SIDEBAR: Read first-hand accounts of news from Pakistan

WASHINGTON – Pakistani television stations continued their news coverage online Wednesday as police swarmed markets to enforce a ban on selling satellite dishes. Demand for dishes surged earlier this week as Pakistanis looked for ways around the local broadcasting ban.

Satellite, mobile and Internet technology have kept media-starved Pakistanis updated since President Pervez Musharraf announced emergency rule Saturday. Human Rights Watch has said that 30 TV news channels have since gone off the air.

In addition to providing access to news, the Internet has allowed dissenters to organize protests and gain international media coverage through blogs and text messages.

“I check Internet on my mobile phone since the DSL signal strength has been squeezed,” said civil rights activist Arshed Bhatti in a telephone interview. His Islamabad café serves as a place for concerned citizens to gather and discuss politics.

“Text messaging has become the alternate media for us.”

Students at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s largest and most prestigious institutions, staged a protest Wednesday morning after using a blog, the Emergency Times, to organize their efforts.

“The Internet is practically the only way to communicate information on a broad base right now,” said the Emergency Times’ editor, who declines to give his name on the site and whose e-mails are sent from an anonymous address. “Our cellular phones are, we believe, being monitored.”

According to blog reports, several hundred students created a human wall to prevent police from entering the university.

“It’s become clear to every other country that when you crack down on media, you also crack down on the Internet,” said Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists. “I think [in Pakistan] they’ve launched something they’re not quite going to be able to control. The government is playing catch up.”

Whether Musharraf allowing some media access intentionally is up for debate. Until Saturday, Musharraf hailed the free and growing private media as proof that the country was enjoying democracy under his military rule.

But that relationship started to go sour in March when the media attacked Musharraf for suspending Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Celebrity broadcast journalists urged viewers to march on the streets in protest, and TV stations played live footage of police physically attacking protesters. Chaudhry was later reinstated only to be removed from office and detained Saturday after Musharraf announced emergency rule.

“The TV stations are allowed to abuse Musharraf daily,” said Rashid Kasuri, a member of Musharraf’s legal team, during a visit to Washington Wednesday. He blamed “media hype” for destabilizing the country.

The government demonstrated that it had the technical ability to block cell phone signals when Chaudhry was unable to address protesting lawyers via telephone Tuesday from his home, where he is under house arrest.

But mobile networks have been otherwise left alone; CPJ’s Dietz said it may be the government’s attempt to get “through this without totally ruining [its] reputation.”

Another reason the Pakistani government targeted radio and TV may have been their broader reach. Only 11 percent of Pakistanis – mostly urban elite – have Internet access, compared with 40 percent who have private television sets. Even in small villages, crowds of Pakistanis can be found watching the news on communal television sets.

“The government decided that the effort [to ban Internet access] was not worth the results,” said Khalid Hasan, a senior journalist for Pakistan’s Daily Times, an English newspaper. “By shutting down the TV channels, they deprived vast numbers from accessing information.”

As the media crackdown goes on, however, more media stations will take their broadcasts online. Cable companies, which are losing money because of the blackout, likely will seek ways around the ban.

And more Pakistanis will turn online for the media access they have come to enjoy under Musharraf’s rule.

“If this goes on, villagers, truckers and the lower middle class will soon realize they are being denied information,” said Huma Yusuf, a Pakistani journalist studying citizen media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It will lead to wider public protests.”