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Friday, January 20, 2017

Mehdi Hassan - Zindagi Mein To Sabhi Piyaar Kia Karte Hain

Pakistan: Missing Activists Hit By 'Malicious' Blasphemy Charges, Families Say

The families of five missing Pakistani activists denounced what they called a 'malicious' social media campaign accusing the men of blasphemy, a highly charged allegation that can prove fatal in Pakistan.

The five men had stood against religious intolerance and at times criticized Pakistan's military. They all vanished within days of each other earlier this month.

No group has claimed responsibility for their abduction and security agencies have denied involvement.

Meanwhile, the blasphemy accusations against the activists have been multiplying on Facebook and Twitter, triggering a flood of threats.

'This campaign can only be meant to divert public sympathy away from our plight and the plight of our loved ones, who have been illegally abducted,' the families of Salman Haider and Waqass Goraya said at a press conference in Islamabad on January 18.

Haider, a leftist writer and professor, disappeared in early January along with liberal bloggers Goraya, Aasim Saeed, and Ahmed Raza Naseer, as well as Samar Abbas, the head of an anti-extremism activist group in Karachi.

The missing activists have been accused of blasphemy not only in numerous online posts and by at least three television commentators. One of the first blasphemy allegations appeared on January 9 on the pro-military Pakistan Defence page on Facebook. A site administrator said it was posted by an anonymous contributor.

Blasphemy is punishable by execution in Pakistan, and the allegations endanger the activists by making them and their families potential targets for vigilantes.

In 2011, a Pakistani governor, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his bodyguard after calling for reform of the blasphemy laws. His killer was hailed as a hero by religious hardliners, and tens of thousands of supporters attended his funeral after he was executed last year.

A group called Civil Society of Pakistan filed a police complaint over the weekend against the missing men, demanding that they be charged with insulting the Prophet Muhammad, a crime in Pakistan that carries a mandatory death sentence.

The society's chairman, Tariq Asad, said the organization filed the complaint in outrage after reading about the case.

'Every Pakistani has awareness of this issue and many have asked us to take this up,' Asad told Reuters.

Both Pakistan Defence and Civil Society of Pakistan dismissed suggestions that they were part of a coordinated campaign.

Activists said that the blasphemy accusations against the five are worrying, and have filed a countersuit demanding that they be halted. They said the online campaigns are intended to silence progressive voices and are carefully coordinated.

The accusations have already prompted several liberal online commentators to close their social media accounts, activists said.

'The intensity of it is very worrying,' Shahzad Ahmed, director of cybersecurity group Bytes for All, told Reuters.

'There is mainstream media, social media: the way it is being projected and repeated, the kind of force that they are using is unprecedented.'

http://timesofahmad.blogspot.com/2017/01/pakistan-missing-activists-hit-by.html

Quetta: Citizens stage a protest against Sui Southern Gas Company

Citizens staged a demonstration outside Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) against the unavailability of gas in different parts of the Quetta city and its suburbs, on Wednesday.

The protester said that temperature touched the subzero degrees following the heavy snowfall in the provincial capital and other parts of Balochistan but the closure of CNG stations, low pressure of gas has added our troubles.

The protesters closed Samungli road for traffic. Police started baton charge and aerial firing against the protestors and booked four protesters. Meanwhile, two police men were also reported to have been injured.

Police tried to negotiate with the protesters for clearing the road which resulted in scuffle between police and protesters.

SSP Police Sher Ali told media that no one would be allow.

http://thebalochistanpoint.com/quetta-citizens-stage-a-protest-against-sui-southern-gas-company/

Pakistan orders closure of rights groups for alleged “anti-state” activities

Police and security officials have ordered about a dozen non-government organisations (NGOs) to halt operations, said an official of the independent Human Rights Commission.

Authorities in Pakistan’s largest province have ordered several women’s and human rights groups to shut down, accusing them of unspecified “anti-state” activities, an official of a human rights group said. Pakistan has toughened its stance against local and international non-government bodies in recent years, accusing some of using their work as a cover for espionage.

“They are shutting up people by harassment,” IA Rehman, an official of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told Reuters on Thursday. Police and security officials have ordered about a dozen non-government organisations (NGOs) to halt operations, mostly in southern Punjab province, Rehman added,

with groups working on women’s and human rights appearing to be the main targets. “The provincial government has given orders to district police offices that so-and-so organization has been indulging in anti-state activities, so ban this organization,” he said.

Punjab’s home minister, Rana Sanaullah, did not respond to written queries about the orders.

