Thursday, July 18, 2019

In the Islamic state of Pakistan, you can piss in public but not kiss in public

Actor Yasir Hussain proposed to his girlfriend actress Iqra Aziz at an awards show and it brewed a storm in the moral teacup of Pakistanis. In Pakistan, you can piss in public, but you dare not kiss in public.Last week, at the Lux Style Awards in Karachi, when actor Yasir Hussain proposed to his girlfriend actress Iqra Aziz, in the most public way, it brewed a storm in the moral teacup of everyone. And why wouldn’t it, after all, the proposal was followed by an intimate hug and a kiss.
How dare the man hug or kiss a woman in the Islamic state of Pakistan, asked many. How dare he propose to her without the permission of her father, brother, uncle or even a male neighbour.
You know, these are the kind of acts that result in earthquakes and tsunamis. Forget the various crimes against women in society, it is a peck that’ll lead to Pakistan’s ultimate destruction.So yes, how dare Yasir think of even showing any warmth to Iqra? The couple has been dating for a while and, to their credit (like a breath of fresh air), they didn’t hide their relationship. Unlike some celebrities in Pakistan who have denied their relationships even after their sex videos were out.
Even actress Veena Malik, a late entrant to the piety club, couldn’t resist from showing her utmost anger towards the newly engaged couple. In a set of tweets, she argued how can a couple kiss before nikah, calling it haram. She tweeted, “Nowhere in r Religion & Quran it is written tht u can hug & kiss before Nikkah. I think we shouldn’t bring religion to support their PDA.
VEENA MALIK ✔@iVeenaKhan
 · 
Replying to @iVeenaKhan
(6/2) be it his acting,hosting,judging but his thoughts which he usually tweet & always takes stand 4 right & always clearly callout wrong.Also just recently saw a video of urs on God which made me realize that u are insightful,cultured & enlightened and then this tweets came up
VEENA MALIK ✔@iVeenaKhan
(6/3)Nowhere in r Religion & quran it is written tht u can hug & kiss before Nikkah.I think we shouldn't bring religion 2 support their PDA.2 wrongs don't make a right.Ofcourse, congratulations to the couple & so happy 4 that they'll get married & preferred Halal over Haram
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17:21 - 8 Jul 2019
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Veena’s rant came in response to actor Hamza Ali Abbasi’s defence of the couple: “Its sad how we Muslims so eagerly pick out individuals/bash them on thr persnl faults. Buraai ko buraai kaho, logon ko zaleel na karo. I criticise item numbers without ever picking out actresses and bashing them individually for doing item numbers. Allah ka khof karo musalmaano!”
Hamza Ali Abbasi ✔@iamhamzaabbasi
In an era when ppl prefer haraam over halal, how can U find faults in a man asking a woman for nikkah? Bcz he hugged her or kissed her on the cheek? STOP IT! Instead celebrate the good... Heartiest congrats to Yasir & Iqra. May Allah bless u both in ur new journey.
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7,053
12:42 - 8 Jul 2019
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Veena reiterated that media celebrities have a certain responsibility towards the society: “This PDA doesn’t represent r moral & cultural values, let alone religious.”This is rich coming from Veena, who in India’s Bigg Boss would show plenty of affection for a fellow male contestant. Was all that without responsibility, one wonders now. We are told that public display of affection (PDA) is not something that ‘good’ Pakistanis can handle. But, there are a lot of things that we can handle in public places: men scratching their private parts, women being beaten up, men groping women randomly or even eve-teasing. Ironically, two individuals in love hanging out in a public place get a bit too much.
Couples, married or dating, are supposed to behave in a manner that raises no eyebrows. They behave like siblings, who are just having dinner together. On a date, there can’t be any hand-holding in the middle of an intense conversation, for the moral police can even banish you from the restaurant.If you think you can get away with a few moments of intimacy in your car then you have another thing coming. The police will come out of nowhere and ask you suspiciously what are you doing in the car. Then, the officer will ask you for your nikah nama (marriage certificate), as if those who have nikah namas fool around in cars.
Technically, PDA is not a punishable offence, but society deciphers laws as it wants. According to the Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 294, “Whoever, to the annoyance of others; a) does any obscene act in any public place, or b) sings, recites or utters any obscene songs, ballad or words, in or near any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three months, or with fine, or with both”.
The bigger debate is who defines “obscenity” in a public space because, unfortunately, we dwell in an environment where vulgarity is rampant in the form of verbal abuse. People, especially men, use such words unashamed. Also, no one condemns men who openly harass women in public, either verbally or through cheap gestures, and humiliate them. That obviously isn’t considered obscenity. But our patriarchal society considers treating women nicely or displaying affection towards them as an unacceptable and atrocious act.
Some might call it our awkwardness around love — and therein lies the hypocrisy of being one thing in public and another in private. Even men who do show such warmth for women are shunned by their own and are sarcastically called ‘henpecked’. They are told: “Tum toh aurat ke neechaylagay huey ho”. The ghairat brigade (or moral police) would like us to belie
ve that showing affection to a woman is a conspiracy of the West. If that is indeed true, that’s one conspiracy we would like to be accused of.
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Pakistan arrests top militant figure ahead of prime minister’s visit to U.S.... [after Imran Khan's visit to DC ends, he will soon be released.]


