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Saturday, May 4, 2019

Journalists under threat from state and non-state actors: Bilawal

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday said that an ‘undeclared censorship’ is stifling the freedom of expression in Pakistan, and journalists are coming increasingly under threat from state and non-state actors, a private TV channel reported.

“There is an undeclared censorship in Pakistan,” he said during his speech at the Karachi Press Club to mark the World Press Freedom Day. “The space for democratic rights has dangerously shrunk in Pakistan. The International Press Freedom Day this year has been observed in Pakistan when the media and the right to freedom of expression are under siege,” he said.

“Journalists are under attack both from state and non-state actors. Of the 26 journalists murdered between 2013 and 2018, only 16 cases proceeded to courts, trials were only completed in six cases and only one conviction was awarded by a lower court. But none were punished as the sole conviction was also overturned,” he observed.

There is an undeclared censorship in Pakistan: Bilawal

Bilawal stressed the importance of the freedom of expression, even terming it ‘the mother of all human rights’. “Journalists and media persons as human rights defenders suffer the most when the freedom of expression is stifled,” he said. “After the right to life, the most important right is the right of expression and the freedom of association because all other rights cannot even be articulated without it,” he remarked.

The PPP chairman spoke of shrinking space for dissent in the country, saying, “Lately, this right has come under increasing threat. Some people hold guns, others carry religious text in order to stifle and dissent and coerce free speech. Rights in the country are shrinking generally and journalists have been killed in the line of duty with impunity.”

“Until recently, the freedom of expression was stifled secretly like ban on some TV channels or newspapers in some areas of the country or by manipulating advertisements to force the media to tow a certain line. These tactics were also referred to in the recent Supreme Court verdict in the Faizabad Dharna case,” he said. “Now there is open talk of bringing all media under one uniform body. Not long ago the government announced a crackdown on social media as well. The impunity of crimes against journalists and human rights defenders is a manifestation of the state curbing free expression and dissent,” he said.

Bilawal urged the government to legislate with a view to providing safety and security to journalists, and condemned the use of ‘economic strangulation’ as a new tool to curb the freedom of expression. “The PPP rejects the move to set up a super regulatory body over all media in Pakistan as well as the manner in which the Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (PECA) 2016 has been misapplied to stifle dissent, constructive criticism and alternative narratives,” he concluded.

https://dailytimes.com.pk/387909/journalists-under-threat-from-state-and-non-state-actors-bilawal/

India & Pakistan have established ‘English rule without the Englishman’

PANKAJ MISHRA

By enforcing colonial-era laws & using technology for illiberal causes, India and Pakistan are no different from the British when it comes to quashing dissent.

Last month, India and Pakistan marked the centenary of an atrocity in which the British army opened fire on thousands of unarmed civilians in Jallianwala Bagh, a walled public garden in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar. The victims — a mixed crowd of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs — had gathered to protest against the Rowlatt Act, a draconian legislation devised by a British judge that allowed British officials to detain Indians without trial and to arbitrarily restrict speech, writing and movement.

The unprovoked killing of hundreds of demonstrators effectively launched the anti-imperialist struggle in British-ruled India, provoking Muhammad Ali Jinnah, father of the Pakistani nation, as well as “Mahatma” Gandhi, father of the Indian nation, into unstinting opposition to the British.

Predictably, the 100th anniversary of the massacre elicited much righteous self-regard among Indian and Pakistani politicians. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took time off from his hectic election campaign to tweet about the “martyrs” of Amritsar: “Their memory,” he wrote, “inspires us to work even harder to build an India they would be proud of.” Fawad Chaudhry, until recently Pakistan’s information minister, demanded an apology from Britain.

But anti-imperialist posturing cannot disguise the fact that India and Pakistan continue to expand the repertoire of legal repression they inherited from the British.

Quasi-Rowlatt acts are on the law books in both countries. In Pakistan, Cyril Almeida, an editor and columnist at Dawn, one of Pakistan’s most respected English-language dailies, is among several figures accused of treason and barred from leaving the country.

Many journalists in Pakistan were killed or “disappeared” by the country’s security establishment during decades of misrule by military despots and venal civilians. The election of Imran Khan, a former sportsperson, as Pakistan’s prime minister last year was seen by many as inaugurating a “Naya (New) Pakistan.” Instead, Khan has presided over a sweeping crackdown on the media.

His information minister has been busy devising a drastic regime of media regulation in Pakistan. Officials have blocked television networks and the distribution of newspapers, and forced media companies to fire journalists deemed too critical of authorities.

As Almeida, who was recently named the International Press Institute’s 71st World Press Freedom Hero, puts it, “Press freedom in Pakistan is under severe and sustained attack, without precedent during eras of civilian governments and the worst in the country since an oppressive military dictatorship in the 1980s.”

