Two Events, One Pattern
In early June 2026, Pakistani authorities cut all internet and mobile connectivity across Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The blackout — which Amnesty International confirmed had stretched past twelve days by June 16 — was triggered by a breakdown in negotiations between the government and the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JKJAAC), a protest movement that authorities simultaneously designated as a proscribed terrorist organization under the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Anti-Terrorism Act, 2014. At least eight protesters and four police officers were killed in subsequent clashes at Rawalakot; over one hundred people were arrested.
Three weeks later, on June 23, journalist Razi Tahir was arrested at Islamabad's district court after his pre-arrest bail was dismissed. The charges: Sections 20 and 26-A of Pakistan's Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, for social media posts on X that the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) alleged were false and likely to cause public panic. A second journalist, Sohrab Barkat, had already been arrested on June 6 — one day into the blackout — under electronic crimes provisions for YouTube content about the JKJAAC.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the latest expressions of a years-long pattern in which Pakistan has converted its cybercrime statute — originally passed to address online fraud and harassment — into an instrument for controlling political dissent and suppressing press coverage.
What PECA Section 26-A Actually Says
PECA's 2025 amendment, signed into law on January 30, 2025, inserted Section 26-A into the statute. The provision criminalizes the "intentional dissemination, exhibition or transmission of information through any information system that the sender knows or believes to be false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of public fear, panic, disorder or unrest." Penalties reach up to three years imprisonment or Rs. 2 million (approximately USD 7,000) in fines, or both.
The provision contains no journalistic exemption, no public-interest defense, and no requirement that prosecutors demonstrate actual harm. The operative terms — "fear," "panic," "disorder," "unrest" — are undefined, leaving enforcement subject to prosecutorial and political discretion rather than objective legal standards. This is not an oversight; analysts at LUMS Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law noted in their critical analysis of the amendment that the vagueness is structural, effectively delegating to the executive the power to define punishable speech on a case-by-case basis.
The 2025 amendments also created a new Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority with sweeping powers to remove content deemed "against the ideology of Pakistan" or casting aspersions on the armed forces, parliament, or provincial assemblies — expanding the digital censorship architecture well beyond Section 26-A alone.
The Kashmir Shutdown: Taking the Security Argument Seriously
The government's case for the Kashmir blackout had surface logic. A violent protest movement had clashed with security forces, and authorities argued that social media was being used to coordinate unrest and spread inflammatory content. When negotiations with the JKJAAC collapsed, the connectivity kill-switch could be framed as a proportionate emergency measure to prevent further loss of life.
That argument deserves serious engagement. Governments across South Asia and Africa have faced genuine scenarios where social platforms have accelerated mob violence or enabled operational coordination by armed groups. The security rationale for temporary, targeted restrictions is not inherently pretextual.
But the proportionality test breaks down quickly here. A twelve-plus-day total blackout — affecting not just JKJAAC organizers but journalists, doctors, businesses, and students across an entire administrative territory — is collective punishment, not a targeted restriction. Amnesty International's Deputy Regional Director for South Asia, Isabelle Lassee, called the shutdown a "dangerous escalation" and called for its immediate reversal. Under international human rights standards, internet shutdowns require demonstration that less restrictive alternatives were unavailable and that the restriction was necessary and proportionate to a specific threat. A twelve-day blanket blackout does not meet that bar.
The arrest of Sohrab Barkat on day one of the blackout — for YouTube journalism about the protest movement — confirmed that the shutdown was not purely an operational security measure. It was also about controlling the information environment during a crackdown.
Razi Tahir and the Chilling Accumulation
Razi Tahir's June 23 arrest fits a documented pattern. More than 150 journalists were charged under PECA provisions in December 2024 alone, according to press freedom monitoring organizations, a figure that accelerated sharply after the 2021 and 2025 amendments added criminal penalties for content deemed offensive to state institutions. The International Federation of Journalists has described the 2025 PECA amendments as further tightening the government's grip on digital expression.
The specific deployment of Section 26-A against Tahir illustrates the provision's structural function. Authorities alleged that a post on X was "false" and likely to cause "panic" — characterizations Tahir could not effectively contest before bail was dismissed at a preliminary hearing. The provision thus operates as a pre-trial detention mechanism: the accused journalist is jailed without an evidentiary hearing on the underlying merits, creating a strong incentive for self-censorship before any court has ruled. Digital Rights Foundation's report "Bytes Behind Bars" documented this chilling effect systematically, finding widespread self-censorship across Pakistani newsrooms.
Pakistan's 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index ranking — 153rd out of 180 countries, rated "difficult" with a legal environment sub-score of 34.57 — reflects this accumulation. PECA enforcement is not one factor among many; it is now the primary driver of the legal environment score.
Section 26-A Needs Surgery
Workable disinformation law requires three elements that Section 26-A conspicuously lacks: a clear harm threshold (not abstract "fear"), a truth defense for accurate but inconvenient reporting, and a public-interest carve-out for journalism. Without these, the provision does not regulate disinformation — it regulates speech, with disinformation as a post-hoc justification for prosecution.
The International Press Institute's analysis of the 2025 amendments correctly identified that Section 26-A's undefined terms enable selective enforcement against politically inconvenient voices rather than genuinely harmful disinformation. Courts should apply Article 19 of Pakistan's Constitution — which guarantees freedom of speech and press — to require that prosecutions under Section 26-A demonstrate actual, specific, verifiable harm, not elastic assertions of potential "unrest."
For internet shutdowns, the standard should be equally demanding: mandatory judicial authorization before imposition, a maximum duration without renewed judicial review, and a strict proportionality analysis. The Kashmir blackout would have failed that test on day one.
Pakistan's parliament passed Section 26-A under the banner of fighting disinformation. If that claim is genuine, legislators should have no objection to adding the guardrails that distinguish real disinformation law from speech suppression — a truth defense, a public-interest exemption, and a specific harm threshold. Their resistance to those additions would answer the question of legislative intent more clearly than any official statement.