Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Overcoming Pakistan's period taboo
There is no sex-education in schools and the topic is rarely discussed.
Booni, Pakistan: Bent over her hand-crank sewing machine, Hajra Bibi carefully stitches sanitary pads for the women of her mountainous village in northwestern Pakistan, one of many rural areas in the deeply conservative country where periods are still taboo.
"I am responding to a crisis," said the 35-year-old mother, sitting in front of her small, doily-covered work table in the village of Booni, close to the Afghan border.
"Before, Booni's women had no idea what sanitary towels were," she explained. Less than a fifth of women use sanitary pads in Pakistan, local charities estimate.
Traditionally women have used rags and cloth to soak up their menstrual blood, but the stigma around periods and a lack of reproductive education means hygiene standards are poor and many contracted infections.
As with other areas of rural Pakistan, menstruating women were viewed as unclean and limited in what they were able to do.
Bibi was given training to make the disposable sanitary pads, made of cotton, plastic, and cloth, by the Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) - an NGO working with Unicef - in a scheme that aims to change attitudes to women's health.
She took up the work to support her family because her husband is disabled and they have little income. Each pad takes around 20 minutes to make and is sold for 20 rupees (13 US cents).
Initially her work disturbed the local community.
Baulking at the thought
"At first, people were asking me why I was doing this, some were insulting me," Bibi recalled.
But now, "girls in the village can talk about their periods", she said proudly, adding that she was fighting "for the basic needs of women".
Infection and education
In Pakistan, Unicef has warned that in some cases information about menstruation has deliberately been withheld from women as a "means of protecting their chastity".
"This in turn negatively impacts their physical and emotional health," it said in a 2018 report.
Historically, the women of Booni have used cloth, but according to Bushra Ansari of AKRSP the taboo surrounding periods meant many were ashamed to dry them outside, unaware that damp cloths are a breeding ground for bacteria.
In addition, female family members often shared the same menstrual rags, increasing the risk of contracting urinary and reproductive tract infections, explained Wassaf Sayed Kakakhail, a doctor in the region.
"If there are three girls in the same family, they all use the same pieces of fabric," she said, adding many women are told not to wash during their period.
There is no sex-education in schools and the topic is rarely discussed - even between women - at homes in northern Pakistan, a particularly conservative part of the country.
According to a 2017 Unicef survey, half of young Pakistani women had no knowledge of menstruation before their periods started.
"Teen girls told us that they thought they had cancer, or a very serious illness that made them bleed," said Kakakhail.
But Mohammad Haidar Ulmulk, public health director for Chitral District, where Booni is, insisted the problem was under control.
"There may be gaps, but we try to cover them," he said, adding that the area had hundreds of health workers trying to help young women.
'Sister, mother, wife'
The situation is different in cities, especially among the richest. But in the patriarchal Muslim country - ranked 148th out of 149 by the World Economic Forum for gender equality - and where sexist stereotypes persist, access to basic feminine hygiene products remains difficult.
In Karachi, a metropolis of twenty million people seen as the most liberal city in Pakistan, sanitary pads are easily accessible, though expensive.
Many women are still made to feel uneasy by leering shopkeepers and ask their husbands to buy them instead.
"Some people buy them late at night, others prefer to buy them in a different neighbourhood," said Sajjad Ali, 32, a store owner.
In shops like this, sanitary pads are wrapped in opaque paper, instead of in transparent bags like other products.
"Periods are treated as taboo and surrounded by mystery," said Seema Shiekh, a women's rights activist.
But she asks: "Doesn't every man have a sister, wife or a mother?"
After twenty years of battling to introduce sex education classes in Pakistan, the first lessons are finally being given in public schools in Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.
Among their aims will be to put an end to the fear surrounding periods in a country where the onset of menstruation is one of the main reasons girls drop out of school.
Some 28 percent of women surveyed in 2017 by Unicef indicated that they had missed school or work because of stomach pain or worry over staining their clothes.
Bibi - who is working alongside 80 other women trained to make sanitary pads - is confident things will change in Booni too.
She mused: "With this project, I have made people aware."
