Saturday, August 22, 2020
Teenage Pakistani Christian domestic servant beaten for not converting to Islam
A Christian girl, Anika Shehzad, 18, from Ferozwala district Shakhupura, who was working as a domestic servant was beaten after refusing to convert to Islam, and accused of theft.
Anika comes from a poor family, and to support her family she accepted a job for Rs. 5000, around $30 a month, as a live in domestic servant. The job was suggested to her by her neighbor.
After a few days Anika was asked to convert to Islam, but she refused but when pressure mounted and became unbearable, she decided to leave the job and informed the family about her decision.
This infuriated the family members and they started beating her. At last one her employer took her to her parents’ house in Ferozwala, and when they saw their daughter’s condition, they asked the employer what had happened.
She told them she Anika had been beaten because she has stolen their money.
The family called on the local pastor to help them to deal with the situation, and they took Anika for medical treatment.
When the parents raised objections and asked questions of the employer to save her skin, the family accused Anika’s father of stealing Rs. 50,000 and gold as well. But according to the family none of them ever visited Anika where she was working.
The family has contacted the local MP Tariq Masih Gill and asked him to get them justice for their daughter, who they believe is innocent and was only tortured because she refused to convert to Islam.Nasir Saeed, Director CLAAS-UK said that although the Punjab Domestic Workers Act 2019 was passed by the Lahore High Court last January, this atrocious practise still continues in Pakistan.He added: “Christians in Pakistan are illiterate and poor, and many poor families are forced to take risks such as sending their young daughters to rich Muslim families to work as live in domestic servants for a little money. These young girls are often sexually harassed, tortured and sometimes are asked to convert to Islam.
“Many times such cases are reported in the mainstream media, like the gruesome torture of 10-year-old housemaid Tayyaba by an additional district and sessions judge, and his wife, in the capital Islamabad which made headlines in 2016.
“Several girls have even been killed, like Shazia Masih, 12. And several cases are taken to the courts but hardly any family has got justice and the practise still continues because perpetrators are always influential and rich, and sometimes victims are pressurised to withdraw their cases and some victims are compensated with money.”
http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/head-line-news-details/7420
Pakistan risks losing Arab allies over its 'new Kashmir policy'
Lacking support from Arab countries for its stance on the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan is looking for new alliances under China's leadership. How practical is it for Islamabad to pursue its new foreign policy? DW analyzes.
Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi blasted the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, accusing the OIC of failing to support Pakistan's stance on Kashmir. Qureshi's comments infuriated officials in Saudi Arabia, which plays a key role in the OIC's affairs and froze a $3.2 billion (€2.72 billion) oil credit facility and demanded that Pakistan repay part of a $3 billion loan, according to the Financial Times newspaper.
"I am once again respectfully telling the OIC that a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers is our expectation. If you cannot convene it, then I'll be compelled to ask Prime Minister Imran Khan to call a meeting of the Islamic countries that are ready to stand with us on the issue of Kashmir and support the oppressed Kashmiris," Qureshi told a broadcaster in Pakistan.
"We have our own sensitivities. You have to realize this. Gulf countries should understand this," the foreign minister said.
Later, Qureshi laid out a four-point strategy for the Kashmir issue, which entailed "confronting, exposing and pushing back against New Delhi's intentions; deterring it through military preparedness, conflict resolution and confidence-building; not being distracted by India's actions; and continuing with regional integration projects through participation in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Economic Cooperation Organization."
The diplomatic row with Saudi Arabia prompted Khan's government to send Army Chief General Qamar Bajwa to Riyadh. "The army chief's visit is being viewed in the context of Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's criticism of the Saudi Arabia-dominated Organization of Islamic Cooperation," according to the Dawn newspaper.
Does Pakistan have a real plan on Kashmir?
Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the special constitutional status of the Indian state Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). The region's autonomy and its own constitution, as well as its special rights for permanent residents, the majority of whom are Muslims, were abolished. Furthermore, the parliament in New Delhi passed a bill to split Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories — J&K and Ladakh — which would be directly administered by New Delhi.
