The futility of a social media crackdown.

'Across the country, women and children belonging to families of those who write and speak on social media against government policies and regime change operation are being threatened to be 'eliminated'. They're also forced to deliver pre-written statements after being kidnapped. This was not even the case during Musharraf's martial law,' reads Azhar Mashwani's pinned tweet on his personal Twitter account.

'The law of nature is that the more cruelty increases, the more hatred and anger increase,' he continued in a follow-up tweet.

A week ago, on March 23, while Pakistan Day celebrations occupied television screens, Mashwani, the focal person (social media) to PTI chief, Imran Khan, went missing. He disappeared for over a week while police investigators remained 'clueless' about his whereabouts.

Mashwani returned today but many other PTI social media activists remain missing, have been arrested, had their homes raided, surveilled, and family members detained or threatened.

Repeated attempts have also been made to contain the PTI's 'hatred' and 'anger' on the mainstream. Amid repeated Pemra bans on airing former Prime Minister Imran Khan's jalsas and speeches, the country's authoritarian machine is eager to tame the insaf tsunami. This brazen, legally questionable, and sweeping crackdown recipe is not new to Pakistan's political spectrum.

Old tricks, new faces

'Respect for the freedom of speech including on social media is the constitutional responsibility of the government and suppressing political views of opponents is condemnable,' PML-N's Nawaz Sharif, then recently ousted prime minister, said in a statement following the arrests of his party's social media activists in 2017.

More recently, under the aegis of Imran Khan's government and the country's military, journalists faced a sustained campaign of censorship, comprising media blackouts, arrests, abductions and FIRs. Those wielding powers have long exercised their archaic censorship pulses on critical quarters. Ironically, those testing and those tested, neither have learnt the lesson: it simply doesn't work anymore.

Tit for tat

In October 2020, under the PTI government, television broadcast of a Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) rally in Gujranwala was interrupted as PML-N supremo Nawaz Sharif addressed the gathering via video link from London. Internet and mobile services were also disrupted soon after Nawaz began his speech. The event was, however, streamed live by political...

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