An Interview with Ayaz Amir

An Interview with Ayaz Amir

By Mohammad Shehzad

Ayaz Amir is known for his audacious and independent views on various national issues. He began his career in the Pakistan Army, and left to join the foreign services in 1973. He resigned in 1977 while posted in Moscow as second secretary during the 1977 movement against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and returned to Pakistan. In 1979 he joined The Muslim as assistant editor. At a very young age, he assumed the arduous task of writing editorials and wrote a number of impeccable editorials for `The Muslim¿ and the `Dawn¿. He was axed from The Muslim in 1981 during a trade union dispute. He started as a freelance writer for the Dawn and the Herald in 1983. Started writing editorials and later a weekly column for the Dawn (1984-to date). He was jailed twice for brief periods during General Zia¿s regime. Got elected as a Member Punjab Assembly (MPA) in 1997 and resigned much before General Musharraf¿s Night of the Long Knives on October 12, 1999. In this exclusive interview with Mohammad Shehzad conducted at his hometown Chakwal, Ayaz Amir speaks on the Indian media, Pakistani media, press freedom issues, and on being a columnist.

Q: Without naming Shaheen Sehbai, you criticized him for saying, the press freedom was restricted in Pakistan. He responded by giving instances where journalists had been harassed and even `kidnapped¿. Any comments?

Most of the English papers, many of the Urdu papers are writing stuff, which is critical of the government. Irshad Haqqani in Jang and Abbas Athar in Nawai Waqt are writing strong articles against the military regime. While there are so many undesirable aspects of this government, the military regime is tolerating a large measure of press freedom. I think this facet of the government should be acknowledged.

Q: When M. Ziauddin writes on water crisis, he is issued a mild press advice. Whereas you remain `untouchable¿ despite criticizing the successive government harshly. Why is it so?

To say that anyone is `untouchable¿ is not correct. As institutional practice, if there is something called `press advice¿ it comes to an established figure in the newspaper which means an advice would come to the editor or to a resident editor. It will not come to a columnist. A columnist is more or less a free agent. He is not responsible for what comes in the newspaper. If governments have press officers, then for them to have some kind of interaction with the established institutions of journalism or the press would be in the context of a country like Pakistan, that would be a natural development. To say that please, in a respectful voice, treat this story is this or that way, this is not a shining example of press freedom but one can at least understand it. But it is a world apart from clamping down upon the press, from banning the publication of a newspaper or taking legal action against any newspaper, that has not happened. There have been one or two instances that one can point at. One or two instances, or three or four instances in two and a half year is not a bad record.

Q: But there are precedents when freelance columnists were also harassed and tortured e.g. Husain Haqqani! When the history of harassment of journalists took place under Mr Nawaz Sharif, I was then not writing but I was an MPA. We had some of the worst excesses against journalists in recent times during the Nawaz Sharif administration. Not Benazir - one or two cases! The military government, one would have to admit, has been relatively benign towards the press. This fact should be noted and appreciated. A great measure of press freedom is being allowed. Here you have so many questionable things taking place associated with the