Participating in a round table conference on Freedom of Press held here as part of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors’ Forum, Mr Sethi said that earlier neither the Pakistan government nor the mainstream media called Taliban activists as “terrorists.” They were called insurgents or militants.
“The Friday Times and Daily Times were the only newspapers, to call the Taliban a terror force. We received several death threats, but we did not change our stand. Now that the Taliban has been attacking military establishments and security forces and killing innocent people, the government and the mainstream media are recognising the Taliban as a terror force. The war on terror is no longer an US mission, it has also become our own war against terror,” Mr Sethi said.
Mr Sethi said the Pakistan government had, over decades, indoctrinated the media and people against India. After the jihad against the then USSR occupation of Afghanistan, non-state players turned their attention towards India. The backlash of terror now haunts Pakistan.
He pointed out that even though the Taliban may be an existential threat, the media and most Pakistanis continue to view India as the more “potent danger.”
“Entire generations have grown up with this mindset. It’s not going to be easy to turn this clock back. But now people are recognising the terror tactics of Talibans.”
Saying that sometimes the state is not equal to government and sometimes it is, in Pakistan, the senior Pakistani editor said judiciary and bureaucracy sometimes back the government. “The real threat is from non-state actors. They are very powerful. If the media gets threats, there’s no defence. We can’t ask the state to defend us. It is defending itself. Earlier we were fighting in wilderness. Now we are getting support.”
He regretted that the notion of secularism has been distorted in Pakistan in the last 30 years. “We have been dubbing secularism as anti-Islam and secularists as enemies of the religion”
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