Saturday, December 28, 2019
Opinion: The #Khashoggi Cover-Up Goes On
The death sentences handed down by a Saudi court to five anonymous men in the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul only add another level of infamy to the foul murder. The claim by the Saudi prosecutors, who report directly to the royal court, that Mr. Khashoggi was killed in a “spur of the moment” decision defies all the evidence that points to a premeditated extrajudicial assassination — the bone saw the assailants brought along, the gruesome chitchat taped by Turkish intelligence, the Khashoggi look-alike who was filmed walking out of the consulate after the killing.An unconvincing trial produces an unsatisfying verdict in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The court was closed to all outsiders save a few diplomats sworn to secrecy, and the identities of the five condemned men and three others sentenced to prison were not made public. But all the evidence unearthed since Mr. Khashoggi, who was living in self-imposed exile in the United States, was throttled and dismembered inside the consulate leaves little doubt that the powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the hit, and that a team of operatives flew to Turkey to carry it out. The fact that two organizers of the execution, Prince Mohammed’s close adviser Saud al-Qahtani and the former deputy head of intelligence, Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, were acquitted for lack of evidence serves only to make the convictions less credible.
But then it is reasonable to assume that the goal was not to put on a convincing trial, much less a fair one. Prince Mohammed knows what really happened and who did it, and after the storm of international censure and revelations since Mr. Khashoggi’s death on Oct. 2, 2018, he must understand that beheading the executioners — if that’s who have been sentenced to death — will not make his culpability go away. “Mockery,” “laughable lies” and “a sham” are only a few of the reactions from human rights experts and the Turkish government that followed the sentences.
There is nothing to show that Prince Mohammed has been humbled by the global outcry over the murder, as he has continued to crackdown against any sign of dissent in his kingdom. The cynical conclusion is that he staged the trial and threw a few underlings to the dogs to give friendly foreign leaders — including President Trump and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has a chummy relationship with the prince — a pretext for carrying on with business as usual.
The sentences were announced shortly after Mr. Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act, in which Congress included a directive to the director of national intelligence to provide a list of officials complicit in Mr. Khashoggi’s murder within 30 days.
It’s doubtful that any such report will change Mr. Trump’s approach to the crown prince, especially given the disdain he has exhibited for the intelligence services, or dissuade businesspeople from seeking lucrative Saudi deals.
But the pretense that justice has been even remotely served must not be given any credence, at any level. And nobody should mistake Prince Mohammed for the benign reformer he once pretended to be or to let him believe he has closed the chapter on the barbaric extermination of a troublesome critic.
Science Under Attack: How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work
By Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport
In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts say, could reverberate for years.
Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.
But the erosion of science reaches well beyond the environment and climate: In San Francisco, a study of the effects of chemicals on pregnant women has stalled after federal funding abruptly ended. In Washington, D.C., a scientific committee that provided expertise in defending against invasive insects has been disbanded. In Kansas City, Mo., the hasty relocation of two agricultural agencies that fund crop science and study the economics of farming has led to an exodus of employees and delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in research.
“The disregard for expertise in the federal government is worse than it’s ever been,” said Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, which has tracked more than 200 reports of Trump administration efforts to restrict or misuse science since 2017. “It’s pervasive.”
Hundreds of scientists, many of whom say they are dismayed at seeing their work undone, are departing.
Among them is Matthew Davis, a biologist whose research on the health risks of mercury to children underpinned the first rules cutting mercury emissions from coal power plants. But last year, with a new baby of his own, he was asked to help support a rollback of those same rules. “I am now part of defending this darker, dirtier future,” he said.
This year, after a decade at the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Davis left.
“Regulations come and go, but the thinning out of scientific capacity in the government will take a long time to get back,” said Joel Clement, a former top climate-policy expert at the Interior Department who quit in 2017 after being reassigned to a job collecting oil and gas royalties. He is now at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group.
Mr. Trump has consistently said that government regulations have stifled businesses and thwarted some of the administration’s core goals, such as increasing fossil-fuel production. Many of the starkest confrontations with federal scientists have involved issues like environmental oversight and energy extraction — areas where industry groups have argued that regulators have gone too far in the past.
“Businesses are finally being freed of Washington’s overreach, and the American economy is flourishing as a result,” a White House statement said last year. Asked about the role of science in policymaking, officials from the White House declined to comment on the record.
