Monday, April 30, 2018
OP-ED - Sex and Shame: What Incels and Jihadists Have in Common
By Simon Cottee
As an instrument for delivering publicity, terrorism clearly works. Or at least it did last week, when the hitherto obscure term “incel” went viral after Alek Minassian drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians in downtown Toronto. Mr. Minassian, just before carrying out his attack, wrote a post on Facebook in which he proclaimed the arrival of an “incel rebellion.” Standing for “involuntarily celibate,” the term is used as a badge of honor among a fringe online subculture of misogynists who say they hate women for depriving them of sex. So now we know.
Were it not for that post, speculation about Mr. Minassian’s attack would have focused on its connection to the Islamic State. It certainly looked like an Islamic State attack: The terrorist group has been aggressively inciting its followers to kill Western civilians with motor vehicles, and since then there have been many such attacks. Mr. Minassian cannot have been oblivious to these horrific rampages and the tremendous publicity that they attracted. This was an Islamic State-inspired attack minus the Islamic State ideology.
Mr. Minassian is obviously a deeply troubled individual. And mass murder is driven by a variety of psychological factors. But much of Mr. Minassian’s trouble seems to have been fueled or exacerbated by the frustration and shame that accompanied his lack of sexual contact with women. This would have made him feel unfulfilled and indignant, and also weak and unmanly. The sense of shame from not being able to perform a culturally approved sex role may be a key to understanding his murderous rage. It may also be another thread connecting him to other violent actors whose ideology is different from his own, yet whose actions are similar. It is not difficult to spot parallels with the world of jihadism, where women and sex are similarly fixated on to an extraordinary degree
Among those who identify with the “incel” movement, there is a pathological fixation on sex and women, and there is a self-pitying perception that everyone else, except the community of “incels,” is having sex. Women are craved, but they are also reviled for what the incels believe is their selective promiscuity: They seem to be having sex with everyone but them. This is internalized as a grave personal insult. The function of the “incel” movement is to transform that personal grievance into an ideology that casts women as despicable sexual objects. The core emotion that animates “incels” is sexual shame. It’s not just that these men are sexually frustrated; it’s that they are ashamed of their sexual failure. At the same time, they are resentful of the sexual success of others, which amplifies their own sense of inadequacy. This explains why they gravitate toward an online subculture that strives to rationalize their shame and redirect the blame for their failure onto women. Like incels, jihadists similarly crave sex, but the circumstances surrounding its consummation are closely regulated by their religious norms, which prohibit sex outside of marriage and same-sex couplings. Among jihadists, even masturbation is frowned upon, although Osama bin Laden famously issued a masturbation fatwa, permitting it in times of urgent need. This repressive attitude toward sex and sexuality has led some commentators to suggest a connection between sexual frustration and the murderous rage of jihadist suicide bombers. The evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, for example, suggested that far from being motivated by thoughts of injustice, the Sept. 11 hijackers were driven by thoughts of sex. Referring to the “martyr’s reward of 72 virgin brides,” he asserted that “testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.” Developing this theme further, the late Christopher Hitchens wrote that the jihadists’ “problem is not so much that they desire virgins as that they are virgins.” Or as the sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer once put it: “Can’t get married, can’t have sex, so they blow things up.” It’s easy to dismiss these observations as reductive caricatures in their portrayal of Muslims as sexually repressed. And, of course, jihadist violence is about far more than just sexual frustration. But there is too much anecdotal evidence about the sexual torment of jihadists and their ideologues to reject the connection outright. For example, Sayyid Qutb, the grandfather of jihadist ideology, was disgusted by Americans’ sexual license during the 1950s, yet he was clearly viscerally excited by its spectacle. Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, instructed in his will that his body be prepared for burial by “good Muslims” and that no woman was to go near it, presumably because he found them dirty and spiritually contaminating. This aversion to women didn’t stop him from visiting a strip club just before the attack, but it did prevent him from shaking women’s hands. One extremist reportedly told the terrorism scholar Jessica Stern that he was “vaginally defeated.” According to Professor Juergensmeyer, “Nothing is more intimate than sexuality, and no greater humiliation can be experienced than failure over what one perceives to be one’s sexual role.” Furthermore, he argues, such failures “can lead to public violence,” which is performed to cancel out feelings of shame and reassert the claim to manhood. It’s possible that Mr. Minassian’s ramming attack in Toronto was just such a performance, and that what he most wanted was to make himself visible to all those women who had, in his mind, made him feel worthless and invisible. However confused and hallucinatory, it was a claim to his virility as a man, as well as an indictment on a sexually promiscuous world from which he had been excluded. That’s a claim that many jihadists would no doubt understand, if not indeed sympathize with.
In Pakistan, the Press Remains in Chains While Pashtun Activists March On
By Mohammad Taqi
The army is unwilling to give any space to news reports or opinion pieces favourable to the Pashtuns and intends to continue ensuring a near-complete electronic media blackout of the movement.
