Friday, September 4, 2020
Imran Khan's #Tinder and #Grindr ban in #Pakistan criticised as 'hypocrisy'
Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer BalochDating app ban is move to appease conservative factions and sign of weakness, say, critics. For Hamza Baloch, Grindr was a life-changer. As a gay man in Pakistan, an Islamic republic where homosexuality carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, his means of meeting others in the LGBT community had always been shrouded in secrecy and risk and kept within known safe spaces. But the arrival of dating apps such as Grindr and Tinder in Pakistan about four years ago brought with it a small revolution among young people across the spectrum of sexuality. Here they could connect and meet people on their own terms, with an honesty about their sexuality that was previously taboo and dangerous. The apps proved popular: Tinder has been downloaded 440,000 times in Pakistan in the last 13 months. “I used Grindr a lot for dating, sometimes just so I could meet up with someone over a cup or tea or dinner, or sometimes for more casual hookups,” said Baloch, who is an LGBT activist in Karachi. He emphasised that Grindr was not just the preserve of upper- and middle-class people in cities, and said he had seen the app used by gay and trans people even in remote rural communities in Sindh province, for example. But this week the Pakistan government announced it was imposed a sweeping ban on dating apps, accusing them of hosting “immoral and indecent content”. It is part of what has been seen as a move by the prime minister, Imran Khan, to appease the conservative religious factions who wield enormous amounts of power and influence in Pakistan. In response, Grindr, which describes itself as the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, said it was “exploring ways that we can be of service to the LGBTQ community in the region”. Homosexuality is still widely perceived to bring shame to families in Pakistan, and has led to so-called “honour” killings. But the apps have also been met with disapproval over heterosexual meetups, particularly for women from more conservative households who are discouraged from dating on their own terms and instead are expected to enter into an arranged marriage with someone selected by their family. “What sane government in 2020 stops its citizens from dating?” said Baloch. “Even those who call themselves religious and practising people of faith used these apps for their private life to fulfil their desires and human needs, which they didn’t want to do publicly or visibly.” He added: “No matter which strata of society they belong to, be it a university grad or a shopkeeper at some village, these apps provided a great and a safe platform to the queer community to connect and interact with each other, without putting themselves at risk.” The apps were not without their dangers. After an incident in 2016 in which a 20-year-old man killed three gay men he had lured from LGBT Facebook pages, claiming to be stopping the spread of evil, the LGBT community was warned to avoid anonymous meetings with people through apps and social media. In order to protect their identities, LGBT people often did not post identifying photos on their Tinder and Grindr profiles. The decision by Khan’s government to bring in the ban on dating apps has led to accusations of hypocrisy against the prime minister, who before entering politics was a Test cricketer with something of a lothario reputation. Many criticised the move as further evidence of the weakness of Khan’s government in the face of the powerful religious right, while others wryly commented that Khan would be the “playboy that brought in sharia [Islamic law according to the Qur’an]”. Neesha*, 20, an LGBT student at Habib University in Karachi, said apps like Tinder had taken the fear out of dating, whichwould now return after the ban. While small groups and communities of LGBT people had existed long before the apps arrived in Pakistan, Tinder and Grindr had opened up the opportunity to meet people who might be less comfortable attending LGBT meetups or who were still exploring their sexuality. Neesha spoke of two university friends who had not known the other was gay, both too fearful to speak openly about it, until they saw each other on Tinder. They subsequently began a relationship. “People say these apps aren’t for countries like ours but I think it’s to the contrary, we need them more because we can’t be public about who we are,” she said, describing the ban as “pure hypocrisy”. The impact of banning the apps was not only felt in the LGBT community. “Going on dates is considered wrong in our society and so honestly Tinder has made it easier for people in Pakistan to communicate with each other and meet each other,” said a 25-year-old student studying at Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Islamabad. “Banning these apps is absurd.” Minahil, a student and activist at Iqra University, Karachi, said the apps had “definitely made it easier for gay people in Pakistan to find love” and she feared that the ban was part of a wider crackdown on the gay community that would once again ensure “people in Pakistan stay in the closet forever”. “By blocking these apps, Imran Khan is trying to win the hearts of conservatives and hide his own past,” she said. “But we can all see the hypocrisy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/imran-khans-tinder-and-grindr-ban-in-pakistan-is-hypocrisy
How can #Balochistan prosper if its poor children are out-of-school and uneducated?
By: Munaj Gul Muhammad
Tariq Baloch, 13, gets up early in the morning and moves to the nearby garage in Turbat city every day so as to earn a little sum of money for the family. He uses the work tools at a very young age rather than picking up books to be at school. And schooling has not been a daydream for him since his childhood besides having the constitutional rights.
”School is not for us.” Says Tariq Baloch in tears before I put a question. “Who could buy clothes and shoes for my younger sister if I were in school? How can we survive without the basic facilities like, food-stuffs, lodging and other indispensable necessities? No one can measure the problems we are going through.” Thought-provoking, indeed.
The expensive fee structure of the education and negligence of the government constrained the boy to work in this garage instead of securing education to lodge a comfy living. He is as poor as sometimes his family members sleep without taking a loaf of bread.
Balochistan, a resource-rich province, is confronted with a staid challenge to ensure all children to be at school and thwarting out-of-school children is another quandary in the province.
60 to 70 percent children in the province are out-of-school according to a report by UNICEF. Among which, 78% girls and 67% boys of school going age are out-of-school, the sole reason why Balochistan always has a handful number of out of school children is because Balochistan governments-in-rule have always snubbed the decades-long education emergency.
