By: Kashmala Khan
There is a very famous saying
that ‘a good dog deserves a good bone’ but quite often one comes across such
dogs that aren’t good but they manage a milieu where one doesn’t have a choice
other than taking them as good dogs, hence they ensure a good bone or bounty.
The dogs, one comes across, in every walk of life. There was a ‘Holy Cows’ time
once. Long gone those cows and now is the time of a ‘Bull’ and that bull is
none other than Pakistani Media, currently ruining everything in the ‘China
Shop’ and when the bull ruins a china shop, the dogs certainly cash their value
and importance and insist upon a good piece of a bone to scare the bull away.
There are dogs and bitches in the
profession who whip a storm in a tea cup and then expect from the people to
take it as a revolution but how about talking of the gods instead today?
Although gods don’t ask for bones but no one stops them from looking for
rewards. The Pakistani media has one such ‘god’ who started his career as a
stringer of a daily on a motorbike and within two decades he has ensured his
place at the helm of the affair. He is at a place from where he first creates
misunderstandings between the personalities and then comes like Bronson, as a
Salvatore to play an angel’s role. He used his profession media as a ‘Kamaan’
(Bow) and his pen as a ‘Teer’ (Arrow) in literal sense while selecting the good
targets who were expected to throw ‘good bones’ to him, but cautioned them
before releasing the arrows from his bow because only that’s how he could get
good bone.
The gentleman’s name is Hamid Mir
who has remained controversial ever since coming into the profession. He has
always been a focal point of one dispute or the other. Hamid Mir started his
journalistic career soon after the death of his late father professor Waris Mir
in 1987 and within years he acclaimed a prominent place in media however it
always remained mystery that how an honest journalist could be a
millionaire within few years? Soon this mystery was resolved when it was
discovered that Mir like other blackmailer journalists, first gathers negative
material and evidences against some individual and later exploit it. The only
difference between him and the other yellow journalists is that they directly
ask for the bribe or reward from the distressed party while Mir jumps into some
issue as a third person, apparently a well wisher for them. He slowly leaks the
gathered information to them, pretending to be a sincere who would like to
rescue them out of muddy waters. His targets would not be common people rather
high profile politicians, industrialists, business tycoons and the
establishment elite. The sources claim that in the early days of his career he
remained for a short time on the payroll of IB. However his desire to excel
didn’t let him halt at one stop. If one looks back at his career, will observe
an interesting fact that his enemies of yester years were his friends for the
coming time. If he faced the wrath of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir at one time then
he was their blue eyed at other occasions too as he can be seen in the
government’s corner today.
The game this dubious journo
would play while the editor of an Urdu newspaper in the past is now being
played by him as the moderator of a talk show ‘Capital Talk’ from a private TV
channel. No doubt his show was a great success in the beginning, nevertheless,
with the passage of time, lacking novelty the show with the same old political
faces, typical cross talking became a pathetic presentation. At that juncture
Mir thought of calling the guests and embarrassing them through mysterious
callers, rival politicians and the recordings from the past. His negative
tactics brought the rating of the show further down and the guests started
refusing to come on his show. Now it was something very destructive for an
ambitious and greedy person like him. Suddenly he started talking of human
rights, Baloch rights, so called intelligence agencies high handedness. His
dicey and harmful behaviour fetched him nothing but the enemies. As a cunning
and clever man he wanted to ensure his safety and security hence started
talking about his likely murder by the intelligence agencies, knowing fully
that it will keep the army, ISI and the IB on toes and they will make their
best efforts to protect him, as in the recent past through a planned campaign
the blame of Saleem Shahzad’s murder was also thrown on ISI.
The smart stringer considered it
an apt incident to qualify his allegation. Hence he filed an application with
CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) http://www.cpj.org/blog/2011/12/pakistans-hamid-mir-publicizes-a-death-threat.php
fearing that he may be killed. Some innocents who didn’t know well about him
showed sympathies and solidarity to him, however a large number of sensible
readers and surfers literally took him up and showed him his true worth. Prior
to that Mir faced an embarrassment and also a legal battle by the next of kin
of Khalid Khawaja and Colonel Imam for abetting in murdering them. Mir tried
his best to justify his position and claimed it to be a conspiracy hatched
against him, but it was difficult for the public to digest his mumbling in the
presence of the audio recording available on the cyber domains and confirmed by
the experts as Hamid Mir’s voice http://changepk.com/2010/05/14/hamid-mir-talibans-most-favorite-informer/
.