Modi said the move was aimed at ending separatism and remove terrorists from Kashmir. He said that Article 370 was being used as a weapon of terror and that the people of the region were missing out on key laws and protections afforded to people in the rest of India.
Since 1989, Muslim insurgents have been fighting Indian forces in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir – a region of 12 million people, about 70% of whom are Muslim. India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.
Islamabad condemned New Delhi's move to abrogate Kashmir's special status and urged its allies in the Muslim world to act against India. Experts say it has so far failed to get much support for its Kashmir stance.
"Islamabad wants to push back against the well-founded criticism that Pakistan doesn't really have a plan on Kashmir. It has been waging an international diplomatic offensive over the last year, but this effort — which is not exactly a new thing for a country that has long sought to push the Kashmir issue in global forums — has not garnered the results Islamabad has wanted," Michael Kugelman, a South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, told DW.
"And that leads to a natural question: If the international diplomatic campaign doesn't pay off, then what's the second plan," Kugelman added.
Experts also say that Pakistan's foreign policy on Kashmir and India lack clarity, and the country's recent measures, such as the unveiling of a new map showing the entire disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir as its territory, are only meant for domestic consumption.
"The situation needs aggressive diplomacy. Apart from China, Malaysia and Turkey, no other country supports Islamabad on Kashmir," Raja Qaiser Ahmed, an assistant professor of International Relations at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, told DW.
Vali Nasr, an international affairs professor at Johns Hopkins University, told DW that Riyadh is unlikely to take measures against India over New Delhi's Kashmir policy. "Saudi Arabia sees India as an important trading partner. It would prefer to have ties to both India and Pakistan but is clearly no longer willing to support Pakistan [on the Kashmir issue]. The manner with which it is punishing Pakistan also reflects the fact that Islamabad has little leverage with Riyadh," Nasr said.
Pakistan looking for new allies
In the absence of support from powerful Arab nations, Pakistan is looking to strengthen ties with other powers.
"Pakistan's increasing outreach to Iran, Malaysia, and Turkey — and more broadly to Russia, as deepening US-India partnership is reducing the scope of Russia-India ties — is a space to watch in the coming months," said Kugelman. "I don't think we should overstate the damage to Pakistan's relations with Saudi Arabia, but that dust-up does suggest that a new foreign policy framework is taking shape that reasserts Pakistan's deep ties with Beijing while scaling up ties with Russia and with Muslim-majority states outside of the Arab Gulf," he added.
Amid these changing regional dynamics, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Qureshi began a two-day visit to China on Thursday, which he dubbed "very important" to deepen the strategic partnership between the two countries.
"The visit aims to project Pakistan's political and military leadership's vision," Qureshi said in a video message before leaving for China.
Experts say that Pakistan wants to play a key role in the emerging China-led alliance, which could possibly include Iran as well.
"In the past, Islamabad tried to get closer to China, Russia and some Southeast Asian states, but except China, no one pushed India to change its position on Kashmir. Pakistan should keep in mind that having close relations with a state does not guarantee consensus on all international disputes," according to Ahmed.
The experts DW spoke to are of the view that Islamabad's desire to be part of new regional alliances may not yield the desired outcome or lead to the permanent solution of its long dispute with India. At the same time, Pakistan may risk further diplomatic isolation by angering Saudi Arabia and its other Gulf allies.
Balochistan: Human Rights bodies express concern over the abduction of Baloch women
The Turbat region Special Task Forces of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has expressed deep concern over the news of the abduction of six women and five children by the Pakistani security forces during an offensive in Panjgur.
It said that the issue of human rights has existed in Balochistan for many years and its intensity is increasing day by day.
The HRCP in its press statement further said, “HRPC not only condemns the abduction of six women and five children in Panjur but it also regards it as an inhumane, immoral and unconstitutional move and demands the immediate release of all arrested men, women and children.”
The HRCP spokesman said that steps should be taken to change attitudes and ensure civil liberties by seriously considering the deteriorating human rights situation in Balochistan.