The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) – which came to the fore after the extrajudicial killing of a young Pashtun man at the hands of police officer Rao Anwar in Karachi earlier this year – continues to march on in Pakistan. It recently held an impressive rally in Peshawar – the Pashtun heartland – without the support of the traditional Pashtun nationalist outfit, the Awami National Party (ANP), which considers itself the political heir to ‘Frontier Gandhi’ – the late Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
The rally brought together a large number of the families of missing Pashtun men and boys, who they claim were forcibly disappeared by the Pakistan Army during and after its operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) – where the country’s constitutional provisions do not apply – and in the so-called “settled” areas like the Swat Valley, which is part of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.
The PTM’s key leader, Manzoor Pashteen, continues to capture the imagination of the Pashtuns with his unassuming demeanour, straightforward explanation of the movement’s main objectives, clear roadmap and resolve to persevere where others have faltered. His plain talk reiterates the movement’s key demands, including the release of those abducted by the army who are innocent and producing before the courts the ones who may have any charges against them.
Army’s response
The Peshawar rally, however, was not the last one. The PTM announced one in Lahore, which has rattled the Pakistani security establishment – a euphemism for the country’s army. The army has been leery of the PTM from the outset but the announcement to hold the rally in Lahore – where no key Pashtun leader has held one since the ANP’s late Wali Khan in the mid-1980s – threw it into a real tizzy.
The army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, took it upon himself to castigate the PTM as “engineered protests” and said that it would not be allowed to undo the so-called gains of military operations. In order to put his words into action, his minions began doing what the army has done for decades – threaten and abduct political workers, censor the press, stifle the electronic media and smear dissenters as foreign agents.
People chant slogans and hold signs as they condemn the death of Naqibullah Mehsud, whose family said he was killed by police in a so-called “encounter killing”, during a protest in Karachi, Pakistan. Credit: Reuters/Akhtar Soomro
Several leaders of the PTM and the leftist Awami Workers Party (AWP), who were involved in planning the Lahore protest, were taken into custody by the Punjab police. Protests erupted over social media after a video surfaced of them being taken into custody, which appeared more like an illegal detention than a formal arrest. The authorities eventually caved in to the backlash and released the leaders.
To the army’s ultimate chagrin, the PTM eventually held an unprecedented rally in Lahore, which was attended not just by the Pashtuns but also by the Punjabi civil and human rights activists and leftist political cadres. The PTM leaders announced that they would hold further rallies in Swat, which was once firmly under the heels of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), followed by one in Karachi.
What became clear before and after the Lahore rally was that the army is unwilling to give any space to news reports or opinion pieces favourable to the PTM and intends to continue ensuring a near-complete electronic media blackout of the movement and therefore of the FATA, which it continues to use as a sanctuary for its agenda against Afghanistan.
Mohammad Bilal holds a picture of his son Hazratullah as he takes part in a protest with members of the Pashtun community against what they say are enforced “disappearances” and routine oppression, in Islamabad, Pakistan. Credit: Reuters/Saad Sayeed
Columnist after columnist announced on Twitter that their weekly column was not published because of the topic – the PTM. Former Senator Afrasiab Khattak and Gul Bukhari, regular writers for The Nation, and Mosharraf Zaidi, Talat Hussain and Imtiaz Alam, who write for The News International, had their columns pulled.
In one instance, The News International took down a column by a Pashtun activist Khan Zaman Kakar from its website after it had been appeared in the print edition. I have had the first-hand experience of my own weekly column getting shut down by the Daily Times under duress from the army three years ago for similar reasons: criticising the army’s jihadist policy as well as its sham operations in the FATA and its highhandedness against the people there.
Pakistan’s largest private television news channel, Geo, has also faced the wrath of the army, which not only banned the channel in cantonment areas but also the delivery of the group’s newspapersJang and The News there.
Past censorship
The chronicler of curbs on the media in Pakistan, Zamir Niazi, wrote in his book The Press In Chains that the first political thought to be censored in Pakistan was actually that of the country’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah. It was Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 address to the constituent assembly, a speech described as the greatest of his life by his biographer Hector Bolitho, that ended up on the censor’s chopping block. This was the landmark speech in which Jinnah laid down his vision for a by and large secular Pakistan as he perceived it. Niazi cites Hamid Jalal that “this speech of the Quaid-e-Azam became the target of what may be called the first of the press advices issued by Pakistan’s permanent establishment … however it was still a shadowy establishment”. Most of the then media toed the establishment’s line and suppressed the speech, except the daily Dawn that carried it.
