Pakistan's private Geo and Ary News channels on Saturday shut down due to 'pressure from the Pakistan government.'
Both channels carried flashes saying they were shutting down due to pressure mounted by the Pakistan government on foreign country they were operating from. They did not give details.
Both channels had shifted their operations to Dubai following curbs imposed on media by President Pervez Musharraf after the imposition of emergency.
All Pakistani and foreign private news channels were taken off the airways soon after the emergency was imposed on November 3.
Most of them were allowed to resume broadcasting on cable TV networks Thursday after they agreed to adhere to guidelines laid down by the government. But Geo and Ary news channels remained off the air.
Since the imposition of emergency, Geo had emerged as a key source of information through its broadcast via satellite and on the Internet.
An announcer on Geo said the Pakistan government had succeeded in pressuring foreign authorities to stop the channels, satellite broadcasts from abroad.
Among Geo's best known anchors ware Hamid Mir and Shahid Masood, who hosted current affairs programmes and were critical of the military regime and the emergency.
The channel had recently rejected the government's demand that they should be removed.
In March, police had attacked Geo's office in Islamabad after authorities were apparently irked by its coverage of the confrontation between lawyers and the government over Musharraf's attempt to sack former Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar M Chaudhry.
Kamran Khan, one of Geo's top anchors, said: "Pakistan's influence with the United Arab emirates government far outweighed the importance of having Pakistani channels in the Dubai Media City.
"The UAE has tremendous financial interests in Pakistan and has invested heavily in the country, in areas like the telecom sector. It was not very difficult for Pakistan to influence the UAE to shut down the Pakistani channels. The government probably thought these two channels were far too nosy."
Mohsin Raza, Director of News at ARY, said: "We are in a state of shock, as we did not expect such an action by the Pakistan government although we were shut down from cable networks after the emergency. They had pressurised us on certain issues that the channel could not compromise on."
After going off the air, Geo continuously broadcast a short clip with its orange and blue logo being battered on stormy seas with a solitary lighthouse in the background.
Journalists reacted angrily to the shutting down of the two channels.
In Karachi, scores of journalists marched in a procession late Friday night to the residence of the Sindh Governor. They shouted slogans and waved banners with messages like 'One coup per dictator.'
The government has imposed strict curbs on the media under emergency regulations. Violations can be punished with prison terms of up to three years or a fine of Rs one crore.
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