The administration’s efforts to cut certain research projects also reflect a longstanding conservative position that some scientific work can be performed cost-effectively by the private sector, and taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to foot the bill. “Eliminating wasteful spending, some of which has nothing to do with studying the science at all, is smart management, not an attack on science,” two analysts at the conservative Heritage Foundation wrote in 2017 of the administration’s proposals to eliminate various climate change and clean energy programs.
Industry groups have expressed support for some of the moves, including a contentious E.P.A. proposal to put new constraints on the use of scientific studies in the name of transparency. The American Chemistry Council, a chemical trade group, praised the proposal by saying, “The goal of providing more transparency in government and using the best available science in the regulatory process should be ideals we all embrace.”
In some cases, the administration’s efforts to roll back government science have been thwarted. Each year, Mr. Trump has proposed sweeping budget cuts at a variety of federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. But Congress has the final say over budget levels and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have rejected the cuts.
For instance, in supporting funding for the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, recently said, “it allows us to take advantage of the United States’ secret weapon, our extraordinary capacity for basic research.”
As a result, many science programs continue to thrive, including space exploration at NASA and medical research at the National Institutes of Health, where the budget has increased more than 12 percent since Mr. Trump took office and where researchers continue to make advances in areas like molecular biology and genetics.
Nevertheless, in other areas, the administration has managed to chip away at federal science.
At the E.P.A., for instance, staffing has fallen to its lowest levels in at least a decade. More than two-thirds of respondents to a survey of federal scientists across 16 agencies said that hiring freezes and departures made it harder to conduct scientific work. And in June, the White House ordered agencies to cut by one-third the number of federal advisory boards that provide technical advice.
The White House said it aimed to eliminate committees that were no longer necessary. Panels cut so far had focused on issues including invasive species and electric grid innovation.At a time when the United States is pulling back from world leadership in other areas like human rights or diplomatic accords, experts warn that the retreat from science is no less significant. Many of the achievements of the past century that helped make the United States an envied global power, including gains in life expectancy, lowered air pollution and increased farm productivity are the result of the kinds of government research now under pressure.“When we decapitate the government’s ability to use science in a professional way, that increases the risk that we start making bad decisions, that we start missing new public health risks,” said Wendy E. Wagner, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the use of science by policymakers.Skirmishes over the use of science in making policy occur in all administrations: Industries routinely push back against health studies that could justify stricter pollution rules, for example. And scientists often gripe about inadequate budgets for their work. But many experts say that current efforts to challenge research findings go well beyond what has been done previously.
In an article published in the journal Science last year, Ms. Wagner wrote that some of the Trump administration’s moves, like a policy to restrict certain academics from the E.P.A.’s Science Advisory Board or the proposal to limit the types of research that can be considered by environmental regulators, “mark a sharp departure with the past.” Rather than isolated battles between political officials and career experts, she said, these moves are an attempt to legally constrain how federal agencies use science in the first place.
Some clashes with scientists have sparked public backlash, as when Trump officials pressured the nation’s weather forecasting agency to support the president’s erroneous assertion this year that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama.
ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story But others have garnered little notice despite their significance.
This year, for instance, the National Park Service’s principal climate change scientist, Patrick Gonzalez, received a “cease and desist” letter from supervisors after testifying to Congress about the risks that global warming posed to national parks.
“I saw it as attempted intimidation,” said Dr. Gonzalez, who added that he was speaking in his capacity as an associate adjunct professor at the University California, Berkeley, a position he also holds. “It’s interference with science and hinders our work.”
Curtailing Scientific Programs
Even though Congress hasn’t gone along with Mr. Trump’s proposals for budget cuts at scientific agencies, the administration has still found ways to advance its goals. One strategy: eliminate individual research projects not explicitly protected by Congress.
For example, just months after Mr. Trump’s election, the Commerce Department disbanded a 15-person scientific committee that had explored how to make National Climate Assessments, the congressionally mandated studies of the risks of climate change, more useful to local officials. It also closed its Office of the Chief Economist, which for decades had conducted wide-ranging research on topics like the economic effects of natural disasters. Similarly, the Interior Department has withdrawn funding for its Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, 22 regional research centers that tackled issues like habitat loss and wildfire management. While California and Alaska used state money to keep their centers open, 16 of 22 remain in limbo.