Niazi has also recorded an incident where parts of Jinnah’s sister and confidant Fatima Jinnah’s speech were muted by Radio Pakistan. Fatima was to address the nation at her brother’s death anniversary on September 11, 1951, when Radio Pakistan’s director Z.A. Bukhari asked her to delete two sentences that were critical of the then government. Fatima refused and was allowed to go on air only to find later that her talk “had faded out at two points, which later were found to coincide with the sentences to which Bokhari had objected”. People protested the censor and Fatima refused to deliver the commemorative address till years later.
A file image of Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. Credit: Reuters
In Pakistan, the army formally anointed itself as the arbiter of the so-called national interest with Field Marshal Ayub Khan’s coup d’etat and relegated the civil bureaucracy to play the second fiddle to it in the permanent establishment. To complete its chokehold on the national interest narrative, the Ayub Khan regime brazenly muzzled the press and forcibly took over the independent Progressive Papers Limited of Mian Iftikharuddin, which included the dailies Pakistan Times, Imroze and the periodical Lail-o-Nahar. In a hard-hitting piece, which remains a must-read even today, the Pakistan Times‘ editor Mazhar Ali Khan later wrote in Feroz Ahmed’s Pakistan Forum:
Military’s control over the narrative in Pakistan
In Pakistan, it seems, the more things change the more they remain the same. From the television outlets muting the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent speech to the army chief directly giving press advice to a group of journalists and the army hounding the dissenting voices in the print and electronic media, the military is unwilling to let go of its control over the narrative. There are thousands of social media accounts that parrot the army’s line while the army itself has abducted social media activists and tortured bloggers.
In their landmark article titled ‘21st-century censorship’, the authors Philip Bennett and Moises Naim had produced a matrix of the censorship types and methods deployed by the present-day regimes, that ranges from direct violence against journalists to sly use of internet proxy warriors that troll legitimate political dissenters and rights campaigners. For each of the listed tools to control or mould opinion and stifle dissent, there’s an available example in the Pakistan Army’s war against the freedom of expression.
From torturing and killing journalists like Saleem Shahzad to forcing electronic and print media into self-censorship, the Pakistan Army has consistently deployed a panoply of coercive measures, in addition to the carrots it dangles in front of media persons. As Bennett and Naim have pointed out, many states and state agencies “went from spectators in the digital revolution to sophisticated early adopters of advanced technologies that allowed them to monitor content, activists and journalists, and direct the flow of information.”
Pakistan Army’s media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), is one such entity that fits the bill. The near-complete blackout of the PTM’s massive rally in Swat on April 29 in the electronic and print media again shows that the ISPR is getting away with serving as the de facto censor and media control authority in Pakistan.
What the army under General Bajwa is doing to dissenters is a reminder of Ayub Khan’s regime. The army’s treatment of the PTM and its peaceful demand for constitutional rights and legal redressal of grievances should send alarm bells ringing. George Bernard Shaw had said that the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship. And to me, the first sign of regression is its return. Pakistan has effectively regressed to martial law. What we had known since the ostensible return of democracy in Pakistan in 2008 was that the army has the complete control over the foreign and national security policies and most domestic affairs as well.
An apparent decade of democracy has actually been ten years of undeclared martial law with a democratic fig leaf. What the PTM and its leader Manzoor Pashteen have done is to force that martial law to bare its ugly, iron teeth. Pakistani politicians and rights activists can join Pashteen’s entourage or wait for their turn when the army comes for them.
https://thewire.in/south-asia/pakistan-pashtun-protests-media-blackout-army
#Pakistan - #ShiaHazaraGenocide - Panic among citizens as Quetta killing spree continues unabated
Successive incidents of targeted killings have spread a wave of terror among citizens of Quetta, who on Monday staged protests at different places against a dozen deaths over the past week.
At least six people have been killed and three wounded in different incidents of targeted killings in the provincial capital over the last three days.
On April 27, brother of prayer leader at a local mosque was shot dead on Toghi Road.
A day later, two other people were killed on Jamaluddin Afghani Road. The deceased belonged to Hazara community.
Last night, unknown assailants opened indiscriminate fire on shops on Jan Mohammad Road. Consequently, three people were killed.
Last week, a suicide attack also claimed lives of six policemen on Quetta's Airport Road.
Police say that they have been investigating the incidents.
Relatives of the victims, representatives of political parties and general public held demonstrations against continuing killings outside the Quetta Press Club and the Balochistan Assembly building on Monday.
Chief Minister Balochistan Abdul Quddus Bizenjo and Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti also visited the demonstration outside the provincial assembly building in Quetta on Monday.
The home minister termed the recent wave of targetted killings a conspiracy to spread chaos.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/193457-panic-among-citizens-as-quetta-killing-spree-continues-unabated
Lawyer on hunger strike over killing of Shiites in Pakistan
A lawyer in Pakistan has gone on hunger strike to bring attention to the killing of Shiites in the city of Quetta.
Jalila Haider said Monday that she will continue the strike she began the day before until the army chief visits the city and details concrete steps to bring the killers to justice and protect the religious minority.