The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) also deplored the enforced disappearance of Baloch women and children from Panjgur and said it was a matter of concern and unconstitutional, immoral and inhumane act.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons Nasrullah Baloch has also issued an appeal to provide full details of the missing women and children from Panjgur to the organisation so that it can effectively take up the issue with the government and other concerned agencies.
It is important to note that since the past several days’ Pakistani forces have launched a large-scale ground and air offensive in different areas of Gichk in the Panjgur district of Balochistan, as a result of which several people, including women and children, have reportedly been abducted so far.
The military offensive later has been extended to other areas including Gichak. There were also reports from locals that the Pakistani army had buried two bodies under its supervision yesterday. Residents of the area and eyewitnesses confirmed that the bodies were burnt.
So far, there are reports of the abduction of seven women along with 11 children and burning down of wheat and other farms and setting ablaze the houses of eight people by Pakistani forces during these latest offensives.
The abducted women and children have been named as Maryam, Muharram, Mahal, Mah Gul, Razia, Jamati, Bego, 14-year-old Shakila, 6-year-old Jamila, 12-year-old Khairina, 6-year-old Sabrina, 1-year-old Adeela, 8-year-old Zubair, 7-year-old Sameer, six-year-old Shahdad, four-year-old Shahram, two-year-old Shantul and another two-year-old child is also among the victims.
The Pakistan forces have laid a siege around the area and blocked communication system that’s why the exact number of abductions, damage to properties and any casualties cannot be confirmed so far.
Investigation: Violence and impunity in Pakistan – no justice for slain woman journalist
A single shot to the head took the life of the young Pakistani reporter, Arooj Iqbal, in the eastern city of Lahore in November 2019. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has retraced her steps, questioning her family, her colleagues, and the police in order to shed light on a murder that has gone completely unpunished – a tragic case revealing archaic attitudes and customs.
She wanted to be the first Pakistani woman journalist to create her own newspaper. Her dream was shattered, destroyed, in the most violent way. Arooj Iqbal will go down in Pakistan’s history as the first woman journalist to be murdered because of her work.
A few hours before the publication of the first issue of Choice, the local newspaper she had just founded, this 27-year-old woman’s lifeless body was found on 25 November in a pool of blood on a street in Lahore, eastern Pakistan’s megapolis. The leading suspect was and still is her ex-husband.
“Arooj Iqbal’s murder is a challenge for all Pakistani citizens,” said RSF’s Pakistan representative Iqbal Khattak, who conducted RSF’s field investigation. “This case is causing an impact here, where it is seen as a classic example of how the poor can be denied justice in Pakistan. I regard it as a collective failure on the part of our society, which has proved unable to get justice done for her bereaved family.”
Absence of security
“Arooj Iqbal’s brutal murder speaks to the complete absence of security in the working lives of women journalists in Pakistan, to the way they must constantly endure contempt, threats, violence and dependency on male superiors,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, who coordinated the research.
“We call on Pakistan’s highest judicial authorities to address the shocking impunity that marks this case, and we condemn the archaic practices that will lead to more women journalists being murdered in Pakistan if nothing changes.”
RSF met Tahira Begum, Arooj Iqbal’s mother, in the courtyard of their small, two-room home in the labyrinth of Old Lahore. “Arooj was clearly targeted because of her journalism work,” she immediately said. “The last time we spoke, she told me she had everything ready to open her office the next day. Unfortunately, she was murdered just before she could do this.”
It was Arooj’s brother, Yasir Iqbal, who received the tragic phone call at 10:44 p.m. on 25 November announcing that she had been killed by a shot to the head. The next morning, he filed a complaint – known in Pakistan as a First Information Report (FIR) – at Qilla Gujar Singh police station.
Violence and harassment
According to Yasir, Arooj’s murderer was none other than her ex-husband, Dilawar Ali, the owner of Anti-Crime, a newspaper specializing in crime stories for which Arooj used to work. “He wanted her to drop the idea of launching her own local newspaper,” Yasir told RSF a week after the murder. His FIR quotes him as saying: “I am dead sure that Dilawar killed my sister or had her killed.”
