November 12, 2003 ☼ Foreign Affairs
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
He contends that India’s stance is duplicitous because on one hand India asks Pakistan to curb cross-border infiltration, and on the other has proposed a Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus link. “Is this bus service for taking the so-called terrorists in air-conditioned coaches?” he asked sarcastically. He should know that India’s complaint is against armed terrorists crossing into to India; the bus is for ordinary folk to move around freely.
Apparently the Hashmi arrest led the European Parliament to hold back its ratification of an agreement with Pakistan. So he told the Europeans that “the press in Pakistan was free, vibrant, and much more critical of the government than what it was in India,” he said, referring to the victimization of journalists in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He went on to praise independence of judiciary in Pakistan while narrating how Indian judiciary was silenced by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi during the emergency in 1977. Even if we forget that the Indian electorate meted out the heaviest punishment to Indira Gandhi for the excesses of Emergency, how could he compare the neutered Pakistani luminaries who came out with a “doctrine of necessity” to justify a coup to India’s ? If he’s talking of victimisation of journalists he probably missed the point that India’s Supreme court registered a case on a public holiday and stayed the arrests; all within 48 hours. At least in India, the arrests of journalists are ordered by an elected legislature and the accused have a consitutional recourse. In Pakistan, troublesome journalists are just kidnapped & killed by shadowy organisations. Also remember Daniel Pearl, Shaheen Sehbai and the Frontier Post.
Coming as they do from the chief diplomat of Pakistan is extremely worrying. Its one thing for foriegn office spokesmen to indulge in such factual gymnastics, but totally another for a foreign minister to do so. I can see very clearly that it will be a monumental waste of time to engage in any parlays with the Jamali-Kasuri types.
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