“Pakistan is already ranked very low among countries with the worst record on press freedom. This action by the government will only worsen that.”

Earlier this month, the Government of Pakistan announced that foreign journalists working in Pakistan must be in possession of a “no-objection certificate” or NOC issued by the External Publicity (EP Wing) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MOIB), in order to travel and work outside of the three major cities of Pakistan, Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. According to the MOIB’s new “Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines, 2026”:

“Registration with EP Wing, MoIB, shall be mandatory for all journalists working with international or foreign media outlets, including digital, print, electronic, and social media/news platforms, through the designated portal (www.dml.nimar.pk). Such registration shall be a prerequisite for engaging with foreign media.”

“All journalists residing within Pakistan, contributing to foreign media in any

capacity i.e. regular, freelancer, contributory, stringer, retainer, sponsor, fixer, assignee, attached etc. shall register themselves on the portal for their mandatory registration with EP Wing.”

Pakistani journalists are not exempt either:

“All Pakistani journalists residing abroad, contributing to foreign media and seeking registration must submit their application through the EP Wing portal and concurrently forward their case through the nearest Press Attaché, Counsellor, Minister posted in Pakistan Missions, Consulates, High Commissions, or Embassies. (www.epwing.gov.pk & www.mofa.gov.pk)”

This comes in the wake of Al Jazeera being told off for what the Pakistani government called“one-sided” journalism regarding Kashmir by the Qatar-based news network (whose website remains blocked in Pakistan), aka:

Section 7 of the guidelines, “SUSPENSION OR WITHDRAWL (SIC) OF PRESS ACCREDITATION or REGISTRATION”, provides a short list as to what can get a journalist’s press accrementition or NOC yoinked away, one of them being:

“g) acts against the ideology, sovereignty, security, or public order of Pakistan;”

Pakistani human rights and journalism organisations roundly denounced the new foreign media requirements, with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) asserting that this “requirement that journalists obtain state approval to report from large parts of the country sends a chilling message: critical reporting is unwelcome”, and that it would“invariably institutionalise bureaucratic control over news-gathering and risk deterring independent reporting on matters of public interest”. The HRCP also said that:

“This is the latest in a growing pattern of restrictions on media freedom in Pakistan. From arbitrary curbs on reporting and increasing censorship to legal and administrative barriers, the space for independent journalism has continued to shrink”.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) condemned the guidelines as “attacking the freedom of expression and putting curbs on press freedom”. In a statement released by the PFUJ, they noted that:

“The government has not only banned foreign journalists from visiting most parts of Pakistan except major cities, but has also restricted the movement of Pakistani media persons working with international media outlets. They are not allowed to visit these areas on their own either.”

“Pakistan is already ranked very low among countries with the worst record on press freedom. This action by the government will only worsen that.”

International Outcry:

International news outlets and journalism bodies have also strongly condemned the decision by the Pakistani government. The BBC released a statement:

“The BBC is extremely concerned about the new restrictions imposed by the Pakistani authorities to limit the movement of international media around the country and calls for the reversal of these unnecessary restrictions.

“We provide independent and impartial news to around 8.6 million people in Pakistan every week and report from the breadth of the country to our global audience. Our journalists, including local staff based in Pakistan, must be able to travel to all parts of the country to cover events as they emerge and to hear the voices of ordinary citizens.

“Freedom of the press is increasingly under pressure around the world and this unwelcome change in approach is a step backwards for Pakistan’s media freedom.”

The Campaign to Project Journalists (CPJ) called on:

“...Pakistani authorities to withdraw draconian new guidelines requiring journalists working for international media outlets to obtain authorization before reporting outside Islamabad, Karachi, or Lahore, in a move likely to censor coverage of unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The guidelines, reviewed by CPJ, require international and Pakistani journalists who contribute to foreign media organizations, including social media and web-based platforms, to obtain a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the information ministry for “official assignments, especially for work outside Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.”

