By Muhammad Najeeb, IANS
Islamabad/Dubai : Two major Pakistani news channel, ARY and GEO, were taken off air in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), apparently on the intervention of President Pervez Musharraf.
The two television networks, operating from ground stations in Dubai, were asked by officials to suspend their transmissions by midnight Friday.
“Yes, transmission of our channel was suspended midnight Friday,” Mohsin Raza, ARY director, told IANS.
Management representatives of ARY and GEO have said the Dubai authorities had closed down their operations following the intervention of Musharraf, who imposed emergency in Pakistan Nov 3 and imposed stiff media curbs within the country.
The move to shut down ARY and GEO operations off Dubai is seen as Musharraf putting more pressure to silence the Pakistani media outlets that have refused to bow down to his dictates.
An official of the UAE embassy in Islamabad said he was not aware why the channels were closed down. But he said the media in Dubai was free to operate “under the law and regulations”.
The statement by the GEO quoting unnamed sources said Musharraf himself intervened to stop all GEO news transmissions from Dubai after a two-week standoff in Pakistan during which all major news channels were closed by cable operators, directly controlled by the Pakistani authorities.
GEO TV has, in all, eight channels uplinking from its offices at the Dubai Media City. Geo News has three beams covering Pakistan, the Middle East and the US and Britain.
“Our other entertainment and sports channels have been allowed to operate but on the condition that we do not show any news or current affairs programmes on these channels,” Dubai station head of Geo TV Imran Mir told IANS Saturday.
Media sources said the government first asked the Geo administration to stop the popular programmes of TV hosts Shahid Masood, Hamid Mir and Kamran Khan without offering any reasons.
However, staff at the Geo TV’s Dubai office continued to attend office Saturday.
“We have a staff of over 200 here. All of them are attending office as in normal conditions. They are doing their normal work and coming in their respective shifts,” Mir said.
He added that website operations of the TV network are going on as usual.
Asked what he expects to happen in the near future, Mir said, “Let’s see. It is very difficult to say anything now. We are negotiating with the government here.”
Almost all private news channels in Pakistan were taken off the air a few hours before Musharraf slammed emergency rule, prompting the biggest news blackout in the country. The news-hungry public turned to satellite dish as the alternative news source but the government banned dish sales and imports.
Later, two international channels Sky News and Fox News, and two local channels Aaj and Dawn News were allowed through cable. The Aaj television also suspended two of its popular talk shows hosted by Talat Hussain and Mushtaq Minhas.
But Geo and ARY remained banned as their administration refused to close down some of the debate shows and sack the news anchors Musharraf regime believed were levelling heavy criticism of the government.