The celebrity and lifestyle magazine Hello! is to launch its Pakistan edition next month with publishers promising to be “socially responsible” in a country troubled by Taliban insurgency. Hello! Pakistan will cover all areas of lifestyle, and entertainment from cuisine, culture and the arts to fashion, chief executive officer and publisher Zahraa Saifullah told a news conference. “The publisher and editors imagine their magazine to be a socially responsible and culturally aware family read,” she said. The magazine, published in more than 100 countries, is to be edited by Mehvash Amin, a graduate from Pakistan’s Punjab University. “Hello! Pakistan focuses on combining the best of what the country has to offer along with exclusive international content,” she said in a statement. Consulting editor Wajahat Khan said: “The idea is not to celebrate the celebrity but to discover more” in Pakistan. He dismissed the impression that the magazine could have a problem with religious or radical groups, particularly in the country’s deeply conservative northwest. “We don’t want to encroach upon the rights of anybody. We have to remain within the parameters of Pakistan,” he said and added that freedom of expression is allowed under the country’s constitution. Islamist militants have killed more than 4,900 people across Pakistan since government troops raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