“The Foreign Media Facilitation Guidelines open the door for Pakistani authorities to further restrict international media coverage, prevent journalists from reporting freely outside Pakistan’s three main cities, and risk exposing them to administrative retaliation,” said CPJ Afghanistan and Pakistan Representative Waliullah Rahmani. “These guidelines mark yet another appalling blow to press freedom in Pakistan, where journalists are already facing an intense crackdown, particularly those reporting on unrest in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.””

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières, or RSF) also condemned the actions of the government as part of a larger package of “attacks on press freedom” that “are increasing at an alarming rate in Pakistan”:

“A sweeping crackdown on protests has also spread to the media. In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, protests calling for electoral reform were violently suppressed and led to mass arrests. At the same time, in recent weeks, the authorities have also stepped up measures to restrict media coverage of the region, where legislative assembly elections have been underway since July 27.”

Célia Mercier, head of RSF’s South Asia office, said in a statement that:

“The authorities appear to have done everything in their power to impose a veritable information blackout on Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The internet shutdown and restrictions on internet access, the surge in arrests and restrictions on access for media professionals, as well as prosecutions under the PECA, reveal a dramatic deterioration in press freedom in the country. RSF calls for the immediate release of detained journalists, the full restoration of internet access in Kashmir, the lifting of new restrictions targeting foreign media journalists, an end to abusive legal proceedings, and the guarantee of the right to information.”

As the Pakistani government continues to copy the homework of its erstwhile neighbour (which is also guilty of the same horrific censorship and crackdowns, both within Kashmir and India), reports continue to pour of a region still in the midst of what Australia’s ABC News reports on as “violent crackdown” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir:

Roughly three weeks ago, on the street outside his house, Haji Hasan Azizi says he watched security officials with large guns "firing indiscriminately on unarmed people".

Mr Hasan lives in Rawalakot — a city in the Pakistan-controlled region of Kashmir, and the epicentre of months-long protests that have become increasingly deadly.

"We picked up the dead bodies; we put them in ambulances and carried some on our shoulders," he told the ABC.

Last month, Pakistan's security forces allegedly killed dozens of protesters who tried to march to Muzaffarabad — the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir — after a lengthy dispute over electoral reform between activists and the government reignited.

Now, red roses adorn memorials on the streets of Rawalakot honouring the dead, and shops remain shuttered.

Ever since the alleged shootings, the city's central bus station has been bursting with hundreds of protesters demanding change and fuelled with grief and anger.

ABC News also reports that verification of information on the ground faces obstacles:

Verifying what is happening on the ground remains difficult. The internet and mobile blackout continues, and new government guidelines ban foreign journalists from reporting on the ground. 

Even local journalists hired by foreign media, often called "fixers", are restricted from gathering information. The guidelines make no mention of Kashmir or explain why the new rules have been imposed.

As journalists that have reported from Pakistan can relate, the demand for NOCs approved by the State is nothing new. As related in Amnesty International’s 2014 report on violence against journalists in Pakistan, “’A Bullet Has Been Chosen For You’: Attacks on Journalists in Pakistan”:

“Some journalists are restricted to one or more cities and all are excluded from carrying out unauthorised travel to dangerous and politically sensitive areas like Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (henceforth ‘the Tribal Areas’) and interior Sindh.”

(Note: As of 2018, FATA has been incorporated into what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa)

From the Amnesty International report:

Foreign journalists are generally immune from direct harassment or abuse from the ISI or other state security personnel. “There are two thin layers of protection as a foreign journalist in Pakistan. First, you work for a foreign organization. Second, you are a foreign national,” one Islamabad-based foreign correspondent told Amnesty International. However, on some rare occasions even foreign journalists have fallen victim to threats and attacks. In 2006 New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall was assaulted by members of the ISI who broke into her Quetta hotel room during her investigation into Pakistani military support for the Taliban. As she recounted in the newspaper: they burst in in a rush, snatching my laptop from my hands. There was an English-speaking officer wearing a smart new khaki-colored fleece. The other three, one of whom had the photographer in tow, were the muscle. They went through my clothes and seized my notebooks and a cellphone. When one of the men grabbed my handbag, I protested. He punched me twice, hard, in the face and temple, and I fell back onto the coffee table,grabbing at the officer’s fleece to break my fall and smashing some cups when I landed.