A Commerce Department official said the climate committee it discontinued had not produced a report, and highlighted other efforts to promote science, such as a major upgrade of the nation’s weather models.
An Interior Department official said the agency’s decisions “are solely based on the facts and grounded in the law,” and that the agency would continue to pursue other partnerships to advance conservation science.Research that potentially posed an obstacle to Mr. Trump’s promise to expand fossil-fuel production was halted, too. In 2017, Interior officials canceled a $1 million study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the health risks of “mountaintop removal” coal mining in places like West Virginia.
Mountaintop removal is as dramatic as it sounds — a hillside is blasted with explosives and the remains are excavated — but the health consequences still aren’t fully understood. The process can kick up coal dust and send heavy metals into waterways, and a number of studies have suggested links to health problems like kidney disease and birth defects.
“The industry was pushing back on these studies,” said Joseph Pizarchik, an Obama-era mining regulator who commissioned the now-defunct study. “We didn’t know what the answer would be,” he said, “but we needed to know: Was the government permitting coal mining that was poisoning people, or not?”
While coal mining has declined in recent years, satellite data shows that at least 60 square miles in Appalachia have been newly mined since 2016. “The study is still as important today as it was five years ago,” Mr. Pizarchik said.
The Cost of Lost Research
The cuts can add up to significant research setbacks.
For years, the E.P.A. and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences had jointly funded 13 children’s health centers nationwide that studied, among other things, the effects of pollution on children’s development. This year, the E.P.A. ended its funding.
At the University of California, San Francisco, one such center has been studying how industrial chemicals such as flame retardants in furniture could affect placenta and fetal development. Key aspects of the research have now stopped.
“The longer we go without funding, the harder it is to start that research back up,” said Tracey Woodruff, who directs the center.
In a statement, the E.P.A. said it anticipated future opportunities to fund children’s health research.
At the Department of Agriculture, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced in June he would relocate two key research agencies to Kansas City from Washington: The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a scientific agency that funds university research on topics like how to breed cattle and corn that can better tolerate drought conditions, and the Economic Research Service, whose economists produce studies for policymakers on farming trends, trade and rural America.
Nearly 600 employees had less than four months to decide whether to uproot and move. Most couldn’t or wouldn’t, and two-thirds of those facing transfer left their jobs.
In August, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, appeared to celebrate the departures.
“It’s nearly impossible to fire a federal worker,” he said in videotaped remarks at a Republican Party gala in South Carolina. “But by simply saying to people, ‘You know what, we’re going to take you outside the bubble, outside the Beltway, outside this liberal haven of Washington, D.C., and move you out in the real part of the country,’ and they quit. What a wonderful way to sort of streamline government and do what we haven’t been able to do for a long time.” The White House declined to comment on Mr. Mulvaney’s speech.
The exodus has led to upheaval.
At the Economic Research Service, dozens of planned studies into topics like dairy industry consolidation and pesticide use have been delayed or disrupted. “You can name any topic in agriculture and we’ve lost an expert,” said Laura Dodson, an economist and acting vice president of the union representing agency employees.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture manages $1.7 billion in grants that fund research on issues like food safety or techniques that help farmers improve their productivity. The staff loss, employees say, has held up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, such as planned research into pests and diseases afflicting grapes, sweet potatoes and fruit trees.Former employees say they remain skeptical that the agencies could be repaired quickly. “It will take 5 to 10 years to rebuild,” said Sonny Ramaswamy, who until 2018 directed the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.Mr. Perdue said the moves would save money and put the offices closer to farmers. “We did not undertake these relocations lightly,” he said in a statement. A Department of Agriculture official added that both agencies were pushing to continue their work, but acknowledged that some grants could be delayed by months.
Questioning the Science Itself
In addition to shutting down some programs, there have been notable instances where the administration has challenged established scientific research. Early on, as it started rolling back regulations on industry, administration officials began questioning research findings underpinning those regulations.
In 2017, aides to Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator at the time, told the agency’s economists to redo an analysis of wetlands protections that had been used to help defend an Obama-era clean-water rule. Instead of concluding that the protections would provide more than $500 million in economic benefits, they were told to list the benefits as unquantifiable, according to Elizabeth Southerland, who retired in 2017 from a 30-year career at the E.P.A., finishing as a senior official in its water office.