 By Haq Nawaz Khan and Jon Gerberg
Pakistani authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the accused mastermind of devastating 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, police said.
Designated a terrorist by the United States, Saeed was the leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group that carried out a four-day coordinated terrorist assault across Mumbai, killing at least 160 people in India’s commercial capital.
Saeed later said he left the group and founded Jammat-ud-Dawa, which he called a charity. The organization has been accused of acting as a front to fund militant activities.In 2012, the United States offered $10 million for information leading to Saeed’s arrest, and two years later it formally named the charity as a terrorist group.Analysts see Saeed’s detention as a major move ahead of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s first official visit to the United States. Khan is scheduled to meet with President Trump on Monday.In Washington, Trump welcomed the arrest. In one of several tweets on various topics Wednesday morning, Trump wrote: “After a ten year search, the so-called ‘mastermind’ of the Mumbai Terror attacks has been arrested in Pakistan. Great pressure has been exerted over the last two years to find him!” Contrary to Trump’s characterization of a prolonged “search,” however, Pakistani authorities have been aware of Saeed’s whereabouts for years. In fact, his political party participated in national elections last year, and he was photographed casting his ballot. In a 2012 news conference in a hotel near the Pakistani army headquarters, he also publicly mocked the U.S. bounty on his head.
“Here I am in front of everyone, not hiding in a cave,” Saeed declared. He said of the $10 million U.S. reward: “Why don’t they give it to me? I can tell them my whereabouts on a daily basis.”
Trump and Khan have traded barbs in the past. On Twitter last year, Trump accused Pakistan of taking billions of dollars from the United States without doing enough to address terrorism. Khan countered what he called “Trump’s tirade against Pakistan” by stressing that his country was an important ally that has made great sacrifices in the United States’ war on terrorism.U.S.-Pakistan ties were tested in 2011 when al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was located by the CIA in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just miles from the country’s elite military academy. After living safely in the compound for years, bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs, an operation that was kept secret from Pakistani authorities until it was completed.The White House counterterrorism adviser at the time, John O. Brennan, said it was “inconceivable” that bin Laden had not received support from within Pakistan.As prime minister, Khan has promised to crack down on banned militant groups within his borders, but Pakistan remains on a watch list for allegedly sponsoring militant organizations.
One Indian government official sounded a note of skepticism about the arrest of Saeed. “This is not the first time that such action has been taken,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Pakistan has made arrests related to terrorism attacks in India in the past, but the suspects “have been allowed to walk free after some time.”
The official added that Pakistan was attempting to deflect criticism ahead of the prime minister’s visit to the United States. India wants to see “credible, verifiable, irreversible” progress, “not a cosmetic step to only impress the international community,” the Indian official said. Despite the charges against him, Saeed maintains a loyal following inside Pakistan, especially in his home city of Lahore. His followers regard him as a fearless Islamic fundamentalist.
Saeed’s spokesman, Nadim Awan, denounced the arrest and said the cleric dissociated himself from Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2001 and has had no links with the organization since then, the Associated Press reported. Lashker-e-Taiba was banned in 2002.
Awan said Saeed’s arrest would be challenged in a higher court.
Militant organizations inside Pakistan have often been tolerated — and have claimed a degree of popular support — for their role in the country’s proxy war against archrival India.
Saeed had been detained repeatedly in Pakistan but released each time. In general, courts have appeared reluctant to prosecute members of militant groups, often releasing them on technicalities or for alleged lack of evidence.
Saeed was arrested in 2017 and placed under house arrest. His followers at the time said the action was taken to appease the newly inaugurated Trump administration, which had just declared a ban on visitors from seven other Muslim-majority countries. Saeed was later freed.On Wednesday, Saeed was traveling from Lahore to the eastern city of Gujranwala to post pre-arrest bail in connection with another set of terrorism charges when he was stopped by counterterrorism officials and taken into custody, according a police statement.He was charged with financing terrorist organizations and using charitable donations for his own personal enrichment.
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The #IMF Takeover of #Pakistan



By Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Many Pakistanis see the terms of the $6 billion bailout package as a hostile takeover of their economy and government.
On July 3, the International Monetary Fund approved a $6 billion bailout package to help “return sustainable growth” to Pakistan’s economy. Throughout the deal spanning 39 months, the IMF will review Pakistan’s progress on a quarterly basis. As part of the agreement, $1 billion has been released to Pakistan.
This is the 13th IMF bailout for Pakistan, with the Fund looking toward the correction of “structural imbalances” in the country. In this regard, the IMF had announced in the negotiations over the past couple of months that Islamabad would have to increase taxation in order to repay external debt and increase foreign exchange reserves.
Details of the agreement reveal the targets that have been set for Pakistan, requiring the country to increase the foreign exchange reserves from the current $6.824 billion to $11.187 billion next year. As a result, the country’s net reserves are expected to increase from negative $17.7 billion to negative $10.8 billion over the same period.
The IMF has further asked Pakistan to pay $37.359 billion in external debt within the duration of the IMF bailout deal. Islamabad owes $14.682 billion of this figure to Beijing, largely due to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The increase in taxation required by the IMF was visible in this fiscal year’s financial budget, with the government increasing the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) tax collection target from 3.94 trillion Pakistani rupees ($25 billion) to 5.5 trillion rupees. The documents further reveal that over the next two years of the bailout package, additional 1.5 trillion rupee and 1.31 trillion rupee hikes in revenue collection have been scheduled.
Even before the budget was passed, the government had already implemented steps to enhance taxation, with hikes in the price of petrol and electricity. Government officials confirm that further hikes are expected next month.
In addition to the heavy taxation, another precondition of the IMF bailout was the devaluation of the Pakistani currency, which the Fund deemed to be artificially valued. With the IMF calling for a “market determined” value of the Pakistani currency, the rupee has lost over half its value since December 2017, resulting in inflation rate reaching a five-year high at 9.4 percent in April, and expected to rise to over 13 percent, as per the Fund’s forecast.
The All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Tajran (meaning “trader’s association”) calling a nationwide strike is one example of the impact that the rise in taxation has had on local industries. As a result, the working class in the country is rising up against what it calls the “IMF’s imperialistic takeover” of the country.
“[The IMF] package is littered with conditionalities that are putting burden on the lives of ordinary people. Pakistani people and traders have no capacity to pay taxes demanded by the IMF,” Farooq Tariq, spokesperson and the former general secretary of the Awami Workers’ Party, told The Diplomat.
“As part of the package, the IMF installed its own ‘intelligent’ people on key posts. Not only does it serve the IMF’s purpose of increasing its stranglehold over the country, it reflects a total lack of confidence in PTI’s capacity to do the job,” Tariq adds. PTI refers to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the current ruling party of the country.
Multiple interviews with officials in the Finance Ministry reveal that the appointments of former IMF mission chief Reza Baqir as the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan and former Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh as the prime minister’s adviser on finance were enforced by the IMF in the lead up  to the bailout agreement.
When asked, a senior government official told The Diplomat that the IMF forced the issue to install “its own men” amid continued deadlock with former Finance Minister Asad Umar. The IMF’s pressure further escalated after it was revealed that the entirety of the loan Pakistan received from Saudi Arabia and the UAE at the turn of the year was spent to prevent the currency market from crashing.
Senior financial journalist and analyst at FX Empire Shahab Jafry questions the manner in which the IMF has forced the government to manage the local currency’s valuation.
“The currency market was going haywire, and you had to dump the [U.S.] dollar to buy the rupees – to support the local currency. The government says it is letting the rupee free float – it can’t let that happen, the country will collapse in 48 hours,” he told The Diplomat.
“The currency has an annual 5 percent depreciation against the dollar. I don’t see the rupee stabilizing because I don’t see the economy stabilizing. In the modern day, in competitive floating currencies, you have to have a very strong export revenue generation to have a stable currency – or oil reserves, because you are prone to imports and the fluctuation of commodities and currencies can crash markets,” Jafry adds.
Observers note the usual IMF pattern in its current dealings with Pakistan, with the Fund employing trusted people in countries where there is large-scale misappropriation of funds obtained from international institutions.
Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, the PM’s financial adviser, was also part of the team that negotiated the 11th bailout package with the IMF as the finance minister during the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) rule from 2008 to 2013.
Last month, an entire inquiry commission was formed to probe the alleged corrupt practices of the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz over the past decade. While many see it as an attempt to audit the funding received in the past, others see it as a maneuver led by the current ruling party, the PTI, to victimize its political opponents with the help of the Pakistan Army.
Farooq Tariq maintains that the military establishment has had a role to play in the aggravation of the economy, and the PTI isn’t the first party to seek the Army’s help in maintaining the vicious circle of debt for Pakistan.
“Pakistan goes to the IMF every few years because of its ruling political parties’ inability to run the economy. The reason is very simple: military and debt expenses. Both take up over half of the national budget at present. The successive governments have bowed down to the pressures of the generals and the creditors not to reduce these two unproductive expenditures,” he said.
Where the Army bolsters particular parties to safeguard its economic interests, the IMF wants Pakistan to pursue certain geopolitical interests. For many, the bailout agreement reveals that instead of economic reforms, geostrategic interests are at the heart of the deal.
“The IMF package is a straitjacket for Pakistan’s economy. The IMF document illustrates a very simplistic thought process,” economist and political scientist Farrukh Saleem, the PTI government’s former spokesperson on energy and economy, told The Diplomat.
“They say the budget deficit is extremely high, the solution is to increase the revenue by 45 percent. How exactly? It’s a shrinking economy. Similarly, they say the trade deficit is extremely high, and then devalue the rupee. The IMF isn’t trying to solve Pakistan’s problems at all, the package has zero reforms – be it power, budget deficit, or trade deficit. After all, the IMF is not a purely economic institute, it’s a political institute as well,” Saleem added.
The former spokesperson maintains that the IMF is advancing U.S. security interests in the region by using the bailout package to ensure Islamabad’s compliance. He refers to this year’s WikiLeaks document “Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare,” originally written in September 2008, as evidence of how the IMF and World Bank are used to serve U.S. regional goals.
Lieutenant-General Talat Masood, former secretary of Pakistan’s Ministry of Defense Production, says there are obvious U.S. goals that the IMF is looking to fulfill.
“They would like to control our nuclear development. They don’t want us to spend on conventional forces and try to match India. They want us to focus on the economy. They don’t want us to use Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] and others to destabilize India and Afghanistan. Also, CPEC and our relationship with China is too strong for their liking. They want us to contribute significantly in the Afghan peace process by pushing the Taliban,” Masood told The Diplomat.
Masood believes the recent arrest of LeT chief Hafiz Saeed, in the lead up to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the United States, underlines that Islamabad has succumbed to the American demands. But Masood is also critical of Pakistan’s own policymaking, which renders it vulnerable to external pressure.
“Pakistan’s policies are so shallow and aren’t based on any foundational principles, and hence can’t be defended. It’s a weakness of policy and the internal structure of Pakistan that they have to succumb to external pressure,” he adds.
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’شاہنواز بھٹو کوگھناؤنی سازش کے تحت شہید کیا گیا‘

پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے شہید شاہنوازبھٹو کو
خراجِ عقیدت پیش کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ نئی نسل کیلئے شہید شاہنوازبھٹو ایک کیس اسٹڈی ہے، آمریتی عناصر شہید شاہنواز بھٹو کی انقلابی سوچ سے خائف اور نوجوانوں میں مقبولیت سے خوفزدہ تھے۔
شہید شاہنوازبھٹو کے 34 ویں یوم ِشہادت کے موقع پر بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ شہید شاہنوازبھٹو کو ایک گہری و گھناؤنی سازش کے تحت شہید کیا گیا، جمہوریت کے لیے جدوجہد میں بھٹو خاندان کی جانب سے بھرپور قائدانہ کردار ادا کرنے کی پاداش میں انہیں شہید کیا گیا۔


انہوں نے کہا کہ عوام کو یہ بھی معلوم ہوگا قوم کی خدمت کے جذبے سے سرشار و زرخیز ذہنوں کے مالک افراد کو کس بے دردی سے موت کے گھاٹ اتارا گیا۔
بلاول نے کہاکہ فکرِ بھٹو پر قائم شہید شاہنواز بھٹو کی جمہوری و انقلابی سوچ کا سفر اور جذبہ عوامی خدمت آج بھی جاری ہے۔
انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ پیپلزپارٹی ملک کو حقیقی جمہوری و مساوات پر مبنی قائدِاعظم کا پاکستان بنانے کے لیےآج بھی جدوجہد کے میدان میں موجود ہے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے قوم سے اپیل کی کہ پارٹی کارکنان اور عوام سے شہید شاہنواز بھٹو کی روح کے ایصالِ ثواب کے لیےدعا کریں۔
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گرفتاریاں حکومت کو بے نقاب کررہی ہے، بلاول بھٹو

پیپلز پارٹی کے چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا ہے کہ سلیکٹڈ احتساب اور سلیکٹڈ گرفتاریاں  اس سلیکٹڈ حکومت کو بے نقاب کررہی ہے۔
چیئرمین پی پی پی نے اپنے ایک ٹوئیٹر پیغام میں کہا کہ اپوزیشن رہنماؤں کی گرفتاریاں، میڈیا پر سنسرشپ اور سلیکٹڈ حکومت، کچھ بھی تو ’نیا‘ نہیں ہے اس پاکستان میں۔
یہ تو ویسا ہی ضیا اور مشرف جیسا پرانا آمرانہ، پاکستان ہے۔ 
انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ اس قسم کے ہتھکنڈے مزاحمت کو نہیں روک سکیں گے۔
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