Press Release: Aaghaz-e-Dosti welcomes decisions taken at Indo-Pak Meeting and suggests more measures

 PRESS RELEASE

Aaghaz-e-Dosti welcomes decisions taken at Indo-Pak Meeting and suggests more measures

Aaghaz-e-Dosti welcomes the decisions taken during the meeting of the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers on the sidelines of SCO meet at Ufa, Russia.

We appreciate that despite being a ‘sideline’ meet and which was doubtful if it would take place, it turned out to be successful with some great decisions which shows the desire for fruitful efforts and confidence in each other. 

It is also appreciable as both the governments that they did not cancel the talk as even a day before the meeting, one Indian soldier got killed during ceasefire violation. After this killing, jingoism was expected but both the governments gave an important message of being patient and the need for an appropriate reply through positive and fruitful talks. 

Aaghaz-e-Dosti believes in positive working strategy and see that such positive and fruitful talks and decisions are appropriate and fit reply to all those who want to create rift between Indo-Pak relation. Even in past, many such attempts were made whenever both countries travelled or planned to walk on same path of peace together but it is necessary that governments must not get affected with these attempts. 

Aaghaz-e-Dosti welcomes the decisions taken which included the joint meetings of NSAs of both countries, the release of fishermen and senior military officials’ meets but being a people’s forum that has good participation of Pakistani and Indian people, especially youths, it appeals to both governments to include more points in the coming meetings.

While the decision to release fishermen with their boats is a commendable decision, this decision should be made permanent. Fishermen should always be released through sea route along with their boats. Their boats should ideally not be confiscated. The Governments should think of more permanent solutions which would minimize the arrest of innocent fishermen. One of the most fundamental way is to solve Sir creek issue which is regarded as the most doable of the conflicts. The Governments should establish common fishing zones. The fishermen who do get arrested should be treated in a humane way. According to the reports accessed and published by Aaghaz-e-Dosti on fishermen data from both sides, there has been procedural delay, errors which increase the hardships of the fishermen. There are also problems with consular access.

The resolute to solve all the conflicts especially ones that were created much after partition like Siachen should be resolved at the earliest. Both the Governments should take measures for confidence-building. When on 1^st July, both governments exchanged list of prisoners, it was reported that the Pakistan Government thinks that India did not share the entire list. These misunderstandings should be resolved as they have a huge impact on public opinion.

Some of the other measures that we feel that the Government should take immediately to facilitate people-to-people communication include telecommunication partnership which would enable the use cellphones during visit to each other’s country, bank partnership, television channel partnership and ease in visa policies like ease in getting visa, visa for whole country, instead of city-specific visa etc. We feel that these measures will increase people-to-people contact and reduce suspicion and misunderstandings.

Aaghaz-e-Dosti believes that the way forward is to solve conflicts not to increase them as conflict means the loss of innocent lives and deterioration of economy.

Press Release issued by

Aliya Harir & Devika Mittal

Conveners

Aaghaz-e-Dosti

https://aaghazedosti.wordpress.com

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