“It’s not unusual for a new administration to come in and change policy direction,” Dr. Southerland said. “But typically you would look for new studies and carefully redo the analysis. Instead, they were sending a message that all the economists, scientists, career staff in the agency were irrelevant.”
Internal documents show that political officials at the E.P.A. have overruled the agency’s career experts on several occasions, including in a move to regulate asbestos more lightly, in a decision not to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos and in a determination that parts of Wisconsin were in compliance with smog standards. The Interior Department sidelined its own legal and environmental analyses in advancing a proposal to raise the Shasta Dam in California.
Michael Abboud, an E.P.A. spokesman, disputed Dr. Southerland’s account in an emailed response, saying “It is not true.”
The E.P.A. is now finalizing a narrower version of the Obama-era water rule, which in its earlier form had prompted outrage from thousands of farmers and ranchers across the country who saw it as overly restrictive.
“E.P.A. under President Trump has worked to put forward the strongest regulations to protect human health and the environment,” Mr. Abboud said, noting that several Obama administration rules had been held up in court and needed revision. “As required by law E.P.A. has always and will continue to use the best available science when developing rules, regardless of the claims of a few federal employees.”
Past administrations have, to varying degrees, disregarded scientific findings that conflicted with their priorities. In 2011, President Obama’s top health official overruled experts at the Food and Drug Administration who had concluded that over-the-counter emergency contraceptives were safe for minors.
But in the Trump administration, the scope is wider. Many top government positions, including at the E.P.A. and the Interior Department, are now occupied by former lobbyists connected to the industries that those agencies oversee.
Scientists and health experts have singled out two moves they find particularly concerning. Since 2017, the E.P.A. has moved to restrict certain academics from sitting on its Science Advisory Board, which provides scrutiny of agency science, and has instead increased the number of appointees connected with the industry. And, in a potentially far-reaching move, the E.P.A. has proposed a rule to limit regulators from using scientific research unless the underlying raw data can be made public. Industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce have argued that some agency rules are based on science that can’t be fully scrutinized by outsiders. But dozens of scientific organizations have warned that the proposal in its current form could prevent the E.P.A. from considering a vast array of research on issues like the dangers of air pollution if, for instance, they are based on confidential health data.
“The problem is that rather than allowing agency scientists to use their judgment and weigh the best available evidence, this could put political constraints on how science enters the decision-making process in the first place,” said Ms. Wagner, the University of Texas law professor.
The E.P.A. says its proposed rule is intended to make the science that underpins potentially costly regulations more transparent. “By requiring transparency,” said Mr. Abboud, the agency spokesman, “scientists will be required to publish hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss, requiring the science to withstand skepticism and peer review.”
An Exodus of Expertise
“In the past, when we had an administration that was not very pro-environment, we could still just lay low and do our work,” said Betsy Smith, a climate scientist with more than 20 years of experience at the E.P.A. who in 2017 saw her long-running study of the effects of climate change on major ports get canceled.
“Now we feel like the E.P.A. is being run by the fossil fuel industry,” she said. “It feels like a wholesale attack.”
After her project was killed, Dr. Smith resigned.
The loss of experienced scientists can erase years or decades of “institutional memory,” said Robert J. Kavlock, a toxicologist who retired in October 2017 after working at the E.P.A. for 40 years, most recently as acting assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Research and Development.His former office, which researches topics like air pollution and chemical testing, has lost 250 scientists and technical staff members since Mr. Trump came to office, while hiring 124. Those who have remained in the office of roughly 1,500 people continue to do their work, Dr. Kavlock said, but are not going out of their way to promote findings on lightning-rod topics like climate change.
“You can see that they’re trying not to ruffle any feathers,” Dr. Kavlock said.
The same can’t be said of Patrick Gonzalez, the National Park Service’s principal climate change scientist, whose work involves helping national parks protect against damages from rising temperatures.In February, Dr. Gonzalez testified before Congress about the risks of global warming, saying he was speaking in his capacity as an associate adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also using his Berkeley affiliation to participate as a co-author on a coming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that synthesizes climate science for world leaders.But in March, shortly after testifying, Dr. Gonzalez’s supervisor at the National Park Service sent the cease-and-desist letter warning him that his Berkeley affiliation was not separate from his government work and that his actions were violating agency policy. Dr. Gonzalez said he viewed the letter as an attempt to deter him from speaking out.
