Freedom of speech: cases during, after Musharraff

In this article, Danilo Reyes examines 28 individual cases, from 2004 to 2015, on free speech during and after Pervez Musharraff’s regime. Reyes took a comparative analysis in approaching this question: would regime change, from military to civilian rule, lead to protection of the right to freedom of expression? In conclusion, Reyes argues that Musharraff’s resignation in 2007 had not altered the resilient habits, practices, and rules designed at curbing free speech. The military, even after Musharraff, remains a powerful political institution; the religious clerics and fundamentalists who articulate the ideological basis of Pakistan’s theocratic legal order, also form an influential institution. Neither the military nor religious clerics are accountable to law. The civilian authority is caught between powerful institutions that refuse to be subordinated by democratic rules.