Pakistan starts sweeping crackdown on journos

Pakistan has launched a sweeping crackdown on journalists, according to a report by the New York Times (NYT).

Rights groups and local journalists told the NYT the effort will close off one of the last paths to independent journalism in the South Asian country.

Now, the government is requiring all journalists working for foreign media outlets to seek permission before travelling outside of Pakistan’s three major cities — Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore.

The new restrictions have been imposed amid a surge in coverage of the elections in the Pakistan-administered section of Kashmir, where protesters have been campaigning since June for greater political autonomy.

The protest movement is calling for constitutional changes Pakistan has refused to consider.

“The requirement that journalists obtain state approval to report from large parts of the country sends a chilling message: that critical reporting is unwelcome,” said the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a major rights organisation in the country.

Pakistani journalists assigned to the Kashmir unrest are facing particularly intense pressure, the NYT says.

New York-based nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists say that two independent Pakistani journalists working in the area were detained on Aug 1 and taken to an undisclosed location.

Other journalists working for Pakistani news outlets say they have been summoned to court over reporting on the region under a law concerning “false and fake information”.

Islamabad criticised a Pakistani journalist working for Al-Jazeera on Sunday for their reporting on the provincial election. The government has also ordered all journalists working for foreign news agencies to leave the region immediately.

It then announced that any journalist working for an international news organisation must receive government approval to report from outside the three major cities.

Previously, foreign reporters were limited to these cities unless they applied for and received government travel permission.

“In practice, it can take months to get that permission, and in some cases, there is no response at all,” the NYT said.

Patricia Gossman, Human Rights Watch’s senior associate Asia director, says the new restrictions would represent an “alarming step in the country’s narrowing space for press freedom and free expression”.

“If the government is really interested in showing that it believes in democracy and press freedom, then it should immediately lift this ban,” the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists said.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Information said in a statement that foreign media would be able to operate as normal despite the new restrictions. It also said it was working on a new travel permit system.

Kamran Bokhari, a Pakistani analyst and senior resident fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Policy Council research centre, told the NYT: “The Pakistani leadership has to know these moves will not work and in fact will backfire.”

“It is a classic case of trying to control the narrative, but in this post-social media and post-AI age these tools of a bygone era do not work.”

It is unclear how the new rules apply to many of the Pakistani journalists who work for foreign news agencies and are already based across the country.

The restrictions on the media will likely affect the coverage of the polls in Kashmir, which are scheduled to end on Aug 10.

Demonstrators have accused the police of trying to repress a peaceful movement, while government officials have accused the protesters of violence against security forces.

Local officials and independent estimates say at least 30 people, including protesters, law enforcers, and bystanders, have been killed in June and July, the NYT says.

Journalists and rights groups say reporters in Pakistan have faced increasing censorship and financial pressure, including the freezing of bank accounts and the suspension of government advertising, arbitrary arrests, and imprisonment.

The Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors reported in January that the government has “complete control and censorship over Pakistani media throughout 2025”.

Out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index, Pakistan ranks 153rd.