Daily Times editorial on bad image management and the mukhtaran/shazia coverup

EDITORIAL: Cover-ups and denial strategy won’t do for Pakistan’s image

First it was Mukhtar Mai, now it is Dr Shazia Khalid. When a group of Pakistani-Americans and an NGO invited Mukhtar Mai to New York to address a gathering and get an award for her courage in the face of social oppression, the government — in fact General Pervez Musharraf himself — decided it was essential to stop her from going abroad “to save Pakistan’s image”. That decision, as we have noted before, was ill-advised. Unfortunately, our worst fears materialised when the international press started to whip the Musharraf regime for “oppressing a rape victim” and, in the process, also began to present Pakistan as a medieval country where women did not have space to breathe. One columnist in The New York Times — who had earlier come to Pakistan and written about Mukhtar Mai — especially took it upon himself to highlight her case, this time proving that tragedies like hers keep visiting Pakistan partly because of what the governments in this country can, and actually, do. The story regarding the columnist is also instructive. After he had visited Pakistan and written about various issues, including the Mukhtar Mai episode, his later request for a visa was denied by the Pakistani government. It was as ill-thought a decision as the one to prevent Mukhtar Mai from going abroad. In this day and age, no one can stop the media from reporting by banning the entry and exit of journalists.

Now, the same columnist has written about Dr Khalid who was raped while she was working at a hospital in Sui, Balochistan. The Musharraf regime tried to hush up that case, too. The incident sparked unrest in the area, which fed into the larger trouble in Balochistan. Additionally, initial suspicion fell on an army officer and some of his personnel. Again, the government erroneously thought that the best way to handle the situation was to keep Dr Khalid away from the media and to get her out of the way as soon as possible. A couple of months after the incident, Dr Khalid was dragged to a plane to London and told to shut up or else. Of course, she hasn’t. Indeed, she has gone and spilled the beans to none other than the NYT journalist estranged from the Pakistan government.

There is a common denominator in these three events: Mukhtar Mai’s going abroad, the denial of a visa to a foreign journalist deemed “hostile” to Pakistan and sending Dr Khalid away. In all three, the government acted foolishly by thinking that the best way to avoid bad publicity was to pretend that nothing had happened or to put a lid on it. It is time General Musharraf realised that his policy has not worked; instead it has redounded to our disadvantage and battered the image of the country as well as that of General Musaharraf himself. General Musharraf must also ask himself why, despite being a strong US ally and claiming that he is very popular abroad, he should constantly come in for stick from the US and international media. Surely, rapes happen everywhere in the world, including the United States. In neighbouring India, much worse has happened and continues to happen. Why does Pakistan get the short end of the stick? It is certainly not because the Indian government or media keep a lid on it. Far from it. It is so commonplace that the international media has lost interest in it. It is not a novel item to be reported and the Indian government isn’t constantly trying to cover it up and thereby making news. General Musharraf keeps asking this question but clutches at the wrong bureaucratic and autocratic answer every time.

Cover-ups do more harm than good. Worse, in today’s world, there can be no cover-ups. General Musharraf knows that there is much that is wrong with Pakistan, as it is with other countries. He should consider people who highlight these wrongs as his allies rather than as his adversaries. Denying journalists visas, preventing people from going abroad or actually bundling them off in planes and spiriting them abroad in order to silence them is not the solution — it is part of the problem. Building the image means making clear to the world that despite problems the government is earnest in trying to solve them. If Mukhtar Mai had been allowed to go to New York and the government had facilitated the travel and given her a discreet minder, none of the bad press would have come Pakistan’s way. The same is true in the case of Dr Khalid. It is time the government chucked its strategy of denial. *