Conditions for journalists are not much better in neighboring India. In the latest global press freedom index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, the world’s largest democracy ranks 140th, just two spots above Pakistan and 32 places below Kuwait.

Newsgatherers and opinion-makers in India risk assassination, arbitrary detention and legal harassment, not to mention vicious and extremely well-organized internet trolls. The journalist Rana Ayyub, recently featured in Time magazine’s global list of 10 threatened journalists, is one of the many female public figures in India hounded by rape threats and fake pornographic videos.

Moreover, the colonial-era sedition law, which was once unleashed on freedom fighters, is used to torment a wide range of figures from the novelist Arundhati Roy to, recently, a former lawmaker who had praised Pakistan in a Facebook post for its tradition of hospitality.

In its election manifesto, India’s opposition Congress Party has promised to repeal the law. This sensible proposal has incited vituperative charges of treason from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Contrary to what Modi claims, those martyred in Amritsar would not be proud of India today — a country in which even innocent children are detained preventively for prolonged periods, as a United Nations report on the human-rights situation in Kashmir documented last year.

Indeed, the methods India and Pakistan use to govern their border states, from Balochistan in the west to Nagaland in the east, include rape and torture as well as preventive and indefinite detention. They arguably exceed, in their intensity and scope, as well as the culture of impunity they foster, what the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh were protesting against.

Denouncing the Rowlatt Act in 1919, Jinnah said that “a Government that passes or sanctions such laws in a time of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilized Government.” By this measure, neither the Indian nor the Pakistani government today can be called civilized.

Deploying British-inspired laws as a blunderbuss, while harnessing Silicon Valley’s innovations to illiberal causes, the ruling classes of India and Pakistan have established what Gandhi explicitly warned his compatriots against: “English rule without the Englishman.”

It is no doubt easy and gratifying to point to the atrocities of Western imperialism. But any principled anti-imperialist and democrat today can only feel anguish and shame over how, a century after the British army gunned down Rowlatt’s critics in Amritsar, his authoritarian mindset still rules South Asia.

European Union threatens to suspend subsidies to Pakistan over persecution of religious minorities

The European Union (EU) has threatened Pakistan that it will suspend all subsidies and trade preferences to Islamabad over ‘persecution of religious minorities’. 51-members of the European Parliament in a letter to the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan drew concerns to religious prejudices against the minorities.

“Over the last few years, religious extremist groups, often with the support of the Pakistani State have grown in influence, further generating religious prejudices against minorities. Concomitantly, instances of attacks against minorities, their places of worship etc. have also increased year upon year,” the letter said. The European Parliament members reminded Islamic Republic of Pakistan that the oppression of religious minorities violated the United Nations treaty on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is the foundation for the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which is a binding UN human rights agreement. “We would be compelled to suspend all subsidies and trade preferences until the effective implementation of the Convention could be assured by the Government of Pakistan.”

Earlier Pakistani governments also share responsibility for contributing and encouraging ‘acts of violence against minorities by radical Islamic groups. The world was drawn to Asia Bibi’s case, a Christian woman who was wrongfully persecuted under the draconian blasphemy law in 2010. The Supreme Court quashed her sentence in October 2018. This led to violent protests by religious hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws and liberal sections of the society urged for her release.

https://thepolicytimes.com/european-union-threatens-to-suspend-subsidies-to-pakistan-over-persecution-of-religious-minorities/

Pakistan sacks key member of economic team amid IMF talks

Senior Pakistani officials say the government has removed the head of the country's central bank, a key member of a team currently in talks with the IMF over an $8 billion bailout package.

The officials said Saturday that Tariq Bajwa, governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, resigned the previous evening. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record. Bajwa has confirmed his resignation to Pakistani media.

The officials also said the government plans to remove Jahanzeb Khan, chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue, a tax collection body.

Both officials were major figures in the government team holding the final round of talks with the IMF in Islamabad. A deal is expected to be signed later this month.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/pakistan-sacks-key-member-of-economic-team-amid-imf-talks

#PPP - #Pakistan - #EndChildMarriage Bilawal Bhutto demands ban on underage marriages across country

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Saturday has demanded to ban underage marriages across the country.
In a Twitter post, the leader said, “UAE marriage age is 18, Indonesia is 18 and Turkey is also 18. Are they not Muslim countries?”

In Sindh, where marriage age is 18, we saw how law stopped an adult marrying a 10-year-old, he added.

Bilawal further told that after every 20 minutes, a girl dies in Pakistan as a result of underage pregnancy.

https://dunyanews.tv/en/Pakistan/489998-Bilawal-Bhutto-ban-underage-marriage-country