Observing that Pakistan has become a battle ground, country’s envoy to the US, Husain Haqqani has said that there may be elements in the Pakistani Government who are responsible for the criminal behavior.
“Pakistan today is a nation brutalised by the arrogance of some who impose their ideology on the country,” Haqqani said at a meeting organised at the National Press Club in memory of the slain Pakistani investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.
Organised by Pakistani journalists based in the US in association with the National Press Club and Committee to Protect Journalists, the meeting was attended by a large number of journalists from the sub-continent and mainstream US media. In a resolution they demanded the Pakistani Government to bring to justice the perpetrators of the heinous crime.
The resolution also demanded the family of Shahzad be protected and Pakistan government take steps to protect all journalists and media houses in the country.
Haqqani criticised all those people in Pakistan who have a tendency to blame all the ills inside the country either on the US or on its immediate neighbour (India).
“There may be elements in the government who are responsible for the criminal behaviour. But there are people in the government who are victims of this criminal behaviour,” the envoy said.
Bob Dietz of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Shahzad was brutally murdered by the elements in the establishment. “This is a clod blooded brutal murder, beaten to death,” he said.
