News
Monday, March 21, 2011
Indo-Pak peace activists demand release of civilian prisoners
* Appeal Pakistan government to give Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India
KARACHI: Peace activists of both India and Pakistan on Sunday unanimously demanded both Indian and Pakistani governments to release all the civilian prisoners, including fishermen, as a goodwill gesture.
Both the countries should also liberalise visa regime, revive the India-Pakistan Judicial Committee on Prisoners, open trade, reduce military expenditure and urgently resolve the almost settled disputed issues like Siachen, Sir Creek.
The participants were speaking at a round table: ‘Strategising Civil Society’s Role in Peace Process: Identifying Priority Issues/Areas and Interventions,’ jointly organised by the Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and Pakistan-India Peace Forum for Peace and Democracy.
They said that as a result of track-two strategy, the governments of both India and Pakistan had almost agreed to resolve the Siachen and Sir Creek issues, but after Mumbai attacks in 2008, the formal announcement could not be made.
Later in a joint statement, the Pakistan and Indian peace activists appealed to Pakistan government to give Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India. India has already given the MFN status to Pakistan.
The Indian and Pakistani delegates requested both the governments not to arrest each other’s fishermen. Instead of arresting fishermen and confiscating trawlers/launches of each other country’s fishermen, only warnings be issued to fishermen in case of crossing of each other’s borders into the sea.
The participants demanded to prepare a list of divided families in both the countries and the members of such families should be given five-year visas with multiple visits. Both countries should include tourist visas category and should be made easily available. Visas should be issued to senior citizens and children on their arrival.
The participants emphasised that students and youth of both India and Pakistan should be encouraged to study in the each other countries’ colleges and universities. For this purpose visa conditions should be relaxed for students and teachers. Accredited students be given visa at the airports.
Some participants pointed out that India produces world class and cost-effective medicines, whereas Pakistani surgical industry produce export quality surgical goods, so Pakistan should allow import of Indian medicines and Indian doctors are encouraged to buy Pakistani surgical goods.
They said presently Pakistan imports medicines from European and US multinational companies, which are very costly, whereas Indian medicines are 10 times cost-effective cheaper.
The interior secretaries of India and Pakistan will be meeting in Delhi on March 28. The participants demanded the governments of both India and Pakistan to evolve a joint mechanism to combat terrorism, militarisation and extremism in their respective countries and the dialogue needs to be uninterrupted and uninterruptible.
Prominent among those who took part in the round table included members of Indian peace delegation, led by veteran journalist Kuldip Nayyar, senior journalist from Mumbai Jatin Desai, Member of the Indian Upper House (Rajya Sabha) Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar, Shahid Siddiqui, Mazhar Hussain, Sanjay Nahar, Haris Kidwai, Krishna Rao, Ramesh Yadev and Lakshmi Prasad, and from Pakistan side Adviser to Sindh Chief Minister and senior economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, Executive Director Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) Karamat Ali, Justice (r) Nasir Aslam Zahid, Justice (r) Rasheed A Rezvi, Secretary General of PPC BM Kutty, President of PPC (Sindh) Dr Tipu Sultan, Syed Shamsuddin, Chief of Jeay Sindh Mahaz Abdu Khaliq Junejo, Uzma Noorani, Farid Awan, Saleha Athar, Rochi Ram, Rahat Saeed Khan, Dr Sikandar Mehdi and others. ppi
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk