ($835) to Rs 100,000 ($1,665) and/or a prison term of up to five years, up from three months. In the last week of April 2005, the government put before the National Assembly an amendment bill seeking to toughen the electronic media law. On March 15, 2005 , t he government pushed through in the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting a set of amendments to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance 2002, which, if approved by both houses of national parliament, will make it easier for the authorities to arrest broadcasters, cancel radio and television licenses, enhance control over broadcast content and raise fines on broadcasters a staggering tenfold, among the litany of proposed changes.