Three days before being murdered, Arooj had herself filed a complaint at the same police station accusing Dilawar Ali of beating and mistreating her. Her FIR is a long list of acts of harassment and violence against her by Dilawar. She visited her family the next day, 23 November, and told them she was scared because Dilawar had threatened to kill her.
Arooj had worked for Anti-Crime for a year and a half before accepting the owner’s marriage proposal. According to Arooj’s mother, her ordeal began as soon as they were married, because Dilawar immediately proved to be violent and to be “a very bad husband.”
Mastermind
Despite all the evidence against him, Dilawar was never arrested or charged. He provided the police with an alibi. He said he was in the Maldives on the evening that Arooj was murdered and did not return to Pakistan until the next day, 26 November.
But the fact that Dilawar was in the Maldives does not mean he could not have arranged for her to be murdered. “This is certainly possible,” RSF was told by Muhammad Iqbal, a police investigator who was involved in the Arooj murder investigation. He said he knew of other cases in which “the accused went abroad or even got themselves arrested for a petty crime in order to strengthen their case for non-involvement.”
RSF showed a copy of Yasir’s FIR to a retired senior police crime investigator. Asking not to be identified, he said she was clearly “perceived as a threat to someone.” And he added: “She may have had some secrets and if these secrets had been made public, they could have been extremely detrimental to this person.” He also combined this hypothesis with the fact that Arooj was going to become a direct competitor of her ex-husband (and former editor) by launching her own newspaper.
Constant threats against the family
In short, a more than convincing array of suspicions left little doubt as to the motive for the murder and, therefore, to the probability that Dilawar was the mastermind. But Dilawar was clearly powerful enough to escape ordinary justice.
Yasir began being the target of threats shortly after filing his complaint accusing Dilawar. “I was constantly receiving threats from Dilawar and his associates, and my younger brother was even confronted on a road by a group of thugs who told him there would be dire consequences if I did not back off.”
The persistence of the threats ended up scaring Tahira Begum, the mother of Arooj and Yasir. The quest for justice for her daughter was turning into a nightmare. “We kept on getting new threats,” she said. “I was terrified. I did not want my family to suffer another tragedy. The period after Arooj’s murder had been very stressful for me and had given a heart condition.”
Police complicity
In Punjab, the province of which Lahore is the capital, a feudal system still regulates many aspects of social life. The political elite operates above the law with the complicity of the police, who are often accused of being corrupt.
In the complaint she filed three days before her death, Arooj accused certain police officers of “protecting Dilawar’s interests.” Those at the bottom of the social scale are often reduced to suffering the consequences of what the powerful do, as the fate suffered by the Iqbal family has shown.
To avoid any possibility of being charged in connection with Arooj’s murder, Dilawar developed a two-fold strategy, using death threats to terrorize her brothers and mother while at the same time taking advantage of his contacts within the provincial parliament. He approached a member of Punjab Legislative Assembly, Chaudhry Shabbaz, and asked him to use his influence on the family and get them to accept an out-of-court settlement.
Parallel justice
To this end, Shabbaz used the “panchayat,” a sort of local council that is supposed to settle civil disputes. It is a system that the rich and powerful often use to escape criminal justice.
Things moved quickly. Six weeks after the murder, on 15 January 2020, an agreement was signed by Arooj’s brother Yasir, by her mother, Tahira Begum, and by the leading suspect, Dilawar Ali. RSF has a obtained a copy. At one point, it says: “I hereby swear that my family and I regard Party No. 2 [Dilawar Ali] as the culprit, that he killed my sister Arooj Iqbal or had her killed. In Panchayat, Party No.1 [Yasir] and his family decide that they all forgive Party No. 2 so that he may obtain God’s clemency. Signed: Yasir Iqbal.”