Game over for Pakistan’s invisible forces
By IMAD ZAFARThis is the age of misinformation and propaganda. Their use has always been prevalent on the power chessboard of Pakistan, but now it is at a peak. The reason is that the nerve-racking battle between the mighty establishment and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif has entered the final stage. No one wants to lose this battle, as Sharif has put everything at risk including the life and future of his daughter Maryam Nawaz, while the military establishment’s 70-year hegemony is under threat, as slowly and gradually Sharif with the help of his political allies is forcing the establishment into a dead-end street. No one could have thought that only 14 months after sending Sharif to prison the security establishment would start backtracking from the power chessboard. The Pakistani establishment is not simply powerful in its own right, with the controlled media and hegemony over state resources, but the current engineered discourse has been backed by Riyadh and Washington. Not a single analyst could have predicted that a regime backed by these superpowers could be defeated. However, all that changed when the establishment proved incapable of pre-empting India’s annexation of Kashmir. That proved to be the last nail in the coffin of the current political discourse.According to whistleblowers in the power corridors who do not wish to be named, there is a rift within the security establishment, with many high-ranking officials wanting not only an end to military involvement in political matters but for certain heads to roll. The announcement by Fazal-ur-Rehman, president of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) party, of a planned “long march” to Islamabad in October and to hold a sit-in there is not a coincidence by any means. It is believed by many whistleblowers that Fazal has the backing of certain quarters within the establishment who do not want the current dispensation to continue. These people are angry over the Kashmir fiasco and the political engineering that resulted in the current political and economic turmoil in Pakistan. However, as no one likes to give up power easily, this final round is getting uglier and uglier, with the establishment trying to persuade Sharif not to join Fazal’s long march and instead offering him deals, including new general elections in 2020 with Sharif and his daughter given a clean chit. On the other hand, Shahbaz Sharif, who is currently heading the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz in the absence of his older brother Nawaz and Maryam, is being asked to persuade Nawaz to accept the deal. Some compliant journalists and pro-establishment politicians are spreading misinformation about Sharif accepting the deal to get new elections in return for not backing Fazal, and that he and Maryam will leave the country for a while. Since propaganda plays a very crucial role in determining the outcome of political battles, it it probable that the establishment is using this as its last tool to recoup a game it has already lost. However, Senator Mushahid Ullah Khan, a member of PML-N, is of a different view. He told this correspondent that Sharif would never accept any deal, especially now that he has nothing left to lose and the establishment has everything to lose. Perhaps he is right: Sharif has lost his wife and his daughter and political heir Maryam Nawaz is in jail, while his own character has been assassinated. So it is the establishment that has everything to lose. It has no answer as to why the government it sponsored, headed by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), is not able to avert the economic turmoil and why there has been no sound response from Pakistan over the issue of Kashmir. This itself is a victory for Sharif as he has been in prison for 14 months, and yet he and Maryam remain the key subjects of the TV talk shows and newspaper headlines. The inexperienced Prime Minister Imran Khan has also played into the hands of Maryam Nawaz. He not only kept Sharif alive politically by trying to hold him responsible for the PTI government’s failures but he also became unnerved by the huge public gatherings in support of Maryam. So right now the establishment is fighting to continue its hegemony over state affairs while Sharif only needs to sit and bide his time. Meanwhile Fazal is gearing up for a massive show in Islamabad and the Kashmir issue is putting immense pressure on the establishment. Only a man with no political acumen can make a deal with a regime that is already sinking under its own weight and errors. The Pakistan Peoples Party is an example in this regard, having succumbed to establishment pressure and betrayed the opposition many times, most recently by announcing that it will not join Fazal’s protest. Perhaps the PPP in return will get a little relief but in the long run, it will remain limited to the Sindh interior as far as electoral politics is concerned. A defiant Sharif was always going to checkmate the establishment, even from behind prison walls. But the establishment perhaps fell prey to its own propaganda and somehow started living in the hallucination that Sharif was history and the invisible forces had won the battle. The journalists who always go with the wind also kept both Khan and the establishment in the illusion of a victory that never was real but only limited to the TV screens and newspapers. ECP ruling favors Maryam On Tuesday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced its verdict on a petition for the disqualification of Maryam Nawaz as a vice-president of her party. The petition was dismissed, and she carry on as the de facto head the PML-N. But that is not likely the end of the story: Look for the pro-establishment news channels to propagate very soon that the ECP ruling is evidence that Sharif has accepted a deal. However, in reality, Sharif is as defiant as he was before, and it seems he will eventually risk everything to win the battle for democratic supremacy in the country. The only thing Sharif needs is patience. Whether he backs Fazal’s protest or not is irrelevant, as if a prisoner is being approached to make a deal with the establishment, this clearly shows who is actually winning the battle. It is just now a matter of Sharif keeping his nerve, while the establishment will need a miracle to get out of this self-created catch-22 position. Many observers and analysts a year and a half ago believed that the party was over for Sharif, as not only would he be sent packing but his PML-N would also be dismantled and the establishment would prevail, and many analysts endorsed Imran Khan. Perhaps they now will realize that the party was never over for Sharif but in fact the events of a year and a half ago were the beginning of the end – “game over” for the establishment on the power chessboard. https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/opinion/party-was-never-over-however-it-is-game-over-for-the-invisible-forces/
Pakistan faces heat at UNHRC over religious discrimination; blasphemy laws
Islamabad may face major embarrassment at the UNHRC after an NGO submitted a petition at the session against enforced disappearances, with the Pakistan Army singled out as the biggest perpetrator behind these disappearances.
