United Arab Emirates to Effectively Shut Down Pakistan’s Geo TV

The long arm of Musharraf reaches across the Gulf to his friends in Arab monarchies.

This is breaking and shocking news. Geo TV, Pakistan’s version of CNN, which is based in Dubai, has been ordered shut down by the UAE government.

Here is a three part discussion (in Urdu) about the matter: 1, 2, 3. They are saying that they were asked to sign certain papers which would have led their programs to be edited, but they refused. In Part III there is an interview of Nawaz Sharif, the exiled former prime minister. Geo points out that with Nawaz’ corruption, at least everyone had the right to discuss it. He asks “are we a criminal nation that we are being treated like this?”

All of Geo is not being shut down, just the news and informative parts.

As it stands Geo news is not available in Pakistan, even on satellite. Internationally: available without news and views and opinion programmes. Geo entertainment, Geo super are available in Pakistan on satellite. Basically, no more news.

Pakistan Policy, on top of this issue, has more on which parts of the channel will be shut down and which will be allowed to run:

At the behest of the Pakistani government, the United Arab Emirates has ordered the GEO News channel to shut down at 3PM EST. The GEO Network’s other channels (e.g. the GEO sports channel) will continue to broadcast, but are forbidden from airing its popular public affairs programs and breaking news. GEO, Pakistan’s most popular news channel, transmits out of Dubai’s Media City. Along with ARY One World, GEO has resisted governmental pressure to accept censorship.

Senior officials with the Jang Group, which owns GEO, received threats last week from individuals claiming to be from the Taliban — strange, since the president of Pakistan has described the country’s independent media as abetting militants.

By the way, this is a few days after UAE and Pakistan signed a $5 billion oil refinery deal.

Looks as if Musharraf has a new model for governance; from enlightened moderation to Arab emir.

Geo TV is currently showing cricket news. At the bottom there is a scroll which says that the party is over.

By the way, this probably means that Pakistani internet is next.