Video Report - #Coronavirus #Covid19 #LatinAmerica What's behind Latin America's severe coronavirus death toll?

Video Report - Kamala Harris’s shoe choice goes viral

Video Report - #india #coronavirus 🇮🇳 Is India losing its Coronavirus battle?

Video Report - Bob Woodward on "Fear" in the Trump White House

Video Report - New audio excerpts released from Trump's conversation with Bob Woodward

#asimsaleembajwa - Belt and Road Pakistan Belt and Road chief under pressure to resign

By ADNAN AAMIR

Corruption allegations spark rare criticism of point man in China relations.

Asim Saleem Bajwa, the retired general who heads the powerful China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority -- the government agency that oversees China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Pakistan -- has come under pressure to resign after allegations of corruption in his family busineses surfaced.

According to an expose last month in Fact Focus, a Pakistani online news portal, growth of the Bajwa family's business interests tracked his military career. The story alleged that Bajwa, who is also special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan for information and broadcasting, used his influence to help his family amass huge wealth.

The story kicked off a firestorm on social media, with demands for Bajwa's resignation and further investigation. It fueled particular discontent among Pakistanis not benefiting from CPEC projects. Maryam Nawaz, a leading opposition figure, also called on Bajwa to respond to the allegations.

The CPEC Authority was set up in October to centralize the affairs of CPEC, China's $50 billion BRI component in Pakistan, and to knock down bureaucratic hurdles obstructing timely project completions.

Feeling the heat, Bajwa announced his resignation as special assistant to the prime minister, but hung on as chairman of the CPEC Authority.

Khan rejected the resignation, and suffered a barrage of criticism -- not least because a major plank in his election campaign was accountability. He is now being accused of reneging on election promises.

Khan's party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Justice Movement), won the 2018 general election with alleged backing from the army.

Strategic Gwadar port is at the southern end of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which overall is unlikely to be affected by corruption allegations against Bajwa, its Pakistani point man.   © Getty Images

"There are several aides to the prime minister but only one head of the CPEC Authority," Malik Siraj Akbar, a Washington-based analyst on South Asian issues, told the Nikkei Asian Review. "Offering to resign as the PM's aide is symbolic and does not add much value."

The scandal was exposed by Ahmed Noorani, an investigative journalist with a history of reporting on military affairs. He spent months preparing the report, which alleges that the Bajwa family's business empire has 99 companies spread over four countries, "including a pizza franchise with 133 restaurants worth an estimated $39.9 million."

In Pakistani media circles, many doubt that such a detailed story could have been pulled together without help from powerful enemies of Bajwa.

The alleged corruption row raises questions about the future of CPEC, even though any evidence of significant damage has yet to emerge.

"It's no small matter for CPEC's Pakistan head to be implicated in a scandal involving overseas family assets -- especially when he's part of a government that has incessantly criticized Pakistani politicians about this very issue," Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, told Nikkei. He said there is unlikely to be a direct impact on CPEC operations, but there will be "reputational implications" for the multi-billion dollar undertaking.

Krzysztof Iwanek, head of the Asia Research Center at Warsaw's War Studies University, agrees that the fallout is likely to be contained. "Pakistan's military and political elite want CPEC to develop further despite their disagreements about different issues," he told Nikkei.

Some government ministers and retired military personnel, meanwhile, regard the allegations against Bajwa as part of an anti-CPEC conspiracy.

With serious tensions along the China-India border, some wonder if India had a hand in corruption allegations against Pakistan's top official for China projects.   © Getty Images

Given present geopolitics, with China and India clashing along their border, Kugelman sees a "powerful pretext" for painting the scandal as an Indian conspiracy against CPEC.

"How come asking for accountability, transparency, and checks and balances on CPEC constitutes a conspiracy against CPEC?" asked Akbar. "Keeping the project clean and free from corruption is in the best interests of Pakistan and China."

Pundits in Pakistan are weighing up the odds of Bajwa losing his coveted CPEC position, but many doubt he will be dismissed.

"Apparently, the allegations of corruption will not prevent Bajwa -- someone well-regarded by [Islamabad and Beijing] -- from serving in the top CPEC slot," Kugelman told Nikkei. He said the reflexive dismissal of corruption allegations against the top official may be part of an effort to preempt criticism of CPEC, an entity Islamabad "badly wants to uphold as sacrosanct."