The second phase of the UNHRC session involves participation of non-government organisations, and several NGOs and civil society groups have submitted petitions to the Council on rampant enforced disappearances, misuse of blasphemy laws and discrimination against religious minorities, including Christians, besides the Shia community, ET has learnt.
Islamabad may face major embarrassment at the UNHRC after an NGO submitted a petition at the session against enforced disappearances, with the Pakistan Army singled out as the biggest perpetrator behind these disappearances.
“Despite growing anger in Pakistan over the prevalence of enforced disappearances, criminalized by international charters and conventions such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the government has yet to acknowledge its responsibility for hundreds of people who have been arbitrarily detained in secret places by the Pakistani army, especially the Baloch minority,” according to a written statement submitted by Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights Association.
“The Pakistani army continues to commit enforced disappearances on the basis of identity,” it alleges, adding 44 people in different parts of Pakistan, such as Awaran and Kech, were forcibly detained in June alone.
“The blasphemy laws are worded in such manner that enable easy misuse. This accommodates false accusations initiated to settle personal scores, economic competition issues and sectarian differences. The laws are routinely used to target religious minorities for personal or political motives and result in a violation of fundamental rights,” the petition by NGO Jubilee Campaign alleges.
In April, security forces forcibly took away 59 persons from Awaran, Kech, Gwadar, Lasbela, Panjgur districts of Balochistan, according to the NGO.
Another petition before the UNHRC alleges that between 1987 and 2017, 1,500 people or more were charged with blasphemy, of which 730 were Muslims, 501 were Ahmadis, 205 Christians and 26 were Hindus.“The blasphemy laws are worded in such manner that enable easy misuse. This accommodates false accusations initiated to settle personal scores, economic competition issues and sectarian differences. The laws are routinely used to target religious minorities for personal or political motives and result in a violation of fundamental rights,” the petition by NGO Jubilee Campaign alleges.
Last week, the wife of a deceased Pakistan Army General who belonged to the Shia community was denied permission to host a religious meet at her Karachi cantonment home.
On August 21, a group of religious minorities submitted a 10-point memorandum to the Pakistani government demanding recognition of their human rights.
The memorandum demands that the minimum marriage age be raised from 16 to 18, the creation of a federal ministry for religious minorities; a 5% quota for scholarships; protection for houses of worship; legislation to prevent discrimination in employment, education and society; designated prayer locations in public places; removal of books promoting hate against religious minorities; and criminal justice reforms to protect women from the daily violence they face, including abductions, sexual violence and forced conversions.
On August 21, a group of religious minorities submitted a 10-point memorandum to the Pakistani government demanding recognition of their human rights.
The memorandum demands that the minimum marriage age be raised from 16 to 18, the creation of a federal ministry for religious minorities; a 5% quota for scholarships; protection for houses of worship; legislation to prevent discrimination in employment, education and society; designated prayer locations in public places; removal of books promoting hate against religious minorities; and criminal justice reforms to protect women from the daily violence they face, including abductions, sexual violence and forced conversions.
Hindu medical student found dead under mysterious conditions in Pakistan
Namrita Chandani, a final year student of Bibi Asifa Dental College in Pakistan's Larkana was found dead in her hostel room. Local police said it was too early to say whether she had committed suicide or had been murdered.
#JusticeForNimrita
Elder brother of Nimarta, Dr. Wishal is not only doctor but he is FCPS consultant physician at Dow Medical University Karachi.
According to him, he believes this is not suicide but a murder.@BBhuttoZardari@fbhutto@ImranKhanPTI #larkana
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