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Dharam Shourie in New York
A United States press watchdog has flayed the Pakistan government for not granting visas to Indian journalists to cover events in the country and said its intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence and fundamentalist religious groups continue to harass local as well as foreign journalists.
"The unofficial ban on virtually all journalists of Indian origin remained in place despite international protests," the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its report released on Tuesday.
Indian journalists complained that their visa applications languished indefinitely, the report added.
Quoting the Pakistani daily The News, it said the government was 'not issuing visas to Indian journalists, saying that they have nothing to report... except anti-Pakistan stories'.
"Even the handful of ethnic Indians who did manage to get visas to Pakistan were subject to intense scrutiny," the report said.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a US citizen, who works for The Washington Post, reported from Pakistan for a couple of months without serious incident.
But when his visa came up for renewal toward the end of November, authorities simply delayed processing it. When the visa expired, officials ordered him out of country, it said.
It said the 'unchecked power' of the military government tended to encourage self-censorship in Pakistani press. Even under democratic rule, journalists had complained of routine surveillance and harassment by state intelligence agencies, especially the 'feared' ISI, controlled by the Pakistani army.
"The ISI operates with considerable independence, giving rise to speculation that its domestic and foreign policy agenda might not be entirely aligned with that of the Musharraf government," it said.
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