The Interior Department, asked to comment, said the letter did not indicate an intent to sanction Dr. Gonzalez and that he was free to speak as a private citizen.
Dr. Gonzalez, with the support of Berkeley, continues to warn about the dangers of climate change and work with the United Nations climate change panel using his vacation time, and he spoke again to Congress in June. “I’d like to provide a positive example for other scientists,” he said.
Still, he noted that not everyone may be in a position to be similarly outspoken. “How many others are not speaking up?” Dr. Gonzalez said.
Life of slavery — the perpetuation of bonded labor in #Pakistan
In the Kot Momin town in Pakistan's Punjab province, farmers work round the clock picking and processing a variety of oranges. The produce from the Sargodha district's orchards dominates the domestic market, as well as the country's major export destinations like Indonesia, the Middle East and Russia.
Among those who toil Kot Momin's fertile lands is Ansar Ali. As a tenant on a farm, both he and his wife work around 16 hours a day, seven days a week, to make ends meet.
While Ali spends most of his time working on the farm and looking after the cattle, his wife works as a domestic help in the household of the landlord who employs them. The landlord has provided them a two-room brick house. Together, they are paid 3,000 rupees ($20, €18) per month, which is hardly sufficient for the family.
The only way for Ali to put food on the table is to regularly borrow extra money from the landlord. In times of desperation, like a medical emergency or other family obligations, the landlord lends him additional funds. Ansar can't read or write, so he just puts his thumb print on the accounts ledger maintained by the landlord.
Over the years, the family's debt has increased manifold, and Ali has no idea how he is ever going to repay it. "The deeper you get into the debt trap, the less hope there is you can ever get out of it," he told DW. "It's a life of slavery I will probably never get out of."
Modern-day slavery
Ali's predicament reflects the growing misery of an entire class of Pakistan's informal workforce. The Australia-based Global Slavery Index (GSI) estimates about 3 million people in Pakistan remain stuck in debt bondage.
Pakistan: Battling slavery
Sociologists describe the practice as the most prevalent form of modern-day slavery, as many sectors of the economy thrive on this crude form of human exploitation — mainly in the agriculture, brick-making and carpet-weaving sectors.
"The landlords are a powerful class," Rizwan Rafiq Minhas, a reporter and social activist in Kot Momin, told DW. "They control almost every aspect of the tenants' lives. They keep them under a close watch. Without their permission, the tenants are not allowed even to speak to people from outside of their estates," he added.
Debt, desperation and organ sale
In 2007, under pressure to pay off some of his debt, Ali decided to take an extreme step: he sold one of his kidneys. He was helped by a network of organ traffickers that included local agents, doctors and medical staff in big cities like Lahore. After taking their cut, they gave him 100,000 rupees ($1,000, €901). The money helped reduce his debt burden — but not for long.
By 2016, the debt had re-accumulated. Ali said he was desperate to pay some of it to get the landlord off his back. This time it was his wife who offered to sell her kidney.
"There was no choice," explained Ali. "I can go on without a meal for days, but I can't see my children starve," he added.
After a temporary reprieve, the vicious cycle of poverty and debt for the family approached a full circle once again.
In theory, Ali can walk out of this exploitive arrangement. "But where would I go? They will get the police to arrest me and bring me back here."
He also has the option of selling his labor to another landlord in the area in exchange for a loan to pay off his current landlord. But that would be like re-mortgaging his family's servitude from one feudal lord to another, he said. Activists say that families caught in debt bondage often opt for it despite the unbearable verbal, physical or even sexual abuse.
In Ali's case, the landlord and his family aren't that bad. "They do get upset with us sometimes, but at least they don't beat us up or humiliate us publicly," the laborer said.
Debt bondage is a global phenomenon. According to the Global Slavery Study, an estimated 40.3 million people were living in modern slavery in 2016. The study, published by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Walk Free Foundation, points out that a wide majority of these victims tend to be women and children.Exploitation is particularly grave in parts of Africa as well as Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. And there are reasons for it. The GSI study shows that modern slavery trends are prevalent in countries ruled by repressive regimes and in conflict areas with hardly any rule of law, poor governance and social protection.In Pakistan, major land reforms were attempted in the 1970s to limit the power of feudal lords and empower landless farmers. But as the country suffered repeated military coups, the reforms were reversed and failed to have an impact, points out Karamat Ali, executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER).