However, conservative Pakistan’s small community of liberal groups is worried about a new crackdown on anyone seen as criticising the government, as concern grows over five liberal writers and activists who went missing this month. The government denies any role in the disappearances. Two officials of non-government bodies in Punjab told Reuters police had ordered their employees to halt work. “Yesterday, the police went to one of my colleagues in Bahawalpur and asked him to shut our office over there,” said Mohammad Tehseen, director of South Asia Partnership Pakistan, which focuses on women’s rights.

The police gave him a letter, seen by Reuters, issued by the Punjab Home Department alleging that his organization was “pursuing (an) anti-state agenda”. Tehseen denied the charge, and said the police would not specify any actions to support the accusation. Telephone calls to police in the city of Bahawalpur went unanswered on Thursday and Friday. Other organisations have received similar letters, Rehman said.

Another NGO, Women in Struggle for Empowerment, was ordered to halt work in Punjab and obtained a copy of another letter from a provincial agency accusing it of activities “detrimental to National/Strategic Security”. A copy of the letter provided to Reuters by the group’s director, Bushra Khaliq, cites an order from the ministry of the interior. Sent copies of the documents, Interior Ministry spokesman Sarfaraz Ahmed said a statement would be issued later, but it had not arrived by Friday afternoon.

http://indianexpress.com/article/world/pakistan-orders-closure-of-rights-groups-for-alleged-anti-state-activities-4483974/

Bring Pakistan’s Missing Bloggers Home

By RAZA RUMI

Since Jan. 4, at least five bloggers and activists have disappeared in Pakistan. Perhaps the best known is Salman Haider, a poet and academic who has been a vocal opponent of religious extremism and the Pakistani authorities’ abuse of opposition activists. The others who have vanished had the courage to critique organized religion, the influence of clerics in Pakistan and the country’s powerful military on social media.

Throughout Pakistan’s history, dissent and free speech have been muzzled by a state that inherited a repressive legal framework from the British colonizers who ruled the Indian subcontinent until 1947. Journalists, poets, intellectuals and many politicians who questioned the state were labeled traitors, sometimes jailed or exiled, and on occasion killed. Almost every Pakistani government — military or civilian — has tried to control and manipulate the news media.

That kind of control has become more difficult as print and electronic media have expanded in the past decade and a half. Since the deregulation of electronic media in 2002, Pakistan has gone from three to 89 television channels. The state’s monopoly of the airwaves is over. Noisy talk shows regularly challenge the elected governments and their policies. But when it comes to the military, journalists and commentators are cautious, often indulging in self-censorship. Laws governing freedom of speech and the news media are vague, and their enforcement is arbitrary; critics are often accused of endangering national security.

The rise of social media and blogs has further expanded the space for dissent. Pakistanis can say on Facebook things they still could not get away with on television or in print. The missing activists, for example, were allegedly affiliated with satirical Facebook pages that ridiculed the hypocrisy of religious clerics and the flawed state policies of using jihad to further foreign policy goals.

Last year, the Parliament passed a draconian cybercrimes law curtailing digital freedoms. This law grants the government overarching powers to control and block information that state officials find offensive, examine and retain users’ data, and impose harsh penalties for a variety of offenses. The law builds on the narrow definition of freedom of speech that the Constitution guarantees in principle but with a number of exceptions that include “glory of Islam,” “the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan” and “public order, decency or morality,” among others. Such ambiguous terms are easily invoked to suppress dissent.

After the enactment of the cybercrime law, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies reportedly asked for legal cover to take pre-emptive “action” against people they believed were breaching national security. This demand was accepted. It is unclear whether the five bloggers and social media activists have disappeared under this arrangement. In fact, there is no information from any official source. But there is good reason to be worried. In recent years, hundreds of suspected insurgents from the southwestern province of Baluchistan and religious militants from other parts of the country have allegedly been picked up by security agencies, never to be heard from again. A government commission is handling at least 1,129 cases of “missing” persons.

Even if the five activists reappear, they will face the wrath of zealots who want instant justice for blasphemers. In recent days, right-wing social media users and pundits have been smearing the missing men as blasphemers. In addition, they have been accused in absentia by conservative sections of the Pakistani media and right-wing trolls as pawns of foreign powers (read India, the eternal enemy) who are waging an information war against Pakistan.

The exact relationship between these right-wing loudmouths and the security services remains, as ever in Pakistan, murky. But these activists’ lives are most likely in danger. In 2011, a police guard killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, because he had publicly defended a Christian woman sentenced to death under the blasphemy law, a law he said needed to be reformed.

