OM Bureau
Forty journalists and media professionals with an interest in helping to resolve
the Kashmir problem between India and Pakistan are taking part in a ground-
breaking series of workshops in Cardiff , about 200 k.m.s off London starting
next week.
Mrinal Chatterjee, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Mass
Communication, Dhenkanal has been invited to join the course starting from 28
January 2006.
The three tailor-made British Foreign Office-funded courses – for media
academics, print and broadcast journalists from the Indian subcontinent – are to
be led by Thomson consultants Tony Geraghty and Russell Isaac .
They will start with a series of seminars, discussions and role play exercises
before the participants move to Belfast for briefings and seminars drawn from
the bid to resolve the conflict between the Catholic and Protestant Christian
communities in Northern Ireland. The three days in Belfast will include a day at
INCORE – a United Nations and University of Ulster faculty which focuses on
the causes, consequences and resolution of international conflict.
Also during the Northern Ireland visit will be a visit to the regional BBC
headquarters and two of the main newspapers, the Irish News and the Belfast
Newsletter. The delegates will then travel to London for the concluding part of
the course.
Participants of the first course – which will last two weeks – include four media
academics from Kashmir University, Srinagar (India), and two delegates from
the Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi, two from the Indian Institute of
Mass Communication, and one each from Tezpur University, Assam and
Kohima University, Kohima (capital of Nagaland in the far north-east of India).
Among topics to be covered in the programme will be: the relevance to
Kashmir of the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and Iraq; sources of
conflict; the role of the media; human rights; and international law.