Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Pakistan Ranks 5th in list of 50 most Dangerous Countries for Christians
According to Open Doors USA ( a non-denominational mission supporting persecuted Christians in over 60 countries ) around 50,000 Christians are being tortured in hard labor camps or put in jails for believing in God.To be Christian is illegal in North Korea therefore if it is revealed either they are killed or brought to hard labor camps.
North Korea is on the top of this list since last 16 years whereas with Muslim majority country Afghanistan is on second number right beneath the communist country. North Korean leader Kim compelled public to worship his family, said president David Curry of Open Door organization. First time in history Afghanistan secured this position.
Citizens of both countries are impatient to Christian faith. David Curry said that extremist in Islam dominant in torturing Christians and in creating conflicting situation in 35 of the 50 countries of this watch list.
In 2017, Christian religion freedom is mostly oppressed in the following ten countries according to Open Doors list.
North Korea ranks first, Afghanistan second, Somalia third, Sudan forth and Pakistan is on fifth number. Then come Eritrea, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. Iran is tenth on this list.
- North Korea
- Afghanistan
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Pakistan
- Eritrea
- Libya
- Iraq
- Yemen
- Iran
- India
- Saudi Arabia
- Maldives
- Nigeria
- Syria
- Uzbekistan
- Egypt
- Vietnam
- Turkmenistan
- Laos
Most of these are the Muslim majority countries. David Curry said that ISIS is expanding its grievous vision through extremist literature and explosive material making ideas therefore they do not need any proper platform.
Since last 26 years Open Doors in USA provides list of Christian persecution, to be noticed by other government and NGOs around the world so they could raise voice for Christians who shed their blood for Christian faith. About one out of twelve Christians is living in the areas where either Christianity is not allowed or penalized.
Unfortunately, no one is there to protect Christians rather their persecution rate is increasing day by day. Curry told that over 215 Christians are persecuted worldwide for practicing Christianity especially women. Around 2,260 women were compelled to marry after their abduction, rape and conversion to Islam in Muslim majority countries. Most importantly such cases are not reported.
Te aim of Open Door USA to raise voice and aware other Christians around the world about persecuted Christians as the Holy Bible says that “Be the voice of voiceless”.
According to Open Door annual watch list published in National press Conference of Washington DC, there are 50 most life threatening countries for Christians.
Pakistan - 72 militants arrested in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were graduates, postgraduates
A number of militants held in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the last several years included some highly educated individuals with master’s degrees from various institutions of the country, an official source confided to The News.
The source stated that the regular police and the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had carried out a number of operations across the province during the last few years and apprehended hundreds of militants.
“Over 1,650 militants have been held in operations by the CTD alone or with the local police since September 2014. A total of 1,182 militants associated with different groups were held from September 2014 till the end of 2016 while 473 were rounded up during actions in 2017,” an official serving in the headquarters of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police told The News.
“Some of those rounded up during these actions were highly qualified. As many as 36 had done their masters in various disciplines while another 36 have done graduation from different educational institutions of the country,” the source disclosed.
The militants were held for various offences including terrorist attacks and target killings during the last over three years. Almost all, or most, of these operations were carried out by the Counter-Terrorism Department in support of army, local police and other forces.
As Peshawar remained the prime target, with most of the attacks taking place in the city, the highest number of arrests was also made from the city.
“Despite being educated, many joined the militants because of their ideology as well as for other reasons,” a source said, adding that some key militants who surrendered in the past were also educated.
The KP Inspector General of Police, Salahuddin Khan Mahsud, when contacted, told The News that this is a fact that some of the militants held in recent years were educated.
“The educated ones include those who studied at madrassas as well as conventional schools and colleges,” he said without elaborating.
“Apart from the graduates and those who had completed their masters in different subjects, there are around 100 others who had passed their intermediate examination while around 274 had done their matriculation,” the source disclosed.
They joined one militant group or the other after they left studies or were still continuing their education at various levels.
“The highest number of arrests of militants during the last over three years was made in Peshawar, followed by Swabi, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Mardan. In Peshawar alone, 328 militants were arrested which makes 19.81 percent of the total arrests,” the source said. Nasir Khan Durrani, who headed the KP Police for over three years, explained that education raised awareness, coupled with increased sensitivity to the issues like social injustice, absence of the rule of law and discriminatory justice.
“Misinterpretation of Quranic injunctions without understanding reference to context and spirit of Islam and idealising era of caliphates and attributing downfall of Muslims to deviations from practices of that era are also among the factors of educated people joining militants’ rings,” Nasir Durrani told The News.
While going through the arrests made in the last almost 10 years, some of the arrested men were still studying in universities and professional colleges when they were held. According to Nasir Durrani, glamourising of vigilantism by the media and intolerance in society due to political and religious leadership are the other factors behind educated people joining militants.
The educated militants mostly did the job of writing literature for their respective groups and operating the social media.
“Out of more than 1,650 militants rounded up by KP Police in the last over three years, 163 went to madrassas for Islamic education. Of these, 94 passed the first grade of their madrassas and had to quit or were still continuing their religious schooling,” the source revealed.
