‘Anadolu Agency Gives Voice to the Voiceless’
By Riyaz ul Khaliq
Ankara, Turkey: At a time when almost all the leading news disseminating agencies have origins in the West, Turkish global wire Anadolu Agency has broken the barriers by competing with equal determination and professionalism, said a US-based Kashmiri lobbyist.
In a solidarity message to commemorate the 100th year of the Anadolu Agency’s operations, Ghulam Nabi Fai said that the people across the dividing line in Jammu and Kashmir offer “sincerest congratulations” to Turkey’s global news agency for completing its 100 years of operations.
“This is indeed a momentous occasion, a milestone and a well-deserved distinction in the field of journalism,” said Fai, who is secretary-general of World Kashmir Awareness Forum in Washington.
Acknowledging that the Agency has become an honest global voice for those who remain uncovered by other news agencies, Fai said, the Rohingya, people in Gaza, Syria and Kashmir feel that their images, as projected throughout the world, often fail to show them as they are. Their causes are hurt by ignorance and misinformation…”
In such a scenario, Fai said: “Anadolu Agency has given hope to millions of hopeless and voice to infinite voiceless people.”
“For that, the Agency deserves the gratitude of hundreds of millions of oppressed people all over the world,” said Fai, who has a doctorate in media and communications from Temple University in the US.
Fai said that the world community has undergone great changes during the past 100 years since the inception of the Anadolu Agency on April 6, 1920.
He said that marginalized and oppressed people who want to assert their national and cultural identities, their collective and individual personalities have prompted Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to persuade the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and Malaysia to start a new joint media venture in the world.
“There seems to be a fierce determination to tap the creative, constructive and liberating possibilities of these new developments,” Fai added.
Disputed region
Jammu and Kashmir is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver is also held by China.
Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.
Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or unification with neighboring Pakistan.
According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have been killed in the conflict in the region since 1989.
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