After failing to come clean on its stand on terror, a frustrated Pakistani Government has now trained its guns on the country's journalists. It hastargeted Dawn and its reporter Cyril Almeida. Pakistan's tendency to silence the Press isn't new. Whenever the country's journalists have dared to voice impartial views on terror, there have been attempts to throttle their views. This time, the ‘crime’ of Dawn was to pen a piece on the rift between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Army chief, General Raheel Sharif.
It is an open secret that both the Sharifs are trying to outwit each other in a dangerous exhibition of powerplay. But why target the PressIJ Though the Pakistani establishment initially said that the Dawn story was speculative, it was miffed when the newspaper stood by its report. The fact that the Government tried to hush up Almeida, shows that the report had a grain of truth. However, by its action, Islamabad has provided fodder to the international media to go the whole hog on the Government's propensity to crush dissenting voices.