Haider says Gen. Qamar Bajwa should come and console the thousands of widows and orphaned children left by the killing of Shiites in Pakistan over the past two decades. Sunni extremists view Shiites as apostates and have carried out scores of attacks since 2001.
In recent months, at least 30 Shiites have been gunned down in Quetta. Police have yet to arrest any suspects.
Pakistan Honors Cuba's Fidel Castro With Highest Civilian Honor
"Fidel opened the heart of Cuba to the world, and for this his country is loved by millions of people," the Pakistani ambassador to Cuba said.
Pakistan's government has honored Cuba's late revolutionary leader and former President Fidel Castro posthumously with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
During a ceremony at the National Hotel in Havana, Cuba, Pakistani Ambassador Kamran Shafi expressed Pakistan's gratitude towards the Cuban revolutionary leader and for the support given to his nation.
"Fidel opened the heart of Cuba to the world, and for this his country is loved by millions of people," Shafi said, adding that Castro was an "icon of resistance against imperialism and neocolonialism."
The ambassador thanked Cuba for having sent 2,500 doctors following a devastating earthquake that struck Pakistan in 2005. He said that for nine months, the group of Cuban medics attended over 1,700,000 patients in the most isolated and severely affected regions of the country.
The earthquake, with a magnitude 7.6, is considered one of the deadliest in South Asia's modern history. Over 100,000 people are estimated to have died, and millions were left injured or homeless.
"Fidel will always be remembered for his generous and selfless help to the people," Shafi said.
The Nishan-e-Pakistan civilian honor has been previously awarded to former and current heads of state, including former Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito in 1961; South African President Nelson Mandela in 1992, and current President of China Xi Jinping in 2015.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Pakistan-Honors-Cubas-Fidel-Castro-With-Highest-Civilian-Honor-20180428-0013.html
#Pakistan - Bilawal Bhutto Felicitates Newly-elected Body Of Karachi Union Of Journalists (KUJ)
Bilawal Bhutto assured them PPP's full support for protecting freedom of press and freedom of expression, said a press release issued by the party secretariat. In a congratulation message to the newly-elected President Hassan Abbas and General Secretary Aajiz Jamali, the PPP Chairman said PPP has always struggled together with journalist fraternity against the draconian laws enacted by dictatorial regimes.
"It was PPP government which abolished such laws aimed at gagging the press," he added. Bilawal Bhutto hoped that newly-elected KUJ body will serve the journalist community and asked them to convey his felicitations to the other office-bearers.
https://www.urdupoint.com/en/pakistan/bilawal-bhutto-zardari-felicitates-newly-ele-331687.html
Sunday, April 29, 2018
SHOULD PAKISTAN BE ALARMED AS BFF CHINA GETS PALLY WITH INDIA?
BY TOM HUSSAIN
Islamabad has more reason than most to feel uneasy as China’s President Xi Jinping meets Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Days before the informal summit between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi met Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Mohammed Asif on the sidelines of a meeting of defence and foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Beijing. Wang emerged from the meeting to tell reporters China was “ready to work together with our Pakistani brothers to undertake the historical mission of national rejuvenation and achieve the great dream of national prosperity and development”.
“In this way, our iron friendship with Pakistan will never rust and be tempered into steel,” said the Chinese state councillor and foreign minister. Asif responded in matching rhetoric, describing China as “our iron brother”.
Since Pakistan and China signed a 1963 treaty to resolve their differences over the status of their shared border in Gilgit-Baltistan, a region of Kashmir also claimed by India, their hyperbole of bilateral friendship has mostly been matched with actions.
After Xi unveiled the US$46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – which has since risen in potential value to US$60 billion – as the showcase project of his pet Belt and Road Initiative in 2015, the Chinese leader characterised it as a thank you for Pakistan’s key role in helping communist China establish diplomatic ties with the US and end its international isolation in 1971. And although, for geopolitical reasons, Pakistan cannot say as much, it has China to thank for enabling it to keep pace with India’s strategic programme, through the transfer of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology between 1989 and 1992.
The first phase of Gwadar Port's Free Zone in southwestern Pakistan was inaugurated by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who said the free zone would help facilitate trade under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Photo: Xinhua
The two have drawn ever closer as China’s Belt and Road-driven expansion across Asia has brought it into direct competition with the US, India and Japan, while Pakistan’s relations with the US, its other major international partner, have deteriorated markedly.
But lately, China and Pakistan have not always been on the same page when it comes to India. At the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental anti-money-laundering watchdog, China in February made what, to Pakistan, was a shock decision. It withdrew its opposition to a US-led move to place Pakistan back on a terror financing watch list for failing to crack down on militant groups fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir and Nato in Afghanistan.
China and India: are war clouds gathering over Doklam again?
