The biggest crime of passion in a shouting match is, in a furious fit, going to a no-go area when it comes to your opponent. It can sometimes register higher on the classless-scale than actual physical confrontation.
Fawad Chaudhry, in a spat with Jang Group’s Umar Cheema on Fareeha Idrees’s show on Ab Tak, “went there.” In a fit, he said to Cheema that he should remember why the army thrashed him when he was picked up.
#PTI spokesman Fawad Chaudhary says journalist @UmarCheema1 was kidnapped and tortured by Pakistan army on live TV. This is shocking pic.twitter.com/VVmlr4XrT6
— Pakistan Media Watch (@PakPressWatch) June 13, 2017
The abduction of Umar Cheema in 2010 is remembered as one of the low-points in Pakistan’s unenviable track record in providing safety to journalists. Though the Jang Group was furiously at odds with the PPP government, voices within the organisation, including Cheema himself were quick to absolve the sitting civilian government and alluded to the military.
Here was a PTI (till further notice) politician openly saying that the army was behind the incident and gloating about it. Gloating about an incident where a journalist was picked up and allegedly beaten, flogged and sexually assaulted. His head, moustache and eyebrows were shaved off.
It should be mentioned to Mr Chaudhry and his ilk that far from being used as a weapon against Cheema, it builds the latter’s credibility. Whatever differences one might have with the man, he went about in the world, doing his job, refused to cave in to pressure and paid for it. He was awarded the International Press Freedom award in 2011 and he deserved it.
The only thing Fawad Chaudhry will win is 2nd place in constituency elections.
On the issue of bizarre takedowns, one should not forget Mehr Bukhari’s strange interaction with Rana Sanaullah earlier this year. When, in the middle of a debate on the credibility of TV talking heads, Sanaullah brought up the infamous planted interview of Malik Riaz that Bukhari and Mubasher Lucman had conducted, says to Sanaullah, that an investigation had, indeed, taken place on that incident and that she had been cleared by the agencies. The same agencies, she said, “who had beaten you up.”
This was a rather bizarre line of argument. But before getting to the argument itself: regardless of what Sanaullah had said to her, since this was a case of actually being hauled up by the spooks, incarcerated and thrashed about, it shouldn’t be pointed out gleefully. A sensitivity to physical violence trumps whatever point-scoring she was meaning to achieve.
Now, on to the lack of logic itself: she wasn’t saying that the same agencies that cleared him also cleared her, so he should believe her. She was saying that the same agencies that had roughed him up had cleared her name, so he should believe her. The bizarre argument clearly didn’t make sense to Sanaullah, who pointed it out. Well, they are the ones who beat him up, he said, so he won’t hold them in high regard, of course.
The above two instances are prime examples of blame-the-victim. With the two gentlemen in question, in particular Sanaullah, one can have a number of differences. But those instances should be owned up like badges of pride instead of being used by puerile rabble-rousers like Fawad Chaudhry and Mehr Bukhari.