Protest after Pak TV channels blocked by Musharraf

ISLAMABAD: Hundreds of demonstrators chanted slogans against President Pervez Musharraf on Monday after the alleged blocking of three private television news channels by the Pakistani authorities.

Geo, ARY-ONE and Aaj said they had been kept off air because of their coverage of the political crisis over Musharraf's March 9 ouster of the country's chief justice. 

Around 200 journalists, lawyers and opposition supporters protested noisily outside the Islamabad office of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA). 

'PEMRA and the government are fully behind the ban,' said Aroosa Alam, the vice president of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club.

 "We have won our freedom after a long struggle and nobody can take it back." 

The protesters shouted 'Go, Musharraf, go' -- a rallying call at virtually every rally in support of suspended Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry -- and 'End curbs on the media now.'

They also chanted 'Death to the disinformation minister' in an apparent reference to Information and Broadcasting Minister Muhammad Ali Durrani, who last week warned the media to tone down its coverage of the crisis.

Durrani was not immediately available for comment, but an information ministry official denied the protesters' claims. 

"No channel, including Geo, has been blocked by the government. A channel had some dispute with cable operators after which some of them suspended its transmissions," the official said on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for PEMRA said it had 'never asked cable operators to block any channel.'

Musharraf last week said that television stations should not broadcast talk shows that discuss Chaudhry's ongoing legal fight against misconduct charges, which the government says led to his suspension.    Durrani has warned TV stations to tone down the coverage or face curbs on their live broadcasts -- prompting expressions of concern from the US--based Committee to Protect Journalists and Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. 

Geo said authorities had blocked its popular talk show "Meray Mutabiq" (According to Me), hosted by presenter and intellectual Shahid Masood, and warned it by telephone to take the show off the air. 

"We have received complaints from viewers from all across Pakistan that they were not receiving Geo television transmission," said the channel's director, Nasir Baig Chughtai.

Aaj Television said that while transmission blockages by under-pressure cable operators had become 'routine' since March 9, it believed they were not solely responsible for the most recent clampdown.  

"Obviously the cable operators have verbal instructions from the authorities to do that because of our coverage of the judicial crisis," the channel's Islamabad bureau chief Tariq Chaudhry said.

Police smashed up Geo's Islamabad office during riots on March 16, while gunmen attacked the Aaj office in Karachi on May 12, during political clashes sparked by Chaudhry's ouster in which more than 40 people died.