Since initiating the CPEC in 2015, China had been quietly warning Pakistan that it cannot indefinitely block multilateral moves to punish it. But Pakistan’s national security and diplomatic narrative has remained deeply invested in countering the threat of an Indian attack across the ceasefire line in Kashmir, and geared towards supporting anti-government forces in India-administered Kashmir.
Wang is understood to have reassured Asif that any progress arising from the Xi-Modi summit would not compromise China’s relations with Pakistan. But the very day after Wang’s rust-and-steel bombast, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, Lijian Zhao, tweeted a section of an editorial in the Daily Times, a liberal Pakistani newspaper, saying “Beijing has been asking Islamabad to engage with New Delhi and keep tensions to a minimum.”
India’s killer ‘godmen’ and their sacrificial children
Pakistan’s military, which dominates defence and foreign policy, has consistently blocked attempts by the elected government to promote trade relations with India, making them conditional upon Indian engagement in talks on Kashmir, which Modi has flatly refused.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with Tong Daochi, the vice-governor of Hubei province, after arriving in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province. Photo: AFP
“I’m sure there’s a bit of unease among the Pakistani military brass about this summit and the apparent detente. Still, the military won’t be overly concerned, as it will conclude – rightly so, in my view – that China very much remains in Pakistan’s orbit, regardless of this new India-China warming period that could well prove short-lived,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia programme at The Wilson Centre, a Washington think tank.
Arif Rafiq, a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute, another Washington think tank, said that since the Pakistani military was the “Communist Party of China’s principal strategic partner in the region”, he didn’t think Beijing was willing to damage relations for tactical benefits vis-à-vis India. “But, at the same time, I think there is recognition in Pakistan that dependence on a single strategic partner puts them in a position of weakness,” he told This Week in Asia.
Hence Pakistan is closely watching the Xi-Modi summit for clues on its own relations to China, especially the iron brother’s approach to its Kashmir dispute. But most analysts believe it is too early after the Doklam stand-off last year for China and India to talk Kashmir.
What a stronger Modi means for China
“China and India may be in a period of detente, but this doesn’t mean China will want to undercut the deep trust in the China-Pakistan partnership, especially with the critical role Islamabad plays in [the Belt and Road Initiative],” Kugelman said.
An Indian soldier at Bumla Pass on the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh. Photo: AFP
“The summit will focus more on some narrowly defined issues of importance to India-China relations. Kashmir is unlikely to come up. And I certainly don’t think China will pressure Pakistan about toning down whatever role it may play in stoking unrest.”
The concerns rise from Indian press reports that Beijing and New Delhi have been quietly discussing an unlikely compromise resolution of India’s opposition to Belt and Road projects located in the Pakistan-administered half of Kashmir, through which flows its only overland link to China.
C. Raja Mohan, the director of the Carnegie India Delhi-based think tank, said a deal, if any, could involve the removal of Kashmir-based projects from the official CPEC listing and their execution under a separate bilateral arrangement.
India’s China policy off target, says Modi’s Mandarin-speaking ‘guided missile’
“Delhi has said it is open to consultations with China on the development of regional transborder infrastructure. Beijing, in turn, has apparently floated a number of new proposals for Delhi’s consideration,” Mohan wrote in The Indian Express. “These include the extension of the CPEC to India, promoting connectivity across the Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, Nepal, Sikkim and other places. If it has the will, China should not find it too hard to address India’s concerns on sovereignty on Kashmir,” he said.
But China might struggle to gain Pakistan’s backing for such an extension of CPEC into India-administered Kashmir.
“I can’t imagine Pakistan agreeing to de-link projects in Gilgit-Baltistan from the CPEC portfolio. Such a move, even if accompanied by a plan to expand the project into India-administered Kashmir, would be perceived by Pakistanis as a direct capitulation to an Indian demand tied to sovereignty. And that’s something the Pakistanis can’t accept,” said Kugelman.
Pashtuns continue to rally for greater rights in Pakistan
The protest movement began in February against an extrajudicial killing, but now it's been transformed into a wider call for ethnic rights.
Following rallies in Peshawar and Lahore, ethnic Pashtuns gathered in Swat demanding greater rights in Pakistan.
They're calling for the military to remove landmines and checkpoints - as well as the return of many who've disappeared.
Army commanders are angry at the anti-military protests but are offering to hold talks.
Hazara community's hunger strike in Quetta enters second day as protesters demand 'right to life'
Syed Ali Shah
Angered at the killing of two Hazara men on Saturday, members of the persecuted Hazara community are staging a protest in Quetta against the unabated killings of members of their community.
Led by social activist Jalila Haider, the protesters continued their hunger strike outside Quetta Press Club for the second day on Sunday.
The protesters criticised law enforcement and security agencies for their inaction and failure in preventing Hazaras from being murdered with impunity. The Hazara community also demanded that Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa meet the widows of the deceased men and hear their grievances.