The Amnesty International report also discusses a notorious example of a foreign journalist’s visa and NOC being revoked, that of the then-New York Times Pakistan Bureau head, Declan Walsh, in 2013:

In the early hours of 12 May 2013, the day after Pakistan’s general elections, the New York Times’ Declan Walsh was expelled from the country. He had been covering the elections from Lahore when he was detained and escorted to the airport by a group of plain-clothed intelligence agents. One of the most experienced foreign correspondents in Pakistan, Walsh had received a late evening call two days earlier from an unknown person who told him to “come home now.” He returned to see a group of police and men in plain clothes waiting outside his house. One of the men handed him a letter from the Ministry of Interior that read, “It is informed [sic] that your visa is hereby cancelled in view of your undesirable activities. You are therefore advised to leave the country within 72 hours.” Declan Walsh described the notice as “a complete bolt from the blue. I had no idea that anything of this sort was coming.” The New York Times’ executive editor, Jill Abramson, described the Interior Ministry’s claims as “vague and unsupported”, noting that Walsh “had received no further explanation of any alleged wrongdoing.” Walsh was escorted to the airport in the early morning of 12 May where he boarded a plane and left the country.

Although the notice came from the Ministry of Interior, Declan Walsh and The New York Times believe Pakistan’s military was behind his expulsion and the revocation of his visa, and that this action was a direct response to his work as a journalist. According to Walsh, the military was angered by his reporting on a range of sensitive political and human rights topics, including the military’s alleged role in the enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing of Baloch separatists, its relationship with the CIA, and the workings of the US drone programme. Previously The Guardian newspaper’s correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Declan Walsh had been living in Pakistan since 2004 and had routinely reported on major human rights issues considered sensitive by state authorities.

Sources:

Ali, K. (2026, August 7). New curbs on foreign media reporting widely panned. Dawn. https://www.dawn.com/news/2021116

“A Bullet Has Been Chosen for You”: Attacks on Journalists in Pakistan(2014, April 30)Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ASA33/005/2014/en/

Clayton, R., & Bhat Burhan. (2026, August 16).Protesters tell of violent crackdown inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Abcnews. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-17/pakistan-controlled-kashmir-violent-crackdown-against-protests/107035532

BBC statement on media restrictions in Pakistan. (2026).BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/statements/pakistan-media-restrictions

(2026, August 5). “Who will be held responsible for that?” he asked. “Who even thinks about the future of these children?”. Citizen South. https://www.citizensouth.org/who-will-be-held-responsible-for-that-he-asked-who-even-thinks-about-the-future-of-these-children/

Pakistan introduces sweeping rules to restrict foreign media amid Kashmir unrest. (2026, August 6). Committee to Protect Journalists. https://cpj.org/2026/08/pakistan-introduces-sweeping-rules-to-restrict-foreign-media-amid-kashmir-unrest/

News Desk. (2026, August 4). All foreign media personnel to require NOC from info ministry for news coverage outside Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. Dawn. https://www.dawn.com/news/2020579

Guidelines For The Facilitation Of The Foreign Media And Their Associates Working In Pakistan.Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. (2026) https://epwing.gov.pk/SiteImage/Misc/files/Foreign%20Media%20Guidelines%20EP%20Wing.pdf

Pakistan: Attempt to impose a news blackout in Kashmir symptomatic of intensifying crackdown on the media. (2026, August 14). Reporters Sans Frontières. https://rsf.org/en/pakistan-attempt-impose-news-blackout-kashmir-symptomatic-intensifying-crackdown-media