By cracking down on people opining on social media, Pakistan joins Turkey, Bangladesh, China and other countries where journalists and activists are hounded by the state and by extremists. Pakistan’s elites, both civilian and military, frequently complain that their country has an image problem. Such disappearances certainly don’t help. Moreover, in an interconnected world, such moves are counterproductive. The elected government of Pakistan must be held accountable for such brazen curtailment of rights. The Parliament needs to review the scope of internet freedoms as well as reconsider the nebulous guarantee of free speech provided by the Constitution.

The international community should help, too. It can remind the Pakistani government of its obligations under the United Nations Convention against Torture and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to put an end to enforced disappearances. In its 2015 compliance report on the civil rights covenant, the government stated that it was “firmly committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It is time to move beyond lip service. Upholding freedom of speech will only bolster Pakistan’s fragile democracy.

But most of all, these missing men should be returned home safely as soon as possible.

Pakistan - A state of denial

By Muneeb Farooq

We are a country that will turn 70 years old this year. The baggage of classical errors and hideously misplaced policies continue to be a festering wound for us.

We are a country where the political elite’s hunger for self-serving interests and the military’s self-righteous overtures have so conveniently undone the once thought-out narrative. Pakistan could have been a welfare state. But today it’s a national security state which exists in a state of denial.

This entails the denial of constitutionally-protected civilian supremacy, of the fact that the accountability is not to be done by those who themselves are accountable and of the fact that the military is an asset and not an option for the country.

The country is in a state of denial about the existence of human rights, which clearly suggest that people cannot be abducted or killed for their religious or other beliefs. It is in a state of denial towards the fact that, once created, proxies and assets always come back to haunt us. There is also a flagrant denial of the fact that nations collapse if the enemy within is not eliminated.

Since its inception, Pakistan never really managed to become the country which it was meant to be. The weak civilian dispensations prevented Pakistan from coming close to the concept of civilian supremacy. As a result, it never flourished and today it gets walked over at every critical juncture. Be it the case of the ‘Dawn leaks’ or any other issue, the civilians have to bend over backwards to prove that they are relevant and not part of every problem.

Similarly, across-the-board accountability is not tolerated in Pakistan – not even in theory. This is because accountability is considered germane only to politicians and not to others. Ironically, accountability is expected from the military which, at least in theory, is itself accountable for its decisions, spending, successes and failures.

It’s a travesty that the role of the military is greatly exaggerated in Pakistan and tends to foster bizarre ideas. A few desperate minds still think that military rule, a military-backed rule or a military-backed change of regime is still an option for Pakistan. Even after seven decades these kinds of ideas still find ample place to thrive.

The latest disposition of these ideas was reflected in the 2014 dharna and the failed attempt in 2016 to lock down Islamabad. Even after an extensive campaign for human rights and under a much-touted civilian government, people are abducted from the federal capital and some parts of Punjab with complete impunity and perfection. No questions are asked and so no answers are given.

It is equally ominous that we have proudly rented ourselves for someone else’s war in the Afghan Jihad and created monsters. We have bloated our tummies with petrodollars and waited till these friends turn into our foes. ‘Jihad’ has resulted in more destruction within Pakistan. It is unfortunate that even after the colossal loss of over 50,000 civilians, soldiers and officers, we still do not know who the real enemy is.

The duplicity in our approach is being subjected to criticism. After the demise of the divide between good and bad Taliban, we have proudly presented another divide between good and bad sectarian banned outfits. We still stand at square one to see where we have to go. But the dictates of history suggest that our ability and vision to foresee things is blurred. The only lesson we have learnt is that lessons are never learnt.

1st anniversary of terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University today

The first anniversary of the deadly terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University that claimed lives of 21 people is being observed Friday (Today).

Preparations have been completed as the university administration formed a nine-member committee for the anniversary event whereas the campus will remain closed throughout the day.

Registrar Salim Shah said that a formal ceremony to remember the departed souls would be held after which flowers would be laid on the martyrs’ monument.

He also added that the event would conclude with collective prayers.

On January 20, around four terrorists entered Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district, roughly 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city of Peshawar and killed 21 people and injured dozens.

Regional police Chief Saeed Wazir told that most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the Bacha Khan University campus.

Police, soldiers and special forces had launched a ground and air operation at the university in a bid to shut down the assault claimed by a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) faction and killed all four attackers.

Security forces said the young attackers had hidden in fields surrounding the Bacha Khan university in the northwestern town of Charsadda, taking advantage of fog that severely restricted visibility to enter the premises unnoticed.

