As we enter 2022, we embark on a journey with tons of optimism and idealism. We are aware the road we are taking will be rocky and dotted with potholes and roadblocks. Alternative Voices is a digital media platform run by a group of Pakistan-born volunteer journalists, writers, academics and activists for whom money is not the consideration, the truth, democracy and human rights are. Our initial focus will be on Pakistan, but we intend to expand our focus to Afghanistan and India in near future.
Although it was hoped after the death of General Ziaul Haq that space for democracy will grow, it didn’t happen. After a brief period when the press in Pakistan enjoyed relative freedom, it started slowly shrinking until 2018 when the press lost whatever freedom it had with the (s)election of Imran Khan Niazi as Pakistan’s prime minister. The Pakistani military used every tactic to silence the press from pressuring the media owners into laying off the journalists who refused to bow down to their threats and enforced abductions. In the first two decades of the 21st century, at least 40 journalists were killed by the Pakistani military or at its behest and many more were physically beaten. Taking cue from the military, the Imran Khan Niazi government used every repressive measure to silence even the mildly critical voices.
Although the term hybrid regime was coined after the Pakistan Army aided Imran Khan Niazi to get elected Pakistan’s prime minister in 2018, all civilian governments since the death of General Ziaul Haq in1988 have been hybrid governments. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif asserted themselves on many minor issues but shamelessly surrendered to the military on major issues. President Asif Ali Zardari’s two prime ministers – Yusuf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervaiz Ashraf – proved even weaker than PM Benazir Bhutto and PM Nawaz Sharif. PM Imran Khan Niazi shameless surrendered almost all powers to the military and remained happy to be the chief executive only in name until his wife advised him to defy the military and refuse to transfer ISI DG Lt General Faiz Hamid to Peshawar. Aa a result of Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa-PM Imran Khan Niazi hybrid regime, Pakistani press carries only GHQ-certified truth. Alternative Voices will fill this gap.
Run on a shoestring budget, we may not be as fast as other digital media are, we promise to call a spade a spade and to give voice to the voiceless – particularly in Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sind – and stand with the oppressed and suppressed. We will write without fear and favor. and look the not-so-sacred cows in the eyes. We will not blur the reality, for example to please the powerful. From Pakistan’s powerful military to religious extremists to big business to unscrupulous politicians, no one will be off our radar. We hope and expect that readers will value Alternative Voices for its ethos and hard-hitting content. Alternative Voices will be like no other.