Among those held, more than 300 were illiterate while the status of another 80 was not known, assuming they also could not receive formal schooling.
“A majority of the arrested men are between the ages of 20 and 30. Around 378 of the held militants were from the age group of 20 to 25 while another 330 were from 26 to 30 years old,” the source informed. “Another 140 of those arrested were teenagers aged 14 to 19 years,” he added. Ideology and other factors were the reason for the involvement of these men in militancy, the source added.
Balochistan: Five Pakistan soldiers killed in Turbat ambush, Railway track blown up in Dera Murad Jamali
Five soldiers of Pakistan paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) have been killed and at least six other wounded as Baloch fighters ambushed their convoy on Monday in Shaapuk area in district Kech Balochistan. While the Jaffarabad Express train was slightly damaged when unknown men blew up a six-foot railway track in Dera Murad Jamali.
According to details, a convoy of four vehicles of Pakistan forces was attacked with rocket launchers and other automatic weapons in Shaapuk area of Turbat Balochistan as it slowed down at a bridge.
An eye-witness told Balochwarna News that the Pakistan forces were ambushed from two sides due to which they even had no time to retaliate. ‘Two vehicles sped away leaving behind their other friends in two vehicles. One of the remaining vehicles was destroyed, all people on broad most likely died,’ the source further elaborate.
However, Pakistani media reported that the force’s vehicle overturned as it tried to speed away from the scene of attack due to which five troops died.
The BLF claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement to media BLF spokesperson, Gwahram Baloch said the killed soldiers were SSG Commandos specially assigned for protection of CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor).
He said the Baloch nation has rejected this exploitative project because hundreds of thousands of non-Baloch will be brought and settled in Balochistan under this project. ‘It is a conspiracy to turn the Baloch people into a minority in Balochistan.’
He warned Pakistan, China and other investors not to invest in any projects against the will of Baloch people otherwise they will be responsible for any harmed cause to them.
In another incident, unknown men targeted the Quetta-Lahore bound Jaffarabad Express train in Jatt Mahallah area of Dera Murad Jamali on Monday.
The remote-controlled explosion damaged a six-foot portion of the rail line and also partially damaged the train.
No casualties have been reported in this incident.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the Baloch Republican Army, Sarbaz Baloch, accepted the responsibility for the attack.
He also urged Baloch people to avoid travelling on trains because, he said, ‘we will target Pakistani installations.’
He said such attacks will continue until freedom of Balochistan.
http://balochwarna.com/2018/01/16/balochistan-five-pakistan-soldiers-killed-in-turbat-ambush-railway-track-blew-up-in-dera-murad-jamali/
For months, a father of sexually abused girls has been seeking justice. Will the govt act?
Talking to Daily Times, Masih said that his three daughters (names have been removed to protect identity of the victims), were subjected to sexual assault by family relatives while he was away working in a factory.
He further stated that in April 2017, an FIR was lodged against the accused leading to their arrest, but they were later set free by the police authorities. Masih also accused his relatives of kidnapping one of his daughters as means to blackmail him to prevent him from pursuing justice.
In an appeal to Punjab chief minister Shehbaz Sharif, Masih requested that his case be given same importance as the recent incident in Kasur where 8-year-old Zainab was raped, murdered and left in a dumpster. Those accused include Masih’s brother, cousin and brother’s son.
He also revealed that the police officials have been forcing him to withdraw the cases, but he said he would continue his silent protest until justice is served.
Masih has protested outside Islamabad Press Club for four months before coming to Lahore, but to no avail.
#Pakistan - #JusticeForZainab - #Kasur — epicenter of child abuse
The sexual abuse and murder of children, primarily girls but boys as well, has reached epidemic proportions, not words that we use lightly. Although Kasur is identified as the general location of many of these crimes, it is not difficult to plot a map that shows that they occur in every province, no exceptions. Today the nation is gripped by grief and anger at the rape and murder of eight-year-old Zainab, kidnapped on her way to religious studies and found days later on a rubbish dump. The full horror of her ordeal before she died is emerging with the autopsy report that she was raped and finally strangled to death. She had probably been dead two or three days when found. She was being cared for by a maternal aunt while her parents were performing Umrah, and they returned home to find themselves and their dead daughter at the centre of a media storm that is going to scar them for life.
Appalling as the case is its very ordinariness is even more so. Another child was raped and killed in Sargodha the day after Zainab was found. The area around Kasur appears to be home to a man or men who are serial rapists and murderers of girls between six and 10 years; and there has been on average a murder a month since early 2017. There are DNA matches that link a perpetrator in all the cases. In Zainab’s case, there is CCTV footage that may show her with her abductor. He is in all likelihood a local man.
Once again the police appear to be getting nowhere fast. There is a wealth of evidence in their hands but they lack the willpower, the expertise or the all-important political support to advance the case beyond crocodile tears and handwringing. The people of Kasur are rightly outraged, and they have protested many times in the past but to no avail. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a monster on the loose. Find him and stop this chain of horror, and do it fast.
#Pakistan - #JusticeForZainab - Say no to sexual abuse
By Sherry Rehman
As the news cycle inevitably shifts to politics, violent extremism, the national debt, we all know that little Zainab’s story will fade away into a niche issue until the next such horror erupts. That is the nature of human memory, especially in the age of quantum processing and 24/7 television.
Our task as citizens, legislators, public representatives is not small. If we use our individual and collective agency to effect change, our first, minimal responsibility to our people, our children will be on its way to opening the gateway to change.
The one most widespread response that sexual abuse of any kind elicits, the world over, is the resort to silence. The videos that exposed a hall of horrors in the annals of sexual abuse in 2015 from Kasur took a long time in pushing their way to public light. Many lives were permanently ruined in the blackmail and maiming that underpinned those serial crimes. The community’s anger was matched by a sad, unfair seam of shame and socially induced guilt that invariably scars victims and their families. Such social attitudes helped in burying the case. Islands of complicity and the disastrous role of privatised justice played a huge part in either buying off or scaring away the affected families from pursuing prosecution. A key lesson learnt was that the power of socially-induced shame must never be underestimated in pushing the scale, nature and perpetrators of this evil under the rug.
But even with the muzzling of voices, the data on the subject is harrowing. Global accounts suggest that one in five women and one in 13 men already report being sexually abused as a child. In Pakistan, according to SAHIL, the NGO that works on child abuse, in only the reported cases, every day, more than 11 children fall prey to sexual abuse. Forty-three per cent of the survivors said they knew their assaulters, while 16 per cent testified to family abusers.
Clearly, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
First thing first. Of course we must hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that each province and the Islamabad federal area have optimal laws in place. Without the laws little will get done on the ground. At the federal level, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000, which provides for free legal advice for victims, just does not make the policy implementation cut. Out of all four provinces, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have done better in having the most robust child protection laws in place. Punjab, which is home to 62 per cent of the child abuse cases, has no such omnibus law on the table. The existing Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children Act of 2004 is too weak and of low scope to cope with the complex set of protections needed for a material impact on such crimes. Kasur itself continues to report 11 such more grisly crimes just in one year before Zainab’s brutally ravaged body was dumped on a trash heap.
But even once the laws are in place, as we know, a law is as good as its citizens and the justice system allows it to be.
Let’s be clear: Every law will require a social coalition against sexual abuse, and it will need time. The real change that will shift the game on the ground will not happen overnight, or even in 10 years or 20. It will take a lifetime of pushing, but there can be no doubt that each push will be worth the effort. Not only time, and of course dogged commitment will be needed, but a resilience against reversals. Rights campaigners will all know that after the media starts reporting, and victims gather courage to speak out, we can even expect perhaps a visible spike in crimes based on higher reporting. The disappointment against more cases coming to public light must therefore only be handled with more action and support, not a debunking of laws or a resort to inaction fuelled by the very natural response of despair.
A few non-governmental organisations are doing important work. Let us encourage them instead of penalising them, and help with building global linkages. Sexual abuse is the one nasty worm that infects every class, every community in Pakistan, but the light in this tunnel is that sexual abuse both against children and women and men is embedded in regional and growing global trends of activism against such crimes. Let us identify all such potential partners as actors for a better future for our young people. Let us resolve to do more in just making public discourse a safer space for victims and their families so they can report, see justice and rebuild their lives.
Bilawal Bhutto and Shehzad Roy collaborate to raise awareness on sexual abuse
During a press conference, Bilawal expressed his sentiments on the Sindh Government taking all efforts to adopt life skills-based education in curriculums far and wide across the province.
“We cannot fight child abuse if our children don’t know how to protect themselves,” he said.
He further added that the life skills-based education curriculum has been adopted at the Fatima Jinnah Government School showing positive results; he went on to say that the Sindh government hopes to implement a similar curriculum that will be made part of 200 schools across the province.
Social activist and singer Shehzad Roy of Zindagi Trust joined hands with Bilawal in his efforts to raise awareness pertaining to child abuse amongst school-going children.
It is with immense hope and conviction that these efforts turn out to be fruitful and the future generations are given the chance to flourish in a safe and healthy atmosphere.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/182281/bilawal-bhutto-shehzad-roy-collaboration-raise-awareness-sexual-abuse/
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will address a public gathering on occasion of 31st martyrdom anniversary of MRD leader Shaheed Fazil Rahu in Rahuki district Badin on January 17
Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will address a public gathering on the occasion of 31st martyrdom anniversary of MRD leader Shaheed Fazil Rahu in Rahuki, district Badin on Wednesday, January 17.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Peoples Party Balochistan will hold a public meeting in Balochistan’s industrial capital Hub on Saturday, January 20.
Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari will address the public meeting and announce his political and development plans for the province.
PPP Balochistan has started preparations for the public meeting in full gears and vowed that this will be a historic Jalsa.
https://mediacellppp.wordpress.com/