Interestingly the journalist
tried his best to get it removed from many sites but it didn’t help him much.
One should keep that thing in mind that the threat to his life by the relatives
and well wishers of those two innocents who were murdered on the behest and tip
of this cunning journalist is yet not over. So why not to suppose it that a
smart man like him when found a threat to his life inevitable, decided to use
in his favour?
Currently, Hamid Mir is very active
on human rights violations and Adiyala missing persons’ case. He is frequently
doing the programs on the issue. The fact is that no sane person would think of
endorsing the killing of even murderers as a just act but the irony is that
Hamid Mir who has to settle some old scores with the Army and ISI has emerged
as a flag bearer of this case and presenting just one side of the picture which
cannot be termed as fair media. What Hamid Mir & Co is not telling the
public is that these 11 terrorists including the four killed were taken to the
safest places by their collaborators under the guise of intelligence agencies
on the day of their release from jail. As a part of the script to cover up
this, the families of these people submitted a writ petition to the SC of
Pakistan declaring them as missing persons. When the SC gave strict directions,
the intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies apprehended 20 suspects
including these eleven who fell sick during their stay in FATA. Although
despite the best Medicare in CMH and LRH Peshawar, four of them died on
different dates in the LRH Peshawar. Hospital officials issued the death
certificates and handed over their bodies to the families with full respect
according to Islamic rites and despite the fact that each family’s permission
was sought for autopsy, all the four families bluntly refused to permit. Hamid
Mir, Asma Jehangir, Ali Dayan and others deliberately skipping this part of the
story presented the case in a way that any enemy agency would dream about
doing.
Besides this, there is yet
another angle of this ‘millionaire journalist’. The sources not known but he is
known for maintaining multiple bank accounts. Why he keeps the public involved
in the controversial issues is one reason for not letting them have a wind
about his heavy bank accounts. He is maintaining huge bank accounts in his own,
wife’s and children’s names and may be few with the fake names as well. In 2007
a huge transaction of about 5 million rupees was made to one of his highly
confidential accounts in a foreign bank’s Blue Area Islamabad branch. But that
was not the only incident. The practice was repeated many a times afterwards
also, nevertheless, the classic is a very recent incident where for promoting
someone as a political hero and taking him out of the crisis, he struck a deal
with ‘someone’. It was decided that he would be paid rupees 30 million. While
the payer was a known real-estate tycoon of the capital, the payee was none
other than our ‘crusader’ Mr. Hamid Mir, who was paid the amount, for a change
not through a bank transaction this time but through a middle man, who on the
condition of anonymity has revealed the details, however willing to come in the
public with the facts and figures, whenever the need shall arise.
It should be understood that what
is bugging and upsetting this so-called straight forward journo? Hamid Mir’s
true face is exposed to everyone except those who have no excess to modern
media means like internet, social media and they are bound to form their
opinion basing on his newspaper columns and stereotype talk show. But soon the
party will be over when his indecent and unethical non professional doings will
be unearthed. As it is an old saying that every dog has a day hence so would be
in the case of Hamid Mir. There is a group within GEO TV who doesn’t like Hamid
Mir for his anti state activities and are closely monitoring and collecting
data about him. The leader of the group has personal differences with Hamid Mir
that developed a couple of years back when Mir insulted and humiliated him in
front of GEO team Islamabad,
publicly. The gentleman claims to have solid proofs about Hamid Mir’s
undeclared assets he made due to his close collaboration with CIA and Al Qaida
at the same time and he is determined to show HM’s ugly face to the world soon
as the greedy journalist in the lust of money has opened too many fronts at one
time. Finally, its time for him to face the music since he has asked for it.
