F.P. Report
PESHAWAR: Former Senator Farhatullah Babar has said that the Pushtuns have suffered most grievously because of past state policies to build jehadi infrastructure.
He said this while addressing a ceremony here at Peshawar Press Club to award journalists for distinguished work. The ceremony was held to mark the fourth death anniversary of Lala Amir Siddiqui, a founding member of the Peshawar Press Club and the Khyber Union of Journalists.
He said that Pushtuns had suffered incalculably during the past three decades. Used as cannon fodder they have been killed and maimed on both sides of the border, forcibly evicted from their homes, their homes and livelihood devastated, children orphaned, women widowed and now humiliated at check posts in the name of security.
He said trade with Afghanistan has come down from 3 billion to about one billion dollars a year just because we are employing trade as a tool of advancing dubious foreign and security policy agendas.
He said that it was no surprise that the voice of the Pushtuns was not heard as there was no big national media house owned by anyone from the region.
However, this gap was being filled by committed and competent journalists in the region and movements like the PTM who seem to give voice to the muted turbulence of Pushtuns spirit.
Paying tributes he said that late Lala Amir Siddiqui stood at the apex of newspaper distribution network in the province. He was the gudgeon pin of publishing industry of his time in the province.
Without Lala Amir the printed words of newspapers would not have reached far and wide in the province, he said. “The challenge of our time is to correct the narrative. Building counter narrative requires intellectual infrastructure based on academic freedom, tolerance for dissent, plurality and critical thinking and asked young journalists to help create through writings this new intellectual infrastructure without fear or favor,” he maintained.
