The voice for the rights of working journalists, newspaper employees and freedom of the press in Pakistan, Minhaj Barna, has fallen silent. He laid down his life for a cause. His fatal ailment had, in fact, started during a month-long hunger strike in Khairpur jail in 1978 during the cruel regime of late Gen Ziaulhaq.

Barna went on a hunger strike along with his jail colleagues to press for the freedom of the press and release of hundreds of journalists, newspaper employees, factory workers and peasants who joined him. Barna and others were jailed under the Martial Law Regulations for protesting against actions of the military dictator who had banned a number of newspapers and journals, including daily Musawaat of the Pakistan People's Party, whose government he had overthrown a year before. He ended his hunger strike only after the military regime accepted all his demands. He developed stomach problem because of a long hunger strike and this stomach problem took his life after 32 and a half years. Thus, in a sense, he is the first martyr to the free press and newspaper workers' rights in Pakistan. This is, indeed, a great sacrifice by a journalist for a noble cause and an example for posterity.

There are three types of journalists in the world: crusading; professional and commercial. Crusading journalists are those who struggle for a cause, suffer and sacrifice their comforts and even lives. Professional journalists are those who have no concern other than their professional excellence irrespective of any encroachment of their rights and commercial journalists are those who hanker after money and go to the extent of blackmailing and exploitation to seek benefits for themselves and their cronies.

Pakistan is no exception. A majority of journalists belong to the second category, a minority to the third category and a microscopic minority to the first category. Barna belonged to the first category. He had personal relations with the Bhuttos and the bureaucracy and he could get whatever he wanted, but he did not desire anything. Unlike many journalists, he never got a plot for a house at any place where he worked during his journalistic career. Before the death of his paralysed wife, a principal at a school for the deaf and dumb, he served her utmost despite his heavy engagements. He lived with his niece and adopted daughter till his last breath.

It was a novel and unique experience in the world to unite working journalists and non-journalists in the struggle for their rights. In Pakistan, Barna conceived the idea and formed a joint trade union called the All Pakistan Newspaper Employees Confederation (APNEC) with its branches all over Pakistan and in every newspaper establishment. It includes working journalists' premier trade union, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, with its one dozen provincial and divisional unions and all plant wise unions at newspapers and news agencies. The idea behind the formation of APNEC was that since all employees of news establishments, journalists (excluding editors with hiring and firing powers) and non-journalists (excluding managers) work under one roof, have equal labour rights and they should be governed under one law and not separate laws of their respective trades. All over the world, including India, journalists and non-journalists have their separate trade unions governed by separate labour laws. In Pakistan too there were separate laws for them.

But here a combined law called the Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act was enacted, governing both working journalists and non-journalists and providing same wage boards and an implementation tribunal. Credit for this goes to Barna, Nisar Osmani and their colleagues. Seven wage boards have been constituted so far, the first one for working journalists alone in 1960 and six combined for all newspaper employees.

Another feather in the cap of Barna is the successful struggle for the repeal of the obnoxious press law called the Press and Public Ordinance promulgated by Ayub Khan. Barna and his dedicated team succeeded in replacing the black law after a ceaseless struggle of 25 years in 1988. The fruit of the press freedom enjoyed by the press (now called media with the introduction of electronic journalism) is the result of the struggle of the crusading journalists who suffered a great deal, were dismissed from their services, jailed and even lashed. This is a phenomenon that never happened in any other part of the world.