Abstract
Martial Law regulation number 33 punishes indulgence ‘in any political activity by words, signs or visible representation’ with 7 years jail and 20 lashes. There are plans to ban women from driving, voting and holding most jobs.
∗ A television playwright, fairly popular in official circles, wrote a line in his TV play: ‘It is human nature. Man wants change.’ The line was expunged from the play without the knowledge of the writer or the script editor.
∗ Four television cameramen of Rawalpindi-Islamabad television centre were sacked for irresponsibly commenting on the ‘referendum’ speech of General Zia-ul-Haq in December 1984.
∗ A censor committee insisted on deleting a close-up of a tearful eye in a film commercial saying that it was erotic. Another committee, set up to vet scripts of stage-plays, proudly claimed that it not only objected to certain lines of dialogue but that they also made ‘positive suggestions’.
∗ A government circular advises government departments, libraries, educational institutions and autonomous institutions that they should subscribe only to listed ‘balanced’ newspapers (all published by the government-owned National Press Trust). The government also decides to base the granting of government advertisements on the ‘responsible’ attitude of the newspapers rather than their circulation.
∗ Author-advocate Mushtaq Raj was detained under Martial Law for writing a book which attempts to find common ground between religion and Marxism.
∗ The Law of Evidence was promulgated and women were declared unfit to become witnesses to commercial deals on their own. A business contract must be signed by two men, or by a man and two women.