"Military governments co-opt and patronized influential landlords to legitimize their own rule," Ali told DW. "But the civilian governments, including the present one, are no better. They are too weak to drive any reform as they also rely on the same feudal for political support."
So, what is in store for people like Ansar Ali?
Experts say that so long as the country's civil-military elite lack the political commitment to introduce reforms, people like him are unlikely to see any change.
Having already sold his and his wife's kidneys to settle his debt, Ali feels he has run out of options.
"In a few years, when my son is old enough, I may have to sell one of his kidneys as well," he said.
https://www.dw.com/en/life-of-slavery-the-perpetuation-of-bonded-labor-in-pakistan/a-51792298
U.N. experts urge Pakistan to clear scholar of blasphemy, lift death sentence
In a joint statement, they described Hafeez’s condemnation by a lower court last week as a “travesty of justice” and said senior judges should acquit the former university lecturer on appeal.
“We urge Pakistan’s superior courts to promptly hear his appeal, overturn the death sentence and acquit him,” said the independent experts who include U.N. investigators on freedom of religion, unlawful killings and arbitrary detention.
In 2013 students at the university where Hafeez taught accused him of making blasphemous Facebook posts. Insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan, which is about 95% Muslim.
His lawyers say he was framed by students from a militant Islamist party because of his liberal and secular views. This month a U.S. religious freedom commission placed Hafeez on its list of global victims.Hafeez’s family and lawyers released a statement saying the trial had been marked by a “wave of fear” and intimidation after Hafeez’s initial defense lawyer, Rashid Rehman, was shot and killed in 2014 after agreeing to take on the case. No one has been charged with that murder.
The family and lawyers said they would file an appeal against the verdict in the high court.
International law permits the death penalty only in exceptional circumstances, and requires incontrovertible evidence of intentional murder, the U.N. experts said.
“The death sentence imposed on Mr. Hafeez has no basis in either law or evidence, and therefore contravenes international law. Carrying out the sentence would amount to an arbitrary killing,” they said.
“We are seriously concerned that blasphemy charges are still being brought against people legitimately exercising their rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and expression,” they added.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-blasphemy-un/u-n-experts-urge-pakistan-to-clear-scholar-of-blasphemy-lift-death-sentence-idUSKBN1YV12D
#Pakistan - Imran Khan a victim of his own illusions
If Miguel de Cervantes were alive in the modern age he would have seen his fictional character Don Quixote come alive in the form of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who like the noble of La Mancha only believes in delivering emotional and unrealistic speeches without doing anything practical on the ground.
On Thursday his government filed a review petition against a ruling of the Supreme Court on the extension of the tenure of Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. The court had ruled the original terms of the extension unconstitutional until approved by the parliament. The petition filed by Khan’s government is so vague that it appears either to have been unprofessionally prepared or that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government does not really want to grant an extension to General Bajwa.
Perhaps Khan has realized that he will not be able to survive politically by depending only on witch-hunts against the opposition and that with his dismal performance in the office of prime minister even his backers in the military establishment don’t want to see him further damaging the economy.
The review petition reads like an emotional essay written by a scholar of Pakistan studies, as it contains references to fifth-generation warfare, tensions on the Line of Control, and Bajwa’s impeccable services to the nation, and on these grounds, the Supreme Court is being requested to review its previous decision and grant Bajwa the much needed extension of his tenure as Chief of Army Staff (COAS).
This kind of immature petition can never be sustained in the court as it gives no grounds as to why the Supreme Court should overturn its earlier verdict against the extension. This means if the court again refuses to yield to the invisible forces, the petition will be rejected, and the extension matter will be sent to parliament. Though Bajwa can easily get validation from the parliament, as the main opposition parties are more than willing to vote in his favor so they can get into the good books of the establishment, they also could replace Khan with a new puppet. So Khan, knowing that he could be removed either by a vote of non-confidence or through fresh elections in 2020, has sped up the process of silencing his political opponents.
On Thursday the offices of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Lahore were raided by the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) to confiscate the video recordings of Judge Arshad Malik confessing that he had been pressured by the invisible forces to convict Nawaz Sharif of corruption at any cost. If that was not enough, Khan reflected his narcissistic mentality the same day while addressing a public gathering, saying that a mafia was operating in some newspapers and some journalists who benefited from the old system were against the PTI government.
