Pakistan: Censorship on election night

Pakistan's Geo TV was the first to report on the surprisingly good performance of Imran Khan's candidates on election night. Then it was switched off.

GAround 11 p.m. on election night, the website of Pakistan's most popular television channel, Geo TV, was suddenly no longer accessible. The special broadcast on the election could no longer be received in parts of the country. “They were angry because we started publishing the results,” says Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan’s best-known talk show hosts. The man with the mustache sits in his office on the fourth floor of the capital studio, surrounded by old television sets, awards and books. By “they” he means the Pakistani military and the secret service ISI. The former in particular sets the political tone in nuclear power.

Geo TV has the largest network of reporters in the country. More than 5,000 journalists were sent to the polling stations on the evening of the parliamentary election, February 8th, says Mir. There they photographed the counting documents and sent them to the broadcaster's headquarters in Karachi. The so-called Form 45 is signed by the manager of the polling station and displayed publicly. “By eleven o’clock in the evening, it was clear from our publications that the PTI’s independent candidates were in the lead.”