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American experts call for halt to attacks on Pak journalists

Four prominent American experts on South Asian affairs, including Dr Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, have expressed ''grave concern'' over the Pakistani government's treatment of journalists, including the arrest of Friday Times editor Najam Sethi, and demanded their immediate release.

They participated in a meeting held yesterday to consider the situation in Pakistan in the wake of the recent crackdown on the media by the government.

Henry L Stimson Center president Michael Krepon said the arrest of Sethi and attacks against other journalists, marked a grave setback to Pakistani democracy. ''NGOs in the United States who care about Pakistan's future call for the release of Najam Sethi and the cessation of harassment to journalists,'' he said.

He said ''friends of Pakistan in the United States will hold Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief personally responsible for the release and well-being of these journalists".

Dr Cohens said the existence of a free press had been a fundamental asset for Pakistan even from the perspective of security and defence policy. ''As a nuclear weapons state as a state surrounded by threatening or hostile forces -- it is to Pakistan's advantage to have a free and untrammelled press, instead of a subservient and meek one,'' he added.

''Pakistan will have difficulty enough in years to come in managing its many domestic and foreign policy problems. It makes no sense to exacerbate these by shutting down or terrorising the tiny but vibrant press as represented by such individuals as Najam Sethi, Hussain Huqqani and others,'' Dr Cohen added.

He said, ''The lessons of dictatorship everywhere including periods of martial law in Pakistan or the Emergency in India is that to do so only hastens and worsens the day of reckoning. It is time that Pakistan's civilian government recognises as did its armed forces several years ago the truth of the Chinese saying that 'a people can be conquered on horseback but they cannot be ruled from horseback'.''

George Tanham, a noted South Asia security analyst said, ''Sethi is a patriotic Pakistani, an able and courageous journalist and a fine human being. He is trying to improve his country and practise a free press which is essential to democracy.

''It is not in Pakistan's interest for the prime minister to imprison him or to close down the free press in Pakistan,'' he added.

Dr Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute said that ''all of the press as well as everyone else who cares about democracy has an enormous stake in the outcome of these developments, not just the arrest and the character of the arrest of the editor of Friday Times but in the harassment and in the threats that have been levelled against other journalists.''

UNI

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