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Belt-and-Road/Pakistan-Belt-and-Road-chief-under-pressure-to-resign

#Pakistan - Pilots’ fake licenses

At last truth about the Pakistan Airline (PIA) dubious licenses is coming to light. Representatives of Pakistan Airline Pilots’ Association (PALPA) told the Sub Committee of Senate Standing Committee on Civil Aviation that licenses of pilots of PK 661, which crashed near Hawelian on way from Chittral to Islamabad, were not genuine. It was further revealed to the Sub Committee that in 2018 scrutiny of PIA pilots’ examination record maintained by the Civil Aviation Authority had exposed discrepancies between the result sheets generated by the software and the attendance sheets of the candidates on the days of examinations. The Committee asked for the forensic report in the matter.

The opposition had resorted to cutting political angles when Civil Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan made a statement in the National assembly that licenses of 262 have been found fake. Former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbassi, who had served Chairman PIA, insisted in an interview on a private TV Channel that pilots’ examinations are conducted by Civil Aviation Authority in absolute transparent manner. Showing resentment over the statement of Aviation Minister, former Prime Minister argued that it will bring a misnomer to the image of the country and National Airline.

The matter of pilots with ingenuine flying licenses posed a grave risk to human lives during air travel. The government had taken right decision to make the names of public of pilots holding fake licenses by uploading on the website of Civil Aviation Authority and informing flying clubs accordingly. The issue was not that simple and straight forward as Shahid Khaqan Abbassi had portrayed, because International Air Transport Association (IATA) had then taken a notice of it. It was on the recommendation of (IATA) that the United States and European Union countries had banned PIA flights in their skies during the tenure of last PML-N government. The main reason cited was the large number of faulty and outmoded aircrafts in the fleet of the National Air Line. The irregularity of inducting pilots of counterfeit licenses is unlawful and can be used as pretext for banning the flight of national airline and other Pakistani airlines on international routes.

PIA was kept in the dilapidated state by the previous government to pave the way for its privitisation at throw away price, for which air traffic was declared as core function, loans, worn out airplanes and other liabilities as non-core function of the airline. The air traffic was selected for privitisation. Abandoning the induction of new aircraft in the fleet of PIA, appointments on political basis and adoption of open skies policy resulted in huge losses of the national carrier in addition to overburdening it with loans of over Rs. 200 billion. Hopefully, the submission of forensic report, rightsizing measures being taken for purging the political appointees and induction of brand new airplanes will help clear the accumulated mess in PIA.

https://thefrontierpost.com/pilots-fake-licenses/

#Pakistan - Rape cases and the rule of law

By Maleeha Hashmey

“One culprit, just one culprit undergoing death penalty while the whole world watches him meet his well-earned destiny is all it is going to curb the ‘rape’ cancer”, “Zero tolerance for rapists”, “Stop victim blaming”—are the audible murmurs we heard getting louder across Pakistan, ever since we saw an innocent woman traveling on the Highway, late on Tuesday night, raped right in front of her kids mercilessly.

But the tragedy was not over. She had to survive to hear from a very responsible police officer that she, somehow, called for it, by (deliberately) not checking up on the fuel levels of her vehicle and by choosing an extremely inappropriate time to travel “alone” with her kids and that she should have chosen GT Road instead, because GT Road is surrounded by densely populated areas with rich traffic inflow. Another free “wisdom nugget” that the officer offered her was that she should not have been traveling alone, to begin with.

So, listening to this timely lecture on how the rape victim was more or less, responsible for “creating a situation” where her car ran out of fuel and the rapists were probably left with no other option but to break the driver’s seat window using stones and dragging her and her children out of the car and raping her ruthlessly, followed by them looting her cash, jewellery and ATM cards.

Sources revealed that the woman was a French national and she had brought her kids to Pakistan to show the culture and values around. Little did she know how the land of pure was going to be introduced to the little ones.

The CCPO Lahore, Umar Sheikh’s statement, was followed by a snide remark, “The woman might have thought that she was in France. She needed to know she wasn’t” which enraged every sensible and sensitive soul in Pakistan, as it not only lacked empathy for the victim but also offered this (weak, untimely and totally unnecessary) defence of the rapists, even if his intention was not so.

His insistence on forcing his opinion on all and complete reluctance to retract and replace it with a more empathetic message added fuel to fire, and eventually the real message got lost and a new politically motivated debate took over print, electronic and digital media, where some of the incumbent government’s supporters began to justify the police officer’s statement full of suggestions on what the victim should and should not have done, claiming that it was his genuine concern for women. The opposition parties, the hard-core feminists, civil society members and a majority of the supporters of the PTI government viewed it to be a highly irresponsible and untimely message, signalling the crime to make sense as the victim’s precautionary measures were not in place.

