| March 28, 2003 | Friday | Muharram 24, 1424 |
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Battle for the airwaves
Juveniles on death row
AS was to be expected, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s visit to China has served to further strengthen the friendly relations between the two countries. The number of agreements signed during the visit testify to the comprehensive nature of their relationship. While one agreement sets up a friendship forum, a memorandum of understanding relates to the construction of another nuclear power plant at Chashma with Chinese help. Under another agreement, Beijing will extend a loan of 500 million dollars to Islamabad for the development of railways. As for defence cooperation, China has agreed to supply four frigates to the Pakistan navy. This is in addition to the joint venture now under way for the production of a super-bomber. The assurances about cooperation in defence matters was given when Mr Jamali met former president Jiang Zemin, who is now head of the powerful Central Military Commission, and Defence Minister Cao Gangchuan.
Mr Jamali’s talks with President Hu Jintao and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao showed an identity of views between the two governments on many international issues and the situation in South Asia. While Mr Hu said that theirs was “a model of excellent relations,” Mr Wen noted that China was the only country Mr Jamali spoke of in his foreign policy speech to the National Assembly. The visit was the first high-level contact between Pakistan and the newly-elected Chinese leadership. The Pakistan prime minister was also the first head of government to visit China after the recent change of command in Beijing. The visit took place against a background of continued tension in South Asia, in addition to the Iraqi war. Even though Pakistan and Indian forces have pulled back to peacetime locations, South Asia is far from being a peaceful region. The recent violent incidents in occupied Kashmir, including the massacre of 24 Hindus and the assassination earlier of a militant leader, have contributed to a rise in tension. It is here that one admires the positive attitude adopted by China towards the situation in Kashmir and South Asia.
There is no doubt that the recent developments in the world and the region have reinforced the need for Pakistan and China to get even closer. The world has of late seen an erosion of the UN’s moral authority and a menacing rise in America’s tendency to pursue a unilateralist course of action. The horrors of death and destruction in Iraq are just one foretaste of the superpower arrogance now in action. Even some of America’s European allies have been deeply alienated by Washington’s chauvinistic approach to world affairs in utter disregard of international morality and the world community’s legitimate concerns. It is, thus, in the interest of Pakistan and China to continue to maintain and consolidate their friendship to resist forces of unilateralism and regional hegemony.
While reviewing Pakistan-China relations, one is struck by this country’s failure to learn from its north-eastern neighbour in matters of economic development. China is now a model of economic dynamism and progress. The reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping and pursued vigorously by the Jiang government have transformed China. The special economic zones (SEZs) it set up have attracted fabulous amounts of foreign investment and technology and helped China make rapid progress economically and technologically. In contrast, we have been playing with the idea of the SEZs for more than two decades. Islamabad would do well to further deepen its economic cooperation with Beijing and learn from the economic development strategies China has followed to banish poverty and improve the quality of life of its people.
RAGING alongside the actual war in Iraq is another hotly contested war: the battle for control of the airwaves. The US is particularly irked by coverage of the Iraq war by the independent Qatar-based Al Jazeera channel, which is emerging as a credible alternative to the monopoly of the western media. The degree of this anger became evident when US Secretary of State Colin Powell accused the Arabic language channel of being heavily tilted in favour of Iraq. Given that the channel is aimed at a largely Arab audience, its emphasis is naturally distinct from those of the leading international broadcasters such as CNN, BBC, Fox and Sky. It is this distinctiveness, and the channel’s refusal to play according to the unwritten rules of the broadcasting game, that has earned the Arabic language channel the ire of the US. The Americans were outraged by Al Jazeera’s decision to broadcast footage of the five American soldiers captured by the Iraqis, and accused the channel of violating the Geneva Conventions. While the US may well have a point here, the criticism rang hollow. Less than two years ago, the western media did not balk at showing extensive footage of chained and blindfolded prisoners captured in Afghanistan at the notorious Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba.
Given its Arab viewers, Al Jazeera naturally dwells heavily on stories that are of interest to them. However, footage of civilian Iraqi casualties and of dead American soldiers directly clash with the sanitized picture of the war that the US media minders tend to depict. Al Jazeera also broke ranks with the cosy consensus by showing footage of a tranquil Basra a day after the British had claimed that a fierce anti-Saddam uprising had broken out in the city. The growing sensitivity of the US military to the other side of the picture was evident from the bombing of the Baghdad TV station. The attack provoked an angry reaction from a number of media and human rights organizations which claimed that targeting the station was a violation of the Geneva convention. The TV station, they argued, in no way represented a military target. The truth of the matter is that wars today are increasingly being fought under the glare of the media, making it much more difficult to effectively manage war news. Given this change, it is difficult to see why the expression of a multiplicity of views on the media should pose such a threat to the US.
THE case of two young boys sentenced to death by a qazi court in Swat has reopened the debate about the propriety of awarding capital punishment to minors. The boys were charged with murder three years ago and are currently lodged in death row, waiting for their appeals to be heard by the Peshawar High Court. Last year, the High Court commuted the death sentence awarded to a minor to life imprisonment, following a public outcry. While the country’s law prohibits capital punishment for juveniles, the boys’ case is complicated by a quirk of geography. They committed the crime in a part of Swat which falls under the jurisdiction of the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA). Unfortunately, the Juvenile Justice Ordinance, under which the death penalty cannot be awarded to minors, has not been extended to the tribal areas. For it to do so, the government must issue a special notification. Lawyers and those campaigning for prisoners’ rights have called on the government to urgently issue this notification in order to save the lives of the condemned boys. The government must indeed act quickly to save the lives of the two condemned minors and also prevent similar cases arising in the future. Any society that awards the harshest of all punishments to those who are not even adults cannot consider itself part of the civilized world.