Journalist organisations condemn attack on Hamid Mir
KARACHI: The South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) and the South Asian Women Media (Sawm) have strongly condemned life attempt on senior anchorperson Hamid Mir terming it an attack on “all the journalists”.
A special meeting joint meeting was held here at Arts Council on Tuesday with its General-Secretary Amir Mehmood and president Sawm Khursheed Haider chaired the session.
The members belonging to both the print and electronic media widely condemned the attack and called upon the journalists’ community to get united to fight with full force with the elements who are hell bent upon crushing the true voice of journalists.Speaking on the occasion Amir Mehmood said that Safma has always raised the voice from its platform irrespective to which organisation the person is belonged.
The meeting denounced all sort of terrorism on any person specially the journalists who were being killed in line of duty and are being threatened by certain elements.Amir said we all have respect for the institutions of the state but said that many journalists still receiving threats from some organization which should be checked and the government should adopt measures to bring the culprits to the book.
In the past too many commissions were constituted but the reports were not made public and even the journalists did not receive any result of the commission.Shaheen Qureshi, The Editor Jang Lahore who was specially invited for the special session opined that due to the lack of unity amongst our rank, these forces are united against silencing the voice of journalists.
Its not only the media houses who rules over the divided community but we ourselves enemies of our friends, we have to draw a line and not become part of any such conspiracies as it would not benefit us but eventually it would help media house and ultimately the sufferers would be the journalists community.
Today Mir was attack, tomorrow anybody from us would get the same fate, but we should seriously formalised a policy to get rid of such kinds of threats and warnings.The resolution passed on the occasion said: “We condemn this senseless violence against brave journalists like Hamid Mir. This is another incident of journalists being targeted for speaking the truth. Freedom of expression is really under attack.”
“We demand of the government to probe the attack. We also demand of the authorities that journalists be provided adequate security so that they could perform their duties without any fear. These attacks will continue until the government tackles journalist’s safety as an issue for all Pakistan society and its right to freedom of expression,” he said.
Prof Tauseef Ali Khan of Federal Urdu University said that the parliament should bring a legislation and constitute a policy that would ensure safety of journalists and it also avoid categorising the media houses on the basis of their popularity graph and ranking as this community is above all such sorts of pressures as it is their duty to inform to the people.
Mujahid Barelvi, a senior journalists and anchorperson, said that it was very ironic that “we journalists are divided and the benefit goes to the owners. Therefore it is the need of the hour that we must ask our bosses to draw a clear policy with regard to this profession”.
Khursheed Abbasi, another senior journalists belonging to the Jang Group, was quiet cynical that policies of our media houses have divided the community and urged upon the Safma to play its role in bringing journalists at platform.
Pakistan is one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists with killings and attacks journalists rife since the beginning of 2014. Six journalists have already been murdered in 2014 and death threats and intimidation continue to mar the nation’s media landscape under a climate of impunity.
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