This genuinely dangerous issue which needed to be viewed using an enviably cohesive national lens, fell prey to political angling, where the opposition’s sole focus turned to the “removal of CCPO, Lahore for his ill-chosen statement” rather than emphasising on the arrest of the culprits. The government missed his statement outside the off-stump, as they say in cricket, lending him the margin to handle the situation better next, without the CM Punjab, Usman Buzdar, sternly telling him off and warning him to work on how and when to say what to whom. Delegation headed by Zalmay Khalilzad calls on COAS Bajwa: ISPR All said and done, one tends to ponder that it is not really about the victim being well-prepared or ill-prepared to defend themselves, but about the habitual predators getting away with this heinous crime time and again, while the country debates on them being publicly executed or not.

From the seven-year old Zainab getting sexually assaulted and murdered to the mother of three getting brutally raped right in front of her children, one can say with absolute certainty that it is all about the sick mentality of the habitual rapists and inability of the weak system of the country to take them to task, make an excellent example out of them. The encouraging part is that this woman’s suspected culprits got caught red-handed while using her stolen ATM Card yesterday. The thorough investigation leading to DNA profiling is underway. While we hope to see the DNA profiling results connect the dots, the real question remains:

Will the culprits be punished this time around? Or will they be set free only to pounce upon their next victim?

Also, why did the Highway Police have to wait for this nerve-wrecking incident to jolt them to place the security staff resource on Highway after six months of this Lahore-Sialkot Motorway being fully operational with no security arrangements in place?

EU humanitarian aid mobilises €5m for basic health service provision The State has to answer this stream of questions, as they echo in every nook and corner of Pakistan today. The sooner the State turns these “why’s” into “you’re in safe hands” and “valuable suggestions to the masses on when, where and how they should travel” into “we ensure your safety inside and outside your houses, irrespective of your class, creed, age gender and ‘precautionary arrangements’”, the better. Pakistan Zindabad!

https://nation.com.pk/13-Sep-2020/rape-cases-and-the-rule-of-law

In TV show 'Churails', Pakistani women take on society's demons

By Asad Hashim
@AsadHashim

Asim Abbasi (left), the show's creator, writer, and director says it took almost two years to film and finish the show [Courtesy: Zee Entertainment]aption

Churails has been lauded for breaking new ground, smashing stereotypes and putting women at the center of its story.

Ten women, dressed in colorful burqas and armed with hockey sticks, cricket bats and their wits, step out of a shop to confront an angry mob. Over two minutes, they deliver a sound beating to a mainly male group that had gathered at the door, having shown up thinking they could stop the women from doing what they do best, helping other women out of difficult or violent situations. Using cricket bats, hockey sticks, and even whiskey they found lying around, the women push the shocked mob back. Churails is certainly not your everyday Pakistani television show. 

 This cathartic scene in particular flies in the face of how such confrontations are generally expected to go in Pakistan, a country of 207 million people where violence against women is frequent and widespread. Written and produced in Pakistan, Churails - which was released in August on Indian streaming platform Zee5 - breaks new ground, smashing stereotypes and putting strong women at the centre of its story.It follows the stories of four women - a rich homemaker, a wedding planner, a recently released convict and a boxer - in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi, as they fight the patriarchy and set up a detective service to help other women in need.Lauded for breaking the mould of formulaically written female characters in South Asian television, the show has raised concerns from Pakistani feminists about how it treats issues of class and homosexuality, and whether it is commodifying feminism.
The "churails", so named after an Urdu word for "witches", spend 10 episodes investigating cheating husbands, confronting abusive partners, browbeating a landlord and ultimately uncovering a massive conspiracy to traffick and murder women. It is a wild ride, and the characters often curse, bludgeon and drink their way through it. For the critics, the show is a complex one to break down, and much of their concern stems from one question: Is the show capitalising on feminism, delivering a feel-good ride without actively confronting the structures of violence in South Asian society?

'Cathartic' Aimen Rizvi is one of those conflicted cultural critics. "It was just very cathartic to see women kicking a**, or being bada**," says Rizvi, a culture writer. "Even just the language, the vernacular, is not something that we really get to see [women using on screen]. It's very rare for Pakistani women to feel represented and to see characters they can so closely identify with on-screen."She quickly points out though that the show also appeared to be capitalising on a rising feminist movement in Pakistan without delving deeper into any of the issues it raises."You have these men writing these empowered female characters ... it's almost like we are following the same tropes and stereotypes, but we are not sitting to think what it means to be a 'brave' woman, what are the costs, how do you sit with these things?" she says.She offers the US television show Mrs America and the UK show I May Destroy You, both released this year, as examples of shows dealing with issues of systemic misogyny in more nuanced and complex ways.