Jalila Haider said that the hunger strike would continue until the Hazara community is provided with adequate security.
Meanwhile, a protest rally was held under the banner of the Balochistan Shia Conference at Shuhada Chowk, Alamdar Road — a Hazara-dominated neighbourhood.
"The people of Balochistan do not want roti, kapra and makaan; all we want is the right to life," former PPP lawmaker Nasir Shah told the gathering, which was attended by members of the Hazara Democratic Party, the Balochistan National Party, the Jamhuri Watan Party and others.
"Peace is destroyed when the state becomes weak," he said, criticising the "wrong policies" which have led to "such disastrous circumstances".
Other speakers commemorated the "over 2,000 Hazaras killed and 3,000 injured in targeted attacks in the past few years."
Zair Agha, a speaker at the rally, said: "Our neighbourhoods have been turned into orphanages. Our blood has become cheaper than water."
The protests began after two Hazara men were shot dead in the fourth targeted attack this month in Quetta.
Two members of the community were killed and another was injured in an attack in the Western Bypass area of the city last Sunday. A shopkeeper was gunned down on April 18 while another Hazara man was killed in the beginning of the month.
Sectarian terrorism in Balochistan has disproportionately targeted people from the predominantly Shia Hazara community, easily identifiable because of their distinct physical attributes.
A report by the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) released last month stated that 509 Hazaras were killed in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta in the last five years.
ISLAM & IGNORANCE IN ACTION TO KILL A WOMAN - Honor killings are being labelled in Italy as a Pakistani phenomenon
By Sabika Shah Povia
I was sitting in the airport transit area in Bahrain when this young Pakistani girl ran up to me. Her name was Sitara. She had been living in the Italian town of Brescia with her parents for a few years. Her father wouldn’t allow her to go to school, so she would always get into discussions with him. That’s when he decided it was time to send her back to Gujrat and get her married, just like her more traditional sister had long before her.
“So you’re going back to get married?” I asked.
“There’s no way I’m boarding the connecting flight to Pakistan!” she laughed. “I have some money, I’ll figure something out.”
I never heard from her again. This was seven years ago, but not much has changed for young women in Brescia today, the city in the northern region of Lombardy, Italy’s industrial hub, with the largest Pakistani minority in the country. About 70 per cent of the 118,000 Pakistani passport-holders live in and around the area, and only about 37pc of the total are women.
“You heard the story of one Sitara, but in Brescia all the stories are like that,” says Wajahat Abbas Kazmi, a Pakistani activist and film director living in Italy. Wajahat used to be a member of the community of Brescia until he decided to break his engagement and come out as being gay. His family left the city shortly afterwards to move back to Pakistan.
“My parents had spent years building a reputation for themselves. I didn’t fit in anymore,” he continues. “I was afraid of the consequences, which is why I told them over the phone before moving to a different city.”
Last week, Wajahat launched the campaign #TruthForSana on social networks after the case of Sana Cheema, the 25-year-old Italian Pakistani from Brescia, who died while on a trip to Pakistan visiting family, began making headlines. Investigations in Pakistan are still on, but the Italian press seems to have closed the case: Sana was murdered for so-called honour after refusing to marry the man her family had chosen for her.
It was easy for them to jump to conclusions due to the troubled relationship with this particular Pakistani community and the precedent of the 2006 murder of Hina Saleem, a 21-year-old from Brescia who was killed by her family for “becoming too Western”. At a moment that sees Italy as the main country of arrival for migrants in Europe and after a very polarised election that saw immigration at the top of the debate and resulted in Italians voting anti-establishment and for far-right parties in record numbers, people seem to be waiting for immigrants to make a false move.
Italy has made the mistake of dealing with the migration situation as an emergency from the start. This didn’t help integrate migrants and favoured the creation of small, closed communities. All the unfounded fears of migrants stealing people’s jobs, of Islamisation of the West, of an increase in crime, come out when a story like that of Sana is reported.
“The hijab she would have never worn while alive, was put on her dead body,” wrote one national newspaper in Italy. “She died where she was born, but where she never wanted to return,” wrote another. “This is how Muslim fathers keep them away from temptations,” was another’s headline. Islam and its alleged incompatibility with the West is at the centre of the debate around this case. Honour killings are being labelled as a Pakistani phenomenon, connected to religion and a patriarchal society, and not to social class and education.
“My friends messaged me asking me if I’d heard about Sana,” says Iqra, a 19-year-old law student of Pakistani descent. “I had been watching the media coverage of the case and began getting worried about the future. Issues like these touch you personally. The media is spreading prejudice against our community by generalising the situation of all Pakistanis in Italy. We’re not all like that.”
Iqra grew up in Italy, studied in Italian public schools, and perfectly blended within society, yet she loves wearing traditional clothes and two of her best friends are second-generation Pakistani immigrants, just like her.
