With news banned from TV, Pakistanis find it on the Web

Musharraf's crackdown on news and dissent has managed to miss a vibrant Internet community.

from the November 7, 2007 edition

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A recent Gallup report suggests that today, more than 15 percent of urban Pakistanis now have Internet access. A small percentage compared with some nations, but a good chunk of Pakistan's politically active middle class. There are also estimated to be more than 60 million mobile phone users, says Mr. Rehmat. Together, the technologies have connected people in ways unimaginable a few years ago and fed a growing hunger for real-time news.

As a result of the ban, which pushed all TV news off the air, GEO-TV's news website added streaming video. But the typical 100,000 simultaneous logons that the website allowed quickly proved insufficient. Citing "enormously heavy traffic," the website went "light" on Sunday by removing all other content except for text updates of breaking news. Later that day, the channel upgraded its servers to allow 500,000 simultaneous users.

"We're getting millions of unique hits," says Asif Latif, the webmaster at GEO's Karachi headquarters. "But our viewers were feeling deprived, so we decided to go online with our telecast and sacrifice the website content."

Blogs and social networking sites have also managed in the past three days to organize protest rallies, start international petitions, and plan strategies for opposing military rule. Many independent blogs are now also hosting channels like GEO-TV, AAJ-TV, and ARY. While not shown on TV in Pakistan, TV news networks here continue to send reports abroad via satellite. So, Pakistanis living in London or Los Angeles get the news. They, in turn, are putting the footage on their own websites, enabling Pakistanis back home to see the news.

"We Oppose Emergency in Pakistan," a group on the social networking website Facebook, now has more than 3,000 members. The website has appointed officers and coordinators in at least 30 different cities across the globe. From Pakistan to New York, London, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland, expatriate Pakistanis are organizing protests and discussing strategies for the days to come. The group helped stage a protest outside the Pakistani embassy in London on Monday, which drew hundreds.

"This just isn't sustainable," Rehmat says of the government crackdown. As an example, he mentions the rumors that circulated Monday about a possible military coup against Musharraf. The rumors were so pervasive, the president had to publicly deny them. The government, he says, is digging its own grave by cultivating a credibility deficit.

"People had become very used to knowing," says Rehmat. "You can't just take that away from them. It's only going to create more hate."

 

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