Something is simmering in southern Punjab — and it is not religious extremism.

“We cannot hold a seminar in a hotel without a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the government,” says Irfan Mufti. He is deputy director of the South Asia Partnership-Pakistan (SAP-PK), a Lahore-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that is running community development projects in southern Punjab. “In places like Multan and Bahawalpur, we cannot even hold an internal meeting,” he says. “If and when a meeting takes place, officials from intelligence agencies arrive and tell us to stop it.”

The officials, he says, do not allow the meetings because of ‘security’ concerns. Whether the meetings endanger security or the government finds it difficult to provide security for them is not clear. What is clear is that the government does not like NGOs to work in Punjab in general and southern parts of the province in particular.

In January this year, a Punjab government letter told SAP-PK to close down its offices in Bahawalpur district. And, according to a report recently published in daily The News, provincial authorities revoked the registration of 3,773 NGOs out of a total of 8,529 registered in the province. Many of them were working in the southern districts and, as per the newspaper report, were accused by the government of being involved in “anti-state activities”.

In at least one case, the government moved so secretly that the NGO concerned – Women in Struggle for Empowerment (Wise) – knew about it only indirectly. Bushra Khaliq, executive director of Wise, says she found out through a small story in an Urdu daily, in December 2016, that her organisation was involved in ‘anti-state’ activities and would not be allowed to function.

Before she could do anything about it, the Punjab government started stopping her organisation’s functionaries from operating in Bahawalnagar and Nankana Sahib districts. Many of its offices remain closed even today in southern Punjab. “I was turned back by a [district] government official in Bahawalpur saying I was not allowed to work in his jurisdiction,” she says.

Khaliq does not know why exactly the government has clamped down on Wise since she received no notice or warning from any government department before the action started. “I was never sent a letter [by the government].”

In at least one case, the government moved so secretly that the NGO concerned – Women in Struggle for Empowerment (Wise) – knew about it only indirectly.

The letter did arrive a month later. By that time, both SAP-PK and Wise had decided to move Lahore High Court against restrictions on their operations. The government’s case was legally weak, says Mufti. “The official letters came from the wrong ministry,” he says. “The government knew that. So it withdrew the letters [as soon as the hearing started].”

Even though the court battle has been won – for now – Mufti fears more trouble in the future. “The government will introduce more stringent measures and red tape.” He cites the example of a project that SAP-PK has been running in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas for the last four years. “Every year we were required to get an NOC to continue the project,” he says. This year, Mufti says, “we will probably not get” the NOC.

Some of his apprehensions stem from changes in the government’s oversight mechanism. A ‘consultative committee’ set up in August last year has been given the exclusive authority to register new NGOs. It includes chiefs of the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau, along with a joint secretary of the federal interior ministry and a director of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan. Its approval now overrides all other procedures.

That will make the registration of new NGOs a difficult task, says Mufti.

Shakil Afridi’s name is almost as infamous as the man he was accused of tracking down. The physician allegedly helped the Central Investigation Agency run a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad that led to the discovery and consequent assassination of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

About four years later, the government in Islamabad asked foreign workers of Save the Children, a London-based NGO, to leave Pakistan. Officials claimed they had enough evidence to suggest that the NGO facilitated Afridi in carrying out his bogus vaccination campaign.

When, however, Afridi was sentenced to 33 years in prison, it was on an entirely different charge — maintaining ties with Mangal Bagh, the notorious chief of a militant outfit, Laskhar-e-Islam, based in the Khyber tribal agency.

The name of Basic Awareness and Rehabilitation Network (Baran), an NGO working in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, then echoed during the hearing of a case on terror financing. A two-member bench of the Supreme Court noted in its order, issued on July 22, 2015, that a law officer representing the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had “pointed out that in connection with … BARAN, it has been found that funds were received in its account” but “the money trail [subsequently] went … dead”.

According to Lubna Jabeen, deputy director at the Punjab Social Welfare Department, the case highlighted how easy it was for NGOs to receive money and transfer it to anyone without any government scrutiny.

She also cites a 2016 letter issued by Punjab home department which said that some NGOs had held campaigns on International Women’s Day (on March 8) that were against “our sociocultural practices”. The letter, sent to secretaries of all departments in the province, used words such as “cultural, religious, social and national interest” to highlight the activities the government did not approve of.

The letter, she says, made it mandatory for NGOs in Punjab to get prior official approval for their activities. “... complete details of the activity” must be provided to the relevant department for approval, Jabeen quotes it as saying.

The main reason for increased government surveillance of NGOs, according to her, is the National Action Plan against extremism and terrorism. “After the Army Public School attack, the process sped up.”

Representatives of NGOs addressed a press conference in Lahore on January 18, 2017 to voice their complaints against what they called harassment by the government. The speakers said intelligence officials monitor their seminars regularly and visit their offices routinely. Some of them use a threatening tone while asking for information, the speakers claimed.

The reason, according to some of them, is the government’s jitters over a mandatory five-year review, due this year, of Pakistan’s human rights situation. Called the Universal Periodic Review, it is a process that all member countries of the United Nations go through. The review was last conducted in Pakistan in 2012.

The process involves submission of reports by the government, as well as ‘shadow reports’ by NGOs. Open discussions at multiple meetings follow the submission of reports. The government has “serious anxieties” about it all, says Mufti, since “there is bound to be a lot of discussion on Operation Zarb-e-Azb and the National Action Plan”.

What is clear is that the government does not like NGOs to work in Punjab in general and southern parts of the province in particular

The picture of human rights in the country is not rosy, he says. The government, therefore, is squeezing NGOs so that there are either no or few ‘shadow reports’, he claims.

Khaliq agrees. The government does not want “anyone to say anything about environmental degradation … human displacement [and] the neglect of local labour” being reportedly caused by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Veteran journalist and activist I A Rehman says the main reason behind harassment of NGOs is that the “government is incompetent”. Governments that are incapable of performing are also incapable of taking criticism, he argues. “This does not just happen in Pakistan. This happens in Russia, India, China, Bahrain and now, after Trump, in the United States as well.” Such governments, Rehman says, “turn any issue into a national security issue” and try to block any point of view that does not conform to their own.

As far as the current government is concerned, he says, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has always been intolerant of NGOs and has called them foreign agents, just like religious hardliners have, on multiple occasions. “The government imagines we present only a negative image of Pakistan which it believes has damaged the country’s and the government’s reputation.”

“The government’s stance is not wrong,” says Jabeen when asked about the reasons for restrictions on NGOs, “but its execution is not right”. She believes the government needs to define what being ‘anti-state’ exactly means. Otherwise, complaints about the arbitrary use of the term will persist.

This article was originally published in the Herald's March 2017 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.

The writer is a Lahore-based reporter for daily Dawn. She holds a degree in Mass Communication from the University of Karachi and focuses on crime and sociopolitical issues.