Since assuming power he has always accused dissenting journalists of working against him on a specific agenda of his political opponents. However, he has never been able to prove his allegations, nor has he ever explained how the majority of media houses and journalists who not only backed him around the clock and often were seen sitting with him in private gatherings or at this home could be seen as honest and objective.
Khan thought that after coming to power on the shoulders of the establishment it would be smooth sailing, but it never happened, as his poor governance and his approach to eliminating the opposition by using different state institutions has not only weakened those institutions but has also worsened the political and economic turmoil.
Khan’s real problem is his hypocritical stance in politics. All his life he has been known in the West as a man who enjoyed his life of personal liberties. But at home in Pakistan, he preferred to choose a conservative ideology for his political party supported by the right-wing vote bank. Historically it is very easy to convince the right-wing that the country is always in crisis and only a hyper-nationalist leader with religious and moral authority can rescue Pakistan from its woes and troubles.
This is the formula every military dictator has used to justify a coup against the elected government, and even Nawaz Sharif used it in the 1990s when he was the blue-eyed boy of the establishment of the day. However, Sharif learned from his mistakes and risked going against the establishment by completely changing his political narrative. In his last stint in office, he was seen as a progressive leader with the political narrative of development and trade and peaceful relations with Pakistan’s neighbors.
On the other hand, Khan’s narrative revolves around blaming every failure of his government on the opposition and the press and terming every dissenting voice a traitor or unethical. The moral policing of opponents is another key factor of his narrative. So in a nutshell, Khan is exactly carrying out the legacy of military dictators like General Ayub Khan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf. Khan perhaps has forgotten that none of these dictators were able to avert their downfall merely through sloganeering or by victimizing their opponents.
PTI needs to realize that diverting the attention of its vote bank and imprisoning political opponents will never change the facts and bitter realities about its poor governance and its inability to devise a strategy to get the country out of the prevailing economic and political crisis. And Khan needs to realize that he cannot fool the masses for long with accusations against his political opponents through a set pattern of lies.
As for the Bajwa case, the petition filed on Thursday could well result in another fiasco, as with such a vague and weak review petition it is likely that the court will again rule against it. This will bring further embarrassment for the PTI government and further discredit the COAS, who has been criticized for not being leaving voluntarily after the court termed his extension unconstitutional.
Khan has encountered a problem not only for his own political career but also for the state, as he has no vision to run the country and is banking solely on sloganeering and his backers in the establishment. Sooner or later he is destined to meet his fate as he is sacrificed as a pawn on the power chessboard.
History perhaps will remember him as another puppet who despite being backed by the establishment dug his own political grave by committing blunder after blunder and who refused to free himself from the delusion of being the only honest and capable man in the entire country while, in reality, he was the victim of his own illusions.
Iqbal Bano - Google Honoured Highly Acclaimed Ghazal Singer Of #Pakistan
Google honored the highly acclaimed Ghazal singer of Pakistan Iqbal Bano with her very own Google Doodle on her 81st birthday.
Google honored the highly acclaimed Ghazal singer of Pakistan Iqbal Bano with her very own Google Doodle on her 81st birthday.
The Google Doodle celebrates the singer famous for her renditions of ghazal, poem and other classical forms, as well as music for film and national songs.
Iqbal Bano was born in 1938 in Delhi and studied with Ustad Chand Khan and began singing on All India Radio as a teenager.
She moved to Pakistan in 1952 and sang on Radio Pakistan, provided vocals as a playback singer for super hit films.
In light of classical, her presentation of 'Thumris in Raag Khamaj' (Kaahe Sataye Mohey), Tilak Kamod (Sautan Ghar Na Ja), Des (Nahin Pare Mohe Chain), Pilu (Gori Tore Naina Kajar Bin Kaare) and others such renderings which have become ever-green classics.
Music lovers noted some similarities between Iqbal Bano and Begum Akhtar, especially some marked resemblances in their styles of singing. Bano's recitals stuck to a classical style that lays more stress on the raag purity.
She was awarded the Pride of Performance by the Pakistani Government in 1974 for her outstanding achievements in classical music. She passed away in 2009 in Lahore.