LAHORE – Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Chief Syed Munawar Hasan urged the Pakistani media to unite for national honour and sovereignty. He was addressing the newly elected members of the Lahore Press Club (LPC) at a luncheon he hosted in honour of LPC President Sarmad Bashir and his team at Mansoora on Thursday.
JI Deputy Chief Chaudhry Aslam Saleemi, JI Secretary General Liaquat Baloch, JI Public Relations Wing Chief Safdar Ali Chaudhary and veteran journalist Bashsir A Qureshi were also present.
Syed Hasan said the western media had admitted that they had been stopped from independent reporting on Raymond Davis issue and to conceal Raymond’s true identity. He said the Interior Minister Rehman Malik was late in revealing Raymond’s diplomatic visa. Raymond had killed two Pakistanis and any ‘false’ statement by a minister could not hide his true position, he said. He questioned as to what caused Malik to conceal Raymond’s identity. He said it was not clear as to who was the chief executive of the country – the president or the prime minister.
The fact was that President Zardari had confined all the state powers to himself and the country was being run under the presidential system and not the parliamentary system. He noted that agreements between Pakistan and Japan should have been signed by the prime minister like the Japanese premier. On arrival at Mansoora, the JI chief welcomed the LPC president and his team and assured them of JI’s support.
Sarmad Bashir, while thanking JI for the reception, said the media was ready to make sacrifices for bringing true facts to the nation. He said dozens of journalists had laid down their lives while others had suffered detentions for the press’ freedom during the regimes of Ayub Khan, Ziaul Haq and Pervez Musharraf.
However, he said, unfortunately neither the military dictators nor the ‘so called’ democracies had tolerated independent media. The JI Information Secretary M Anwar Khan Niazi read out the welcome address on the occasion.