“Completely vulnerable”
Under criminal law stemming from the Islamic laws, to which the panchayats refer, conflicts are resolved by means of Qisas and Diyat. Qisas is a form of retributive justice, an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Diyat consists of financial compensation, paid by the guilty person to the victim or to the victim’s family.
It was this form of agreement that Yasir Iqbal was forced to accept. The compensation for his sister’s murder was 1 million rupees, about 5,200 euros, the sum he received from Dilawar Ali. He said he signed the agreement very reluctantly. “Why did we sign?” he said. “Because Dilawar was threatening us so much, because we were completely vulnerable and because we had found the [justice] system to be completely ineffective.”
When the murder of a woman journalist is treated as an honor crime that can be settled by means of financial payment, what role is left for the legitimate authorities? To defend women who are the victims of violence in their home or at work, the Punjab provincial government created the Women’s Development Department (WDD).
Powerless authorities
“We are an observatory that monitors protection for women’s rights,” WDD deputy secretary-general Asif-ur Rehman said. When RSF asked him about the Arooj Iqbal case, he confessed that he had never heard of it.
Asked if the WDD could intervene in the case as a civil party, he said he was powerless to do this. “We have no mandate to initiate any proceedings,” he said. “If no formal complaint by the injured party or their representative is still pending, we cannot act.”
Professional isolation
Arooj’s murder elicited little or no reactions from local organizations that defend journalists. “Our family received no support from the journalistic community, none,” her mother said dejectedly.
“We did not cover Arooj’s murder as we should have done,” Punjab Union of Journalists president Qamar Bhatti conceded. He also acknowledged that the journalists’ unions and press clubs in Punjab have never taken any specific measures to protect women journalists.
It seems that Arooj Iqbal was also the victim of her relative isolation within the profession. She was probably unaware of the importance of joining a journalists’ union or press club, which is what most male journalists do in Pakistan.
Panic
Being a member of a union or press club usually means that journalists are able to mobilize their colleagues and put pressure on the authorities at the first sign of a threat. “She clearly made a strategic blunder by ignoring the union and the press club as a base of support,” said Afifa Nasar Ullah, a leading woman journalist who specializes in freelance investigative reporting.
“Also, I don’t think Arooj had undergone any safety training that could have helped her see the warning signs and improve her security. In fact, almost no women journalists who are members of unions or press clubs have received such training.” She added: “Arooj’s murder has panicked women journalists in Lahore, and has made them and the dozens of other women journalists in Punjab feel very insecure.”
Tiny minority
Women still constitute just a tiny minority of Pakistan’s journalists. According to some figures consulted by RSF, only 750 of the country’s 19,000 journalists are women – barely 4%. As a result, their specific rights as women journalists are largely ignored.
“This is unacceptable,” said Pakistani media specialist Adnan Rehmat. “Women journalists ought to receive adequate technical resources such as orientation on physical and digital security but especially training that is customized to their specific needs.”
In his view, such training should be a part of a larger strategy of solidarity and networking among women journalists. “Women journalists in several cities are already forming informal networking clusters on social media platforms such as WhatsApp to keep in touch.”
Major challenge
Rehmat added: “What needs to happen is a formal and regular engagement to bring together all women journalists in Pakistan in order to train and equip them in enacting and sustaining professional support systems including complaint mechanisms, rapid safety response, threat alerts, documentation, psychosocial counselling support and even some financial support to seek legal assistance.”
In the family home’s small courtyard, Tahira Begum talked about what drove her daughter to become a journalist. “She always liked to learn. She studied really hard while supporting herself by working and she even used to help me with the household chores. Founding her own newspaper was her dream.”
But the dream was shattered from within the journalistic community. “She had already been attacked twice in the past,” her mother added. “Once she told me she had escaped an attempt on her life. I responded by asking her to stop working as a journalist. But she said, Mom, it’s OK, nothing will happen.”
She repeated the same phrase on 23 November. Two days later, she was shot in the head.
Pakistan is ranked 145th out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.
https://balochistanvoices.com/2020/08/investigation-violence-and-impunity-in-pakistan-no-justice-for-slain-woman-journalist/
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