Protecting women and minorities in Pakistan – beyond the law

By Farah Adeed

Women and minorities can be better protected if the state decides to focus on modifying the social goals and not just laws.

Women and minorities in Pakistan are not safe. This is the truth of the day, no matter if hyper-nationalists and religious fanatics accept it or not. We regularly hear about honor killings and persecution of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. These cases, as a matter of fact, of violence and mass-killing are increasing day by day. There are, however, some laws in Pakistan to protect its citizens from both internal threats and external aggression. But despite all the laws, a considerable part of our society is not safe – it does not feel protected.

The question is: why is violence against women increasing in Pakistan despite the strict legislation? Why has the state failed to protect minorities? What legal and political steps should be taken by the state to protect her citizens irrespective of gender, and religious differences?

Let’s examine the case of religious minorities in the country. Ahmadis and Hindus are facing violent opposition and being humiliated for nothing. Their only crime, may be, is being Ahmadis or Hindus. Recently we have witnessed the destruction of Ahmadis’ place of worship when a violent mob attacked the community. On the other hand, forced conversion of Hindus is no more a hidden thing. The question arises what is the relevance or significance of Article 20 of the Constitution of Pakistan, which clearly says:

“Freedom to profess religion and to manage religious institutions. — Subject to law, public order and morality-

(a) every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion; and

(b) every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.”

I shall come to this question in a while. But here it is pertinent to include one more important and very relevant case that is of honor killing. The Constitution of Pakistan assures the equality before law and takes men and women as citizens. It says:

“Equality of citizens. — (25-A) All citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law.

(2) There shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex.

(3) Nothing in this Article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the protection of women and children. ”

But despite these laws, women and minorities in Pakistan feel as though they are second class citizens with no or few rights.

Although there is a ‘Blasphemy law’ in Pakistan, which assures that if anyone passes derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad (P.B.U.H), and is found guilty, will be convicted, yet we see the brutal murder of a governor of the biggest province of Pakistan. The saddest part of the story was that the governor himself was a Muslim. He clarified his position many times, but the ‘believers’ didn’t bother to pay heed to what he was saying repeatedly.

Another victim of societal pressure and stereotyping was social media star and model Qandeel Baloch who was strangled to death by her brother. The brother killed her to save his family’s honor. The unfortunate Qandeel was challenging the traditional belief system of our society and exposing so many ugly faces. There are laws, as we see, but people break them so frequently and even without the fear of being convicted and severely punished. Why does it happen anyway?

For this we need to understand the basic thing. Why laws are made.

Laws are made to protect the citizens of the state from all sort of internal as well as external threats and violence. But it needs to be understood that the law itself is not to determine the societal goals of any society, rather it only supplements the social process to achieve the socially determined goals. When laws contradict, known human history confirms, with local norms they are almost always ridiculously broken.

In case of Pakistan, the sense of male-domination and socially exclusive thinking are instilled in the mind of individuals through education at schools and colleges. For instance, the man who ruthlessly murdered ‘unruly’ Hindu is presented to our children as our hero and Hindus, in general, are portrayed as coward and hypocrites. This sort of educational curriculum is designed to foster official narrative in the minds of young students.

Individuals, who grow up in such a divisive society, find the laws which contradict what they are taught in early childhood.

Unfortunately, there is a contradiction between the social goals and the legal system prevailing in this country. Laws are made without carefully reading the public opinion, which sadly results into chaos and turmoil. Bertrand Russell in his book Power has rightly remarked that when the law is not supported by public opinion it is almost powerless.

This is the reason that despite the presence of laws, women and minorities in Pakistan are not treated equally. There is an attitudinal and cultural problem, which has been chiefly advocated to fulfil the narrow political interests of the ruling elites or of some powerful institutions. Law can play a role in minimizing the violence against all the victims at the moment, but for a long term and permanent solution, our state needs to review its policies and in particular its education policy.

There is a dire need of a formatting an education policy which professes inclusivity and the idea of coexistence. This change in education system with the aid of media propagation would definitely help the state change the societal goals and thus to make laws which would hardly be challenged or broken.

A change can only be brought through education without shedding blood. Without understanding the role and scope of law, the state can make so many other laws but nobody can protect Salman Taseer, Qandeel Baloch or Ahmadis and Hindus.

Our women and minorities can be better protected if the state decides to focus on modifying the social goals rather than only on laws.

