Karachi and Mumbai press clubs organised a seminar on “Pak-India Relations: What can Media Do” at Karachi Press Club on Sunday, which was attended by a host of journalists from both Pakistan and India.
The Press Club, Mumbai (TPC-M) president Gurbir Singh and Karachi Press Club (KPC) President Imtiaz Khan Faran were presiding over a seminar at KPC.
In the renewed troubled bilateral ties between Pakistan and India due to cease fire violations at the Line of Control (LoC), the journalists from the two nuclear-armed countries vowed to accelerate their efforts to sensitise the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad to their “common enemies”.
“We need to take joint delegations to our interior ministries and tell them that you are not doing enough,” said Gurbir Singh.
“Let’s not wait here. This is a take-off position for us. We should set up permanent machinery to keep in touch with our governments,” Singh told Sunday’s penal discussion.
Singh, having close relatives in Peshawar, said the two governments instead of bickering with each other on marginal issues should align against their common enemies like the “international police America” which, he said, was rampaging the world in the name of democracy and freedom.
The US national security documents made public by Edward Snowden revealed that the Americans were spying on all the emails having captured 18 billion email bites going through Gmail. “Of this number, six billion bites are emanating from India which is the most-watched country for some reasons,” the senior journalist said, adding that the US has long been replacing democracies with dictatorships at its will.
Singh was equally critical to US drone attacks on Pakistani soil. He said drone strikes were causing a great embarrassment to the whole region making mockery of the international law.
“These are our common enemies,” he maintained and added that the media across the LoC should act responsibly while reporting on Kashmir, Siachan, Balochistan and other sensitive issues involving the two countries.
Urging the need to set up the office of Pakistani High Commission in Maharshtra, Singh said the government of Pakistan was closely following the peace initiative by the two press clubs as the visa issuing process this time was like a “breeze”.
Imtiaz Khan said the time was ripe for the two sides to go for solutions instead of holding prolonged discussions on bilateral issues. “We journalists should play a leading role in promoting people-to-people contact and the peace process as an ambassadors of peace,” he said.
Indian columnist having a Sindhi origin Jyoti Punwani Sakarikar urged the media, particularly on that side of the border, to review its inhuman approach towards “sensationalism” and “negativity”. “Media should find sensation in breaking the stereotypes the two countries are facing for decades,” she said adding the Indian media should be neutral while reporting issues involving Pakistan.
“The media showed us the image of Pakistan as an enemy country. It still has not changed,” she lamented and added that the media should also find sensationalism in commonalities the people of India and Pakistan shared religio-culturally.
Jyoti, wearing traditional Sindhi ajrak gifted to her by her hosts from KPC Saturday night, said indian media went to every mile to highlight the welcome of Mumtaz Qadri and Ajmal Kasab but had hushed up the issue when the alleged terrorist Colonel Parohit had got the same treatment by his supporters in India.
A human rights activist and journalist Jatin Desai in May 2 election all five major political parties wanted friendship with India. Lamenting that Islamabad and New Delhi were still maintaining a ban on the deputation of only two media correspondents on each other’s territory, Desai said, a demand must be made in the shape of a resolution to the two government for the lifting of the sanction.
Also, he said the hard copies of newspapers from the two countries were disallowed to cross the border. The seniour journalist also backed the Sharmel Shaikh Statement that envisaged the “de-bracketing of peace process from terrorist attacks” on each others soils. “If that statement was in place the composite dialogue process would not have stalled,” he said.
Desai said presently 780 indian boats, each worth Rs5 million and serving at least 100 fishermen, were in the custody of Pakistan. Likewise, he said, India was holding 150 boats and 180 Pakistani fishermen in its jails for years.
“We journalists need to be sensitive to the people who have their sons” and other loves ones imprisoned on other side of the border, he said. Desai said as the journalists from India and Pakistan would have to think and act beyond the notion of nationalism to report objectively.
The News editor Aamir Zia termed the peace process between India and Pakistan as evolutionary. He said that the mindset in Pakistan, on political and military level, had witnessed a “sea change”.
Pakistan’s outgoing army chief General Asfaque Parvez Kayani, he said, also had an approach different to that of the establishment that made Pakistan fighting proxy wars in Kashmir and Afghanistan. “His approach is focused more on internal issues,” he said lamenting, however, that New Delhi had failed to reciprocate Islamabad’s offers leading to the resolution of Sir Creek and Siachan conflicts.
He said that the political and even religious parties like Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and Jamat-e-Islami (JI) had developed a broad consensus that ties with India needed improvement.
Urging the need for the resolution of political conflicts like Kashmir, Siachan, SirCreeketc, Zia expressed the fear that Indo-Pak ties were likely to become hostage to the non-state actors.
The journalist said Pakistan, itself a victim of terrorism having over 50,000 of its people killed and even more injured, could not guarantee that it would stop cross border infiltration in India by the non-state actors.
“We have to stay on course come what may. We have to stand for peace. We should become a catalyst,” Zia urged his fraternity.
A H Khanzada said the people of two countries must learn to live in peace depsite the post-1947 territorial divide, no matter how far their governments could go in their ever-present blame game.
Aamir Latif, earlier, said the seminar was aimed at underpinning the convergences and reduces divergences in the policies of the two countries. “This can be done through the promotion of people-to-people contact,” he said.
The media persons from India and Pakistan also agreed that the media on two sides of the LoC must keep in mind the sensitivities of the people of the two countries who, despite all the politically-motivated hostilities of their governments, share a sense of oneness and are closely related.
At the end, the two sides exchanged their cultural gifts like Sindhi Cap and Shawls.
The 14-member Indian delegation, during the three-day visit, enjoyed a music night on Saturday and visited the Karachi Port Trust, State Bank of Pakistan and the Sindh Assembly.
