Observing that Pakistan has become a battle ground, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s envoy to the United States, has said that there might be elements in the Pakistani Government who are responsible for the criminal behavior. “Pakistan today is a nation brutalized by the arrogance of some who impose their ideology on the country,” Haqqani said in a meeting organized at the National Press Club in memory of the slain Pakistani investigative journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad.
The meeting was organized by the Pakistani journalists based in the US in association with the National Press Club and Committee to Protect Journalists and was attended by a large number of journalists from the sub-continent and main stream US media. In a resolution, they demanded the Pakistani Government to bring to justice the perpetrators of the heinous crime. The resolution also demanded that the family of Shahzad should be protected and that Pakistan government should take steps to protect all journalists and media houses in the country.
Haqqani criticized 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 neighbor, India. “There may be elements in the government who are responsible for the criminal behavior, but there are people in the government who are victims of this criminal behavior,” the envoy said. Bob Dietz of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said that Shahzad was brutally murdered by the elements in the establishment. “This is a cold blooded brutal murder, beaten to death,” he said.