1.8 million Children in Balochistan do not attend school, over half of whom are girls, a report by the Academy for Educational Planning and Management (AEPAM) says.
In Balochistan mainly girls are out-of-school owing to the gender-based discrimination and regressive societal norms. The dismal state of education, expensive fee structure, and apathy of the government are the other reasons for the great drop-out of the students in the province.
“If my daughters were able to be enrolled in any school in the area someday, it could be the happiest day of my life.” Says Mahtab Baloch. “A fraction of unfortunate and indigent daughters of the soil end their lives up without stepping into schools.”
Correspondingly, the non-functional schools and absence of ultimate amenities in the schools are the main drives behind the rife unenrollment of the school-going children; therefore, the province has been home to the highest proportion of illiteracy among girls. Getting the out-of-school children into school is the constitutional duty of the government which remains unaddressed.
1, 1627 primary schools are registered in Balochistan, of which 1,271 are middle schools and 947 are high schools as per as a study by Alif Ailaan. The study highlights that each year 165,869 girls are enrolled in the primary section, of which the number drops to 44,076 in the middle section and 20,015 in the higher section.
The absence of rudimentary education always impedes progress of the society so as the province grieves from the plagues.
” Whenever I see children going towards schools having bags and wearing uniforms, I wish to get my children enrolled in a school, but forlornly, we cannot go to a lot of expenses to educate our children well since we are paupers,” complains Bibi Gangi.
Her children are out of school and have no other options besides opting work tools at a very young age. They are abused and beaten.
According to the annual report citizen-led household ASER Survey 2018,“In Baluchistan, the proportion of out-of-school children has improved as compared to 2016 but 28% children are still not going to school and the province has recorded overall 7% increase in enrollment.”
Visiting a friend in Mand, district Kech, a few months ago, I was dazed to see the government primary schools in scruffy state. The education minister of Balochistan has on no occasion taken decent steps to bring out-of-school children into school and address the longstanding education crisis in the province.
The education crisis in Balochistan would not come to an end until and unless a basic education is accessible for all. The government had better show its commitment to tackle the problem of ghost teachers and absenteeism of teachers by applying biometric system and ensure that all children are provided with free textbooks and uniforms besides basic amenities in schools.
MNA Mohsin Dawar says stopped at Quetta airport, barred from entering city
Lawmaker Mohsin Dawar said he was barred from leaving Quetta airport on Friday by authorities upon arrival in Balochistan's capital.
"I have just landed in Quetta and I have been stopped from leaving the airport by security agencies," said Dawar via a tweet. "I have been told that my entry to Balochistan has been barred again for 90 days. The state thinks it can break our resolve with such petty tactics. They can’t."
He also posted a notice on his Twitter account, which said that the entry of Dawar and fellow lawmaker Ali Wazir in Balochistan was banned for 90 days under the Balochistan Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960.
Speaking to DawnNewsTV, Dawar said he was speaking to government officials and added that he was being accompanied by workers and supporters of the group.
“The officials informed Mohsin that the deputy commissioner was in Islamabad. The additional deputy commissioner has reached the airport to talk with Mohsin,” Khalil Ahmed, a PTM worker present at the airport said. Khalil further said that the MNA had come to Balochistan to offer condolences to families whose members had been killed in a firing incident at Chaman border.
Dawar and his supporters had flown in from Islamabad. According to an official at the airport, the last flight from Quetta to Islamabad took off earlier in the day and no other flights are scheduled to other cities today.
Members of the group's Quetta chapter gathered outside the airport as news of the development reached them and threatened to stage a protest against the government over the move.
In November 2018, Dawar and Wazir were offloaded from a flight bound from Peshawar to Dubai by officials of security agencies and were told that they could not travel abroad because their names were on the Exit Control List.
In December of the same year, the federal cabinet directed the interior ministry to scrap the PTM leaders' names off the list.
Earlier this year in March, Dawar and Wazir were stopped from boarding a Kabul-bound flight, as officials said that their names were on no fly list. They were going to Afghanistan to attend President Ashraf Ghani's oath-taking ceremony.
At the time, Firdous Ashiq Awan, the then special assistant to the prime minister on information and broadcasting, had said that the names of both MNAs were on the ECL and they "did not ask for permission to go to Afghanistan".
https://www.dawn.com/news/1577902/mna-mohsin-dawar-says-stopped-at-quetta-airport-barred-from-entering-city
#Baluchistan : At least 4 injured in blast outside mosque in #Quetta
At least four people were injured in a blast outside a mosque on Quetta's Sariab Road on Friday, police said.
The wounded were shifted to the Civil Hospital for treatment. The incident took place after Friday prayers.
A video showed worshippers coming out of the mosque as an explosion was heard and plumes of smoke rose from a motorcycle on fire.
Quetta Deputy Inspector General Abdul Razzaq Cheema said the nature of the explosion could not be immediately ascertained and police were investigating if explosives were planted on a bike or if the vehicle caught fire.
But another police official told DawnNewsTV that 1-1.5 kilogrammes of explosive material was left in a bag next to a motorcycle parked outside the mosque. He said the blast was caused after the detonator blew up but the explosives themselves didn't catch fire.
More destruction would have been caused if the explosive material had gone off, the official added.
Police cordoned off the area as the probe into the blast went underway.
According to a state-run APP news agency, shops were shut down as panic gripped the area following the blast. Rescue services were also dispatched to the site.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1577897/at-least-4-injured-in-suspected-blast-in-quetta
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)