Pakistan’s misguided obsession with infrastructure

The government is building more airports, roads and railways, even though the existing ones are underused.

NEARLY 20 years after it opened, Pakistan’s first motorway still has a desolate feel. There is scant traffic along the 375km link between Islamabad and Lahore (pictured). Motorists can drive for miles without seeing another vehicle, save perhaps for traffic cops manning speed traps. As the two cities are already connected by the Grand Trunk Road, which is 90km shorter and toll-free, there is simply not much demand for a motorway.

Yet this $1.2bn white elephant is one of the proudest achievements of Nawaz Sharif, who was prime minister when it opened in 1997 and is once again running Pakistan. Mr Sharif, who enjoys comparisons to Sher Shah Suri, a 16th-century ruler who renovated the Grand Trunk Road, never tires of talking about it. He regained power in 2013 with a campaign which both harked back to his famous road and promised more infrastructure to come. He even pledged bullet trains that would enable pious passengers to leave Karachi after dawn prayers and arrive in Peshawar, more than 1,000km to the north, in time for evening worship.

It is an article of faith for Mr Sharif and his party, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), that investment in infrastructure is a foolproof way of boosting the economy. His government is racing to finish umpteen projects before the next election, due by mid-2018, including a metro line in Lahore and a new airport for Islamabad. The likelihood is that the new airport (which has been plagued with problems, including runways that have been built too close together) will be as underused as most of the country’s other airports, many of which are modern and spacious.

Pakistan’s infrastructure is underused because the economic boom it was meant to trigger has never arrived. Over the past three years the government has successfully staved off a balance-of-payments crisis, achieving some measure of macroeconomic stability. It has trimmed the budget deficit, partly by broadening the tax take and partly by cutting energy subsidies. That, along with lower oil prices, has narrowed Pakistan’s trade deficit and allowed it to begin rebuilding its foreign-exchange reserves. The stockmarket has risen by 50% since the end of 2015.

But terrorism and insurgency have put off investors, both foreign and domestic. The country is also held back by inefficient and often cartelised industries, which have fallen behind rivals in India and Bangladesh. Exports, 60% of which are textiles, have been shrinking for years. Much more needs to be done to create an educated workforce. Almost half of all those aged five to 16 are out of school—25m children. Health, like education, is woefully underfunded, in part because successive governments shy away from taxing the wealthy. Only 0.6% of the population pays income tax. As the World Bank puts it, Pakistan’s long-term development depends on “better nutrition, health and education”.

Cement to be

But Mr Sharif’s government is pinning its hopes on yet more infrastructure to fix the country’s economic problems, in the form of a $46bn investment scheme known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Much of it is being financed on commercial terms, including several power plants. Pakistan undoubtedly needs to relieve a chronic shortage of electricity. But critics fear the country will struggle to pay back the debt, especially if foreign-exchange earnings from exports continue to dwindle. At the very least, the government will need to continue chasing deadbeat customers to pay their bills and cutting expensive subsidies—steps that are deeply unpopular.

In addition to boosting Pakistan’s power supply, CPEC is supposed to link China by land to Gwadar, a deep-water port on the Arabian Sea, in the hope of creating a lucrative new trade route. New or upgraded roads will stretch the length of the country. The Karakoram Highway between the two countries, which was built in the 1960s at vast expense over a high and crumbly mountain range, is being upgraded as part of the trade corridor. But it forever needs patching up and is little used. Sceptics say Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region, is still too poor for better transport links to make much difference to Pakistan’s economy. Securing isolated stretches of road from separatist rebels in Balochistan is also gobbling up large amounts of cash.

Lijian Zhao, a Chinese diplomat, says China is all too aware that Pakistan needs more than just big-ticket infrastructure if it is to flourish. Disarmingly, he praises the efforts of Britain and other countries to improve Pakistan’s “software”, such as education and the rule of law. “But China’s expertise is hardware,” says Mr Zhao.

It may not concern Mr Sharif unduly if the next generation of roads is as deserted as the last. Civilian governments have often struggled to get much done in between military coups, but voters are impressed by gleaming new projects, even if they never use them. It’s an approach that has worked for Mr Sharif’s brother, Shehbaz, the popular chief minister of Punjab province. He has lavished resources on endless sequences of over- and underpasses to create “signal-free” traffic corridors in Lahore, the provincial capital, that are of most benefit to the rich minority who can afford cars.

There are limits, however. Khawaja Saad Rafique, the railways minister, recently admitted to parliament that the country would not be getting a bullet train after all. “When we asked the Chinese about it, they laughed at us,” he said.