Jang/Geo Editor-in-Chief detention: Hunger striker’s condition worsens

LAHORE: The health of veteran journalist Azhar Munir has worsened lately, raising fears for his life.

However, he is adamant that he will continue his hunger strike for the release of Jang/Geo Editor-in-Chief Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman. He has been on hunger strike at a footpath outside the Lahore Press Club for the last 16 days. Even requests from senior journalists including Mir Ibrahim Rahman, Suhail Warraich and others have failed to convince him to call off his strike, though he has started facing difficulty in standing up and walking now.

A skinny and feeble 65-year-old Azhar Munir has a long history of waging protest campaigns for the release of prisoners of conscience inside and outside the country. He says he began the present hunger strike on his own, without any demand from the family of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman or the management of Jang/Geo, “and I’m determined to continue it until I have the strength to do so.”

He says he has been continuing his strike despite receiving insults and threats from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) activists, the government agencies and fellow journalists.

“I’m here for a principled cause, which I have always held much above my life. I am not ready to retreat from my pledge even if nobody else in the world joins me and backs my cause,” he says. Azhar, who is not an employee of the Jang Group currently, worked for daily Jang for few years in mid-90s. He has always been an ardent supporter and campaigner for human rights, freedom of expression and other noble causes and is known for demanding release of the prisoners of conscience in far-off regions of the world. He is also a life member of the Lahore Press Club.

Having penned 14 books on history and current affairs, besides dozens of booklets and pamphlets on issues like human rights and civil liberties during a career spanned on four decades, Azhar recalled that he launched a similar hunger strike on his own when the Nawaz Sharif government victimised the Jang Group and nearly stifled its publication by choking news print supply in 1999. “For a couple of days, I observed hunger strike alone at the press club, though I had left Jang Group, and many journalists and media houses owners had opposed my initiative.

“But later on, few more journalists joined me and gradually the number of protestors at the hunger strike camp grew larger, forcing the government to back away,” he said.

Azhar also recalled his strikes and protest campaigns for many political prisoners in 1980s and 1990s. He said he had campaigned for Myanmar icon for civil liberties and democracy, Aung San Sui Kyi, and wrote hundreds of letters to the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other world bodies demanding their practical support for her release. He had waged similar campaigns for a number of other prisoners of conscience like the Israeli nuclear scientist and peace activist Mordechai Vanunu who, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, revealed details of Israel's nuclear weapons programme and stockpiles to the British press in 1986. Israeli intelligence agency Mossad lured him to Italy where he was abducted, drugged and secretly transported to Israel, where he was convicted in a secret trial and he spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11-year in solitary confinement. Azhar said he ran a campaign for release of Nigerian journalist and peace activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by military regime for campaigning for the rights of oppressed ethnic Ogoni people. He also campaigned for restoration and justice for ex-chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry after he was illegally sacked and publicly humiliated by military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf.