Friday, March 8, 2019
#AuratAzadiMarch2019 - Women take to the streets of Pakistan to rewrite their place in society
Sabrina Toppa
Campaigners will march on International Women’s Day to protest against harassment, child marriage and ‘honour killings’During Jalwat Ali’s school days in Lahore, there were limited spaces to gather with other women, never mind flood the streets with punchy placards.
Public spaces often feel constricted in Pakistan, as though under critical male scrutiny. But over the past few days, Ali has been recruiting dozens of women, from garment workers to domestic helpers who barely get a day off. “To solve any problem, we need to make a collective effort,” she says.
On Friday, a series of International Women’s Day marches will be held in several Pakistani cities, calling for women’s place in society to be rewritten.
Organisers hope the aurat march (“women’s march”) and aurat azadi march (“women’s liberation march”) will bring a cross-section of society on to the streets to draw attention to the struggle for reproductive, economic, and social justice across Pakistan. The marchers will be protesting against sexual harassment in the workplace, child marriage, “honour killings”, wage inequalities and limited political representation.
The aim is to reach ordinary women in factories, homes, and offices, says Nighat Dad, an aurat march organiser in Lahore.
“We want an organic movement by women demanding equal access to justice and ending discrimination of all kinds,” she says.
Her fellow activist, Leena Ghani, points out that Pakistani women have a history of taking to the streets, famously during military dictator Zia ul-Haq’s martial law in the 1980s: “Many women before us have paved the way for us. There is a tradition of women being politically progressive in Pakistan.”
While Pakistan has made major strides towards gender equality – achieving greater workforce participation, reserved seats in parliament, and anti-discrimination laws for women – poorer, marginalised women and transgender citizens continue to struggle, Ghani says.
Designer Shehzil Malik has created a series of striking posters for the aurat march that counter typical representations of Pakistani women as docile and subservient. “These women mean business,” says Malik.
Speakers at the Lahore march range from a woman fighting to reform marriage laws to the women who worked on the landmark Punjab Domestic Workers’ Act – legislation that outlaws child labour in homes and provides maternity benefits to workers.
“The aurat march will allow us to display unity with other workers and women,” said Arooma Shahzad, a key campaigner on the new domestic workers’ laws.
Others, like Laaleen Sukhera, a writer with three young daughters in Lahore, will march to protest against Pakistan’s regressive family laws. After years of failing to receive adequate child support and alimony, Sukhera’s acrimonious divorce was an unpleasant awakening.
“The time for change is now,” she says. “The Pakistani mindset tends to be Victorian. The system frequently grants mothers custody, but makes life a living hell for them, with little or no support for raising kids.”
Pakistan's schools crisis has 'devastating impact on millions of girls'
Women are also protesting against discriminatory policies in universities, where male and female students are afforded different levels of freedom. “Most university hostels have a relationship of mistrust and constant surveillance of women,” says Wafa Asher, 21, a university student in Lahore participating in the aurat march. “There is over-policing of dress and behaviour and early curfews for women.”
A Pakistani university recently caused a furore on social media by banning women from wearing skinny jeans and sleeveless shirts.
“Given the issues the average Pakistani woman faces – sometimes with nowhere to go – creating a space that recognises a woman’s right to be there is integral,” says Kanwal Ahmed, the founder behind women-only Facebook group Soul Sisters, which has attracted nearly 150,000 people.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/08/women-take-to-the-streets-of-pakistan-to-rewrite-their-place-in-society-international-womens-day
India and Pakistan Are a Brewing Nuclear Nightmare
By James Stavridis
India’s election and Pakistan’s economic crisis are coming at a bad time.
While India and Pakistan seem to have stopped bombing one another, the causes behind the cross-border tensions aren’t going away any time soon. The two nations are nuclear-armed; have large conventional armed forces; have had four serious wars since they became independent in 1947; and have enormous cultural and religious antipathy. This is a prescription for a disaster, and yet the confrontation is flying below the international radar - well below North Korea, Brexit, China-U.S. trade confrontations, Iran and even the “yellow vests” of France. A full-blown war in the valleys and mountains of Kashmir is a very real possibility.
When I was the supreme allied commander of NATO, the most important mission of the alliance was dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, our Pakistani partners continued to support many of the radical elements of the Taliban. They were afraid of creeping Indian influence, and much preferred a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan to a more Western-leaning and independent Afghani government. I dealt often with General Ashfaq Kayani, the lean, chain-smoking chief of staff of the Pakistani army (arguably a more powerful position than the prime minister). He frequently came to NATO’s political headquarters in Brussels to brief the combined military leadership of the alliance on the key threat Pakistan faced several years ago – internal terrorism. Yet always hovering over our conversations was the Pakistani military’s deepest concern: India.
The most recent crisis was set off in mid-February when a Pakistani terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, detonated a suicide bomb in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers. It was the deadliest attack on security forces since that insurgency began in earnest decades ago. While the Pakistani government denied involvement in the bombing, India believes it was aware of the incident, and therefore responded with significant airstrikes into Pakistan. Two Indian fighter jets were shot down and a pilot captured. There was an unmistakable echo of the 1947 and 1965 Kashmir conflicts, in which tens of thousands died.
The extremely fragile cease-fire in place for two decades is fraying. Partly this is the result of domestic politics in India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected on a Hindu nationalist agenda, is up for re-election in April and May. After the Indian bombing of Pakistani territory, a popular hashtag in India became #Indiastrikesback. This is rare behavior, given that Indian armed forces have not otherwise crossed the so-called Line of Control between the nations since 1971. Former Indian Air Vice Marshall Arjun Subramanian, now a professor at Tufts University, told me, “At the strategic level, the strikes have signaled a heightened resolve on the part of the Modi government to change the response matrix in the aftermath of a confirmed jihadi attack from safe havens in Pakistan.”
Most worrisome, of course, are the significant nuclear arsenals of the combatants. Each has roughly 150 missiles, although only India has a submarine-based ballistic missile capability and thus a true nuclear triad (land, air and sea). Pakistan is developing sea-launched cruise missiles to counter that Indian threat. India has adopted a “no first use” doctrine, although Pakistan – which has smaller conventional forces and thus potentially the need for a more ambiguous doctrine - has not made an equivalent pledge. Paradoxically, the fact that both sides want to avoid a nuclear conflict has probably prevented an escalation on the conventional side during recent crises.
In past conflicts, the U.S. has played a mediating role. But today Pakistan is more inclined to work with China. India has strong relations with both the U.S. and Russia, but is unlikely to turn to either, so as not to appear beholden to any peer “great state.” This tracks with the tendency of the Trump administration to let nations work things out themselves. Other than National Security Advisor John Bolton’s sensible comment that the U.S. supports India’s right to self-defense, the administration is staying on the sidelines. Complicating the picture is that the Washington is trying to enlist Pakistani aid in ending the long war in Afghanistan by reining in the Taliban.
What the U.S. can do most effectively is to quietly encourage both sides to step back from escalation – which Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan did by releasing the captured Indian jet pilot unharmed. We should also offer our intelligence capabilities to both India and Pakistan as each of them deal with the disruptive terrorist groups operating from Pakistani soil - Jaish-e-Mohammed and the even more deadly Lashkar-e-Taiba. The U.S. could also encourage other mediation by allies and international organizations, in particular Saudi Arabia, which reportedly was influential in the release of the Indian pilot. As Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., recently pointed out, Pakistan in on the verge of an economic crisis. While the Khan government has tried to defuse the situation, in part by appealing to the International Monetary fund, internal pressures are building. Make no mistake: With Pakistan’s economic plight and the upcoming elections in India, South Asia is in a situation in which a military miscalculation, perhaps even a nuclear one, is real possibility.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-08/india-pakistan-crisis-a-brewing-nuclear-nightmare
#Pakistan - #PPP - In a historic first, a female legislator chairs Senate session
Senator Krishna Kumari of the PPP became the first woman to chair a session of the Senate on Friday after she was asked by the Senate chairperson to chair the session to mark International Women’s Day.
“Chairman Senate of Pakistan decided to make our colleague Krishna Kumari Kohli aka Kishoo Bai to Chair the Senate for today on Women’s Day,” Senator Faisal Javed tweeted.
"I consider myself lucky today by chairing the Senate session, I salute Pakistan and the people of Pakistan.
Senator Kumari made history after becoming the first Hindu woman to be elected to the Senate. She was elected on the reserved seat for women minorities from Sindh.
She continued to achieve accolades for Pakistan and was featured last year on BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world.
Senator Kumari is a member of Sindh’s Hindu community based in Thar. She hails from the family of freedom fighter Rooplo Kolhi.
https://www.samaa.tv/news/2019/03/in-a-historic-first-a-female-legislator-chairs-senate-session/
بلاول کا وزیراعظم کی تقریر پر ردعمل
چیئرمین پاکستان پیپلز بلاول بھٹو نے وزیر اعظم عمران خان کی تقریر کا جواب دے دیا۔ اُن کا کہنا ہے کہ اگر وزیراعظم میں ہمت ہوتی تو وہ میری تقریر کا جواب قومی اسمبلی میں ہی دیتے۔
سماجی رابطے کی ویب سائٹ ٹوئٹر پر پیغام میں بلاول بھٹو نے کہا کہ وزیراعظم اسی لہجے و حوصلے سے مودی اورکالعدم تنظیموں سے متعلق بات کریں جیسے وہ اکثر اپوزیشن پرتنقید کرتے ہیں۔
I wish our PM could work up the courage to respond to Modi or talk against banned organizations with the same tone he frequently criticizes opposition. Also if he wants to respond to my NA speech should do so in parliament to my face. Cowards talk behind people’s backs.
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چیئرمین پی پی نے مزید کہا ہے کہ وزیراعظم قومی اسمبلی میں میری تقریر کا جواب دینا چاہتے ہیں تو اُنہیں پارلیمنٹ میں میرے سامنے ایسا کرنا چاہئے، بزدل ہمیشہ پیٹھ پیچھے بات کرتے ہیں۔
https://jang.com.pk/news/616442-bilawal-bhutto-hits-back-at-pm-imran-khan
خواتین کا عالمی دن، بلاول کا والدہ کو خراج تحسین
پاکستان سمیت آج ملک بھر میں خواتین کا عالمی دن منایا جارہا ہے، اسی حوالے
سے پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو نے اپنی والدہ کو خراج تحسین پیش کیا ہے۔
سماجی رابطے کی ویب سائٹ ٹوئٹر پر پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زردادی نے ایک نظم شیئر کی ہے جس میں وہ اپنی والدہ یعنی شہید بینظیر بھٹو کو خراج تحسین پیش کرتے نظر آرہے ہیں۔
بلاول نے ٹوئٹر پر شیئر کی گئی اپنی نظم میں لکھا کہ:
وہ دشمنوں پے تیر تھی، وہ بنتِ ذلفقارتھیسنو، کے اُس کی قبر بھی، فتح کا اک نشاں ہیںاُسی کے پاس تیر ہیں، اُسی کے ہاں کمان ہیں
اس کے علاوہ انہوں نے نظم کے اختتام پر ہیش ٹیگ کے ساتھ بینظیر بھٹو اور ویمنز ڈے لکھا۔ اور نا صرف یہ بلکہ انہوں نے اپنے ٹوئٹ میں ایک تصویر بھی شیئر کی ہے جس میں وہ، بختاور بھٹو اور آصفہ بھٹو بینظیر کے ہمراہ موجود ہیں۔
https://jang.com.pk/news/616416-bilawal-bhuttos-tweet-on-worlds-women-day
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