Thousands of Pakistanis reach Europe every year. They are mostly young, unskilled men with rural backgrounds. They seem to believe that they can come to this country and live without ever mixing with “the other”. Their purpose is usually to make enough money to support their families back home or to build a house to go back to.
“I wouldn’t kill my daughter if she wanted to marry an Italian,” says Waqar Amin, who was born in Italy and is expecting a baby girl. “I wouldn’t be happy and I would tell her I disapprove. We shouldn’t hate Italians, especially since we live in this country, but our culture is different.”
Even if police end up revealing that Sana Cheema did die from natural causes, it will be too late to stop the backlash this case has caused on the entire Pakistani community in Italy.
عمران اورالطاف ایک دوسرے کاعکس، پہلے لندن ، اب بنی گالہ سے کراچی پرراج کرنے کے خواب دیکھے جارہے ہیں: بلاول
چیئرمین پیپلزپارٹی بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا ہے کہ خان صاحب!پرانے نعرے کی ناکامی کے بعد نیا نعرہ لے آیا، عمران اور الطاف ایک دوسرے کاعکس ہیں، ایک ہڑتال تودوسرا دھرنا دیتا ہے،ایک تقریر کرکے معافی مانگتا ہے دوسرا یوٹرن پریوٹرن لیتا ہے، پہلے لندن سے اب بنی گالہ سے کراچی پرراج کرنے کے خواب دیکھے جارہے ہیں،ہم بانی ایم کیوایم کی سیاست کے پہلے دن سے مخالف تھے۔انہوں نے اتوار کو لیاقت آباد ٹنکی گراو¿نڈ میں خطاب کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ اہل کراچی کومیرا سلام! میں شہیدوں کوسلام پیش کرتاہوں۔یہ وہی علاقہ ہے جہاں پہلے گولی بعد میں بات کی جاتی تھی۔یہ وہی علاقہ ہے جہاں میں پیدا ہوا اور سانس لیا۔لالوکھیت صابری برادران کا کراچی ہے۔ صابری برادران نے میرے نانا کیلئے سدا رہے آباد، بھٹو زندہ باد قوالی بنائی۔انہوں نے کہا کہ شہر قائد میں نسل پرستی کے بیج بوئے گئے،طاقت کے زور پرکراچی میں پیپلزپارٹی کی حمایت کوختم کرنے کی کوشش کی گئی، اور نفرت کے بیج بوئے گئے۔پیپلزپارٹی کوختم کرنے کیلئے ہزاروں جیالوں کوشہید کردیا گیا۔ جیالوں کوگھروں میں گھس کرگولیاں ماری گئیں۔ مگر دیکھ لوہم فنا نہیں ہوئے۔کیونکہ بھٹو تقدیر کاوہ پرند ہ ہے جوباربار اپنی ہی راکھ سے پیدا ہوتا ہے۔بلاول نے کہا کہ 30سالوں میں کراچی میں جو ہوا وہ سب کے سامنے ہے۔لیکن وہ وقت گزر گیا اب کیا کرنا ہے یہ پیغام لیکر میں آپ کے پاس آیا ہوں۔انہوں نے کہا کہ کراچی کامسئلہ کراچی میں پیدا ہونے والا اور محبت کرنے والا ہی حل کرسکتا ہے۔ اور ہاں ! میں بھی کراچی والا ہوں۔ جائیں اپنے بڑے سے پوچھو کہ انہوں نے بھٹو سے کیسے وفا کی ؟ انہوں نے کہا کہ کراچی میں اگر آپریشن قائم ہوا تواس آپریشن کے کپتان وزیراعلیٰ سندھ تھے۔یہ الگ بات ہے کہ اب ہرکوئی امن کاجھنڈا لیکر پھر رہا ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ جب دہشتگردوں کے سامنے سب کے سرجھکے ہوئے تھے تب پیپلزپارٹی ان کے سامنے ڈٹی ہوئی تھی۔اب امن توقائم ہوگیا ہے لیکن اب سوچا کہ پولیس کوفعال کیا جائے۔انہوں نے کہا کہ پولیس میں سیاسی بھرتیوں کوختم کرنا ہوگا۔ایسی پولیس ہوگی جس پرعوام کواعتماد ہو۔ہم پرفیکٹ نہیں مگر ہم ٹارگٹ کلر والی پارٹی نہیں ہے۔لاء اینڈ آرڈر کے نام پرانسانی حقوق کی دھجیاں اڑانا
بند کرو۔انہوں نے کہا کہ ہم الطاف حسین کی سیاست کے پہلے دن سے ہی خلاف تھے۔آج وہ بھی ہیں۔جنہوں نے الطاف کوچھوڑ دیا مگر سیاست آج بھی الطاف والی کررہے ہیں۔انہوں نے کہا کہ جوجماعت مینڈیٹ لیتی ہے اس کاکام ہے کہ عوامی مسائل حل کرے۔ کراچی میں پانی اور صفائی بڑا مسئلہ بن چکی ہے۔جبکہ کراچی کے دواضلاع میں بڑی سڑکیں روز دھوئی جاتی ہیں۔بلاول نے کہا کہ ہمیں ووٹ دوایم کیوایم کی طرح گٹروں میں بوریاں ڈال کربند نہیں کریں گے۔ایم کیوایم والے کہتے ہیں ووٹ ہمیں دولیکن بدانتظامی پرگالیاں پیپلزپارٹی کودو۔انہوں نے کہاکہ ہم نے پورے سندھ میں سب سے زیادہ کراچی میں ترقیاتی اسکیمیں بنائیں۔۔