Many popular leaders from US to India & from Pakistan to Bangladesh promoting right wing ideology for their own interests: Hamid Mir

LONDON, June 02 (SABAH): Senior Pakistani journalist and Host of Capital Talk on Geo News Hamid Mir said that many popular leaders from US to India and from Pakistan to Bangladesh are promoting right wing ideology for their own interests and these same leaders are biggest enemies of media freedom.

He was speaking at Blavatnik School of Government in University of Oxford on “media freedom in South Asia” late Thursday evening. Hamid Mir was invited by South Asian Society of Oxford University for an annual lecture.

Hamid Mir said that last year an international media rights body RSF declared Narendra Modi, Imran Khan, Hasina Wajid and Putin as press freedom predators because these leaders never tolerated criticism against them. He said Modi and Imran Khan started supporting Russian President Putin not because of any principles, they liked Putin because he don’t allow press freedom and human rights in his country. He said that anti- Americanism of Imran Khan is a political drama because same Khan was a very close friend of a right wing American leader Trump. He said that today Imran Khan is crying about so-called restrictions on media freedom but he must tell us that why Pakistan lost 18 points on world press freedom index when he was in power? Why he remained silent when Pakistani journalists like Mattiullah Jan were kidnapped and Asad Tur was attacked? A big number of students attended the lecture of Hamid Mir.

Many Pakistani, Indian, Afghan and Chinese students asked different questions to Hamid Mir about the future of print and electronic media after a new digital revolution. Hamid Mir said that good journalism will always have a good future. He said that he survived many assassination attempts and never left his profession because public trust and support was his biggest strength. He said that in the age of disinformation and fake news only objective journalism will ultimately survive. He condemned some cases registered against few journalists in Pakistan recently. He said that many journalists were kidnapped and attacked when Imran Khan was in power and his supporters in media remained silent or made fun of those who were attacked. He said a big number of female journalists faced on-line harassment from the supporters of Imran Khan. Today supporters of Imran Khan in media are not attacked or kidnapped they are only facing some cases but we are not silent. We are opposing restrictions on some TV channels. We want their fair trail of those who are facing cases.