JAC to move court against Punjab defamation bill

ISLAMABAD: The Joint Action Committee has rejected the Punjab Defamation Bill, 2024, calling it a ‘black law.’ It has also announced moving court against it.

It was decided at an emergency virtual meeting of the Joint Action Committee, attended by representatives of PBA, APNS, CPNE, PFUJ and AEMEND. It called the bill a draconian law passed in the dark of night without consulting the stakeholders. It was decided that the Joint Action Committee would continue its efforts by contacting political parties, human rights organisations and other stakeholders. The bill will also be challenged in the Lahore High Court.

Each and every option, including a boycott of coverage and protests, will be implemented in a phased manner, the JAC said, making it clear that media organisations are not against making laws but stakeholders should be consulted before legislation. The JAC identified several authoritarian clauses in the Defamation Bill 2024, including malicious tribunals, fines, enactment of new laws despite the existence of old ones, multiple points of suppression of expression aimed at curtailing freedom of the press and legislation against fundamental human rights, which could not be accepted under any circumstances.

It said that the Punjab government had totally ignored recommendations proposed by the APNS and PBA. “The black law was passed in a haste, which exposes the bad intentions of the government,” it maintained. Several committees were also set up in the meeting to consult stakeholders and discuss legal issues related to the law.

On the other hand, speaking to Geo’s Shahzeb Khanzada on Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada Kay Saath, Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari defended her government’s Punjab Defamation Bill, 2024 that was passed late Monday night. Responding to media criticism of the law, Bokhari said that the bill was not rushed but that the government had been working on it for the past two months using earlier laws and keeping in mind the critique against those laws.

When asked with whom the bill was discussed in the past two months, she said the government was “doing its homework” into why previous laws had not been very successful. Bokhari said that the new defamation law “There is no role of the police in this...this is a simple civil matter [under this law]....and there is no arrest in it either”.

When told that the world over such laws are made after consultation, the information minister responded that the world over such laws are not branded black laws without being read either nor are such issues politicized.

But then why did the Punjab government feel the need to rush through a bill when media stakeholders had not even had a chance to review it properly? According to the Punjab information minister, “whatever points APNS and PBA had brought up, we did make some (two) amendments keeping those in mind.” She also seemed to dispute the idea that the government did not give stakeholders any time for consultation, saying that during the Monday meeting between the Punjab government and media bodies, “we were going ahead with a clause-by-clause consultation when a gentleman entered the meeting and started asking us to just delay this till next week. We are not the ones that left the meeting.”

But -- once again -- why couldn’t the government just delay the bill by a week? The information minister did not quite answer this question other than pointing to what she said was the dire need for such a law and that it was high time it was made. Bokhari also denied that the Punjab government was under any pressure to bring about this law, saying there was “no pressure nor can there be any”.

Per Bokhari, the Punjab Defamation Bill, 2024 is for the people of Punjab -- who “will not be vulnerable to defamation”, regardless of wherever the person doing the defamation is situated -- and that any criticism that the law protects only the government of Punjab is unfounded. Responding to critique that the appointing authority for the tribunals is the government which also gets to decide their tenure, the provincial information minister claimed that this is the way judges are appointed in the country -- “whether tribunal judges or high court judges”. She also explained that this is why the government had thought that constitutional office-holders wouldn’t go to such tribunals --since the government would be the appointing authority.

Bur is this not a privilege that has been assigned to the chief minister or other such constitutional offices? Why should such offices not be open to criticism? To this, Bokhari responded that “No one is stopping anyone from criticising any office-holder. The issue is just defamation and unverified allegations; there is a difference between the two.”

She also clarified that the part in the law about cases not being talked about means that the “proceedings cannot be discussed. In 2019, an SC order said that sub-judice issues cannot be discussed. The word over sub-judice matters are not discussed.”