کراچی میں کالجز، سکولز،ہسپتال بنائیں لیکن ان لوگوں نے کیا کام کیا ہے؟ایشیائ کا سب سے بڑا دل کا ہسپتال بھی کراچی میں ہے۔انہوں نے کہا کہ آج ایک لیڈر کراچی میں نفرت کے بیج بونے کی کوشش کررہا ہے۔طالبان کے بچھڑے بھائی کوپرامن کراچی پسند نہیں ہے۔عمران اور الطاف ایک دوسرے کاعکس ہیں۔۔عمران خان نے کراچی والوں کوزندہ لاشیں کہا۔ایک ہڑتال کرتا ہے تودوسرا دھرنا دیتا ہے۔ایک تقریر کرکے معافی مانگتا ہے تودوسرا یوٹرن لیتا ہے۔انہوں نے کہا کہ پہلے لندن سے اب بنی گالہ سے کراچی پرراج کرنے کے خواب دیکھے جارہے ہیں۔ پرانے نعرے کی ناکامی کے بعد نیا نعرہ لے آیا۔دونہیں ایک پاکستان۔ انہوں نے کہاکہ خان صاحب کیا آپ عوام کوبے وقوف سمجھتے ہو؟ آپ خیبرپختونخواہ میں توکاکردگی نہ دکھا سکے؟ بلاول نے کہا کہ نوازشریف وعدہ کراچی والوں سے اور تکمیل کہیں اور کرتے ہیں۔۔نوازشریف نے رہی سہی بجلی بھی چھین لی۔۔کراچی کے لوگوں کومہینوں گیس کی فراہمی روک کرمحروم رکھا۔ نوازشریف آپ ووٹ کی عزت کی بات کرتے ہو؟ آپ کوعزت تب ملتی جب آپ پارلیمان ،عوام کی عزت کرتے۔
https://www.nawaiwaqt.com.pk/29-Apr-2018/815533
https://www.nawaiwaqt.com.pk/29-Apr-2018/815533
#KarachiBhuttoKa #KarachiKisKaBhuttoKa - #PPP will free Karachi from ‘Mustaqil Qaumi Musibat’: Bilawal Bhutto
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Sunday came down hard on political rival Muttahida Qaumi Movement, stating his party will free Karachi from ‘Mustaqil Qaumi Musibat’.
Taking a jibe at his party’s arch-rival MQM, while addressing a party rally at Liaquatabad’s Tanki Ground, he said Karachi’s mandate has always been hijacked by use of force.
“PPP is not the party of target killers or sector commanders. We didn’t run the city’s affairs on directions received from London,” he said, adding that if the founder of MQM was considered wrong for his political stance, so should his associates.
“We were against the politics of MQM-founder from day one. How could those who couldn’t be loyal to their leaders be loyal to you? They may have parted ways with him but they are still pursuing his political stance.”
The PPP chairman appealed to the people of Karachi to vote for him. He claimed that his party had continued to work for the city’s development even after its mandate was ‘stolen’.
Turning the barrel towards Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan, Bilawal said Imran was pursuing the politics of hate introduced by the MQM leader.
“Imran and the MQM founder, both, are a reflection of one another. Karachi was controlled by London and now Imran is planning to run the affairs of Karachi from his residence in Bani Gala,” he said.
The PPP chairman taunted Imran for taking Liaquat Jatoi in his party’s fold.
“Imran has now added a politician to his party who is the only Sindh chief minister to be dismissed over corruption charges.”
Bilawal further said that certain forces did not like the relationship between the people of the city and the party.
“Seeds of hatred were sown to stop PPP in Karachi; you have witnessed what happened in the last 30 last years,” he said. “Only those who love Karachi can resolve the issues of this city.”
Stating that Karachi was his home, he said his party was not ready to tolerate lawlessness in the city.
“We brought peace in the city by launching the Karachi Operation under Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah against terrorists and militant wings,” said the PPP chief.
http://www.thesindhtimes.com/pak/04/ppp-will-free-karachi-mustaqil-qaumi-musibat-bilawal-bhutto/