The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Pakistani authorities on Friday to restore domestic access to the YouTube channel of the exiled investigative journalist Ahmad Noorani, following the journalist’s recent criticism of the Pakistani army. CJP’s Asia program coordinator Beh Lih Yi stated that “the brutal intimidation of journalists and their families must stop, and the Pakistan government must allow the media to report freely.”
Noorani was attacked by six individuals on October 27, 2017, near his home in Islamabad, suffering from severe head wounds, several local journalists called on the Government to investigate the attack.
The following November, the Senate of Pakistan commissioned a report on the attack, with no public arrests or prosecutions having been made thus far. The investigation was personally overseen by the Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal.
Alongside the attack, Noorani has reportedly received several death threats, which CPJ harshly condemned.
In June 2023, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) alleged that Noorani illegally accessed tax records of army officials in the course of an investigation into Pakistan’s Army Chief Qamar Bajwa. The governmental body declared that “legal efforts [were] being made for [Noorani’s] arrest,” which subsequently led to the censorship of Noorani’s news outlet in Pakistan. CJP argued that Pakistan’s Protection of Journalists and Media Professionals Act ought to legally protect Noorani.
The now US-based Noorani published a recent investigative report on March 17 into Army Chief General Asim Munir, alleging unchecked “hegemony and misgovernance” in Pakistan. Three days before the FIA instituted new cases against the journalist under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA), with the allegation of spreading “anti-state propaganda online.” On March 19, Noorani’s brothers were reportedly abducted, with Noorani claiming that the assailants were intelligence agents.
As of May 12, Noorani’s YouTube channel is blocked in Pakistan, alongside the prolonged blockage of the journalist’s news website. A day later, new charges by Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency under PECA have been instituted against Noorani.
Legal action against government-critical journalists, akin to Ahmad Noorani, has been made significantly easier since January of 2024 with a new amendment of POCA, providing authorities with close to absolute discretion to instigate proceedings against journalists. Precisely in the current political climate amid the Pakistani-Indian conflict and accelerating violence against civilians, the Pakistani government’s attitude towards journalistic repression raises grave concern.