"My concern is that the people creating the show are not really living through those realities," says Rizvi. "It is an appropriation and a misrepresentation in certain ways."

Yasra Rizvi plays Jugnu, a disgraced wedding planner battling her, and society's, demons [Courtesy: Zee Entertainment] 

Ushah Kazi, a culture writer and author of The Pop Culture Junkie's Guide to Pakistani Cinema, says that classifying the show as feminist simply based on its subject matter is problematic.

"I think classifying Churails as a feminist series is a little over-enthusiastic," she says. "I do believe that it is feminism-curious for sure. It is willing to create interesting narratives that focus on women. But with that said, it is a commercial venture, and the limitations of that will hinder how far it can push the envelope."

The language used in the show and its marketing is significant, says Kazi.

"The marketing for the series doesn't even use the words 'feminist' or 'patriarchy'. This could be a coincidence, or it could be a conscious decision on the part of the team to not alienate potential subscribers."

Anna MM Vetticad, an Indian journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic, does not shy away from calling the show "feminist", but says the series remains "brave yet problematic".

"Churails' significance lies in the range of sensitive issues it confronts while making no apologies for its feminism," she told Al Jazeera.

"The show is also, in some senses, superficial. While it purports to expose classism, it seems unaware of its own class bias. And it does not delve sufficiently into some of the trickier moral questions it raises.

"In terms of its courage in taking on issues usually avoided by mainstream Hindi/Hindustani language cinema though, that too in a hugely gutsy and entertaining fashion, it is a new frontier for south Asian TV."

'Great' reception

For Asim Abbasi, the show's creator, writer and director, the feedback has been immense, and varied.

"The reception overall has been great ... I knew it would impact people, but I didn't know the amount of engagement it would create, between the people who like it or don't like it," says Abbasi.

"Even if you don't like it, you're talking about. Those dialogues are important. Whether that is about gay and lesbian representation, whether it's about women's rights. It's interesting to see who is reacting well to it and who is not."

Abbasi defends the show against allegations of not dealing deeply enough with issues of class, racism or structural drivers of violence, saying he wrote storylines to revolve around a single central theme.

"For me, the show was about power dynamics and how it causes gender bias," he says. "The one thing is the power imbalance between a man and woman, and how that can cause female rage and give you both positive and negative consequences."

Sarwat Gillani, left, and Yasra Rizvi, right, play two of the four lead roles in Churails [Courtesy: Zee Entertainment]

Nimra Bucha plays Batool, the newly released convict, and delivers one of the show's most powerful performances as a woman who murdered her husband for attempting to rape their child. "The way the story is told ... will strike you as radically different," she says. "And the screen will seem unfamiliar because it will be populated with people you don't see on screen doing things they normally don't do on screen here."Bucha said it took a while to better understand her character, who is central to the plot but has perhaps the fewest lines of dialogue in the show. "There were clues all over the script that led to her," says Bucha. "Asim had written some really wacky scenes for her with minimum direction which were fun to interpret. She's not boring. She's not 'strong and silent' [either]." Cross-border appeal India and Pakistan, South Asian neighbours who have fought three full-scale wars since gaining independence from the British colonial rulers in 1947, have seen tensions rise in recent years, focused on the disputed territory of Kashmir.India's government, led by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has seen space for Pakistani artists in that country's massive Bollywood market shrink to almost nothing.

Pakistan, too, has banned Indian films and television channels from its screens.Pakistani television shows, however, are a notable exception, finding dedicated audiences in India and escaping vocal opposition from the country's Hindu right wing."India and Pakistan have historically been dichotomous in their approach to each other's art and artists," says Vetticad. "While the general public have welcomed cross-border exchanges, right-wing elements and politicians have consistently sought to stem them." The show, however, managed to navigate both strict Pakistani censor board rules and the virtual cultural apartheid being played out across the two countries' industries. "It was certainly not going to get past the censors, there was no way to air this on a Pakistani channel," says Abbasi. "Something like this would never get approved without significant cuts." The show found a home on Zee5, a streaming platform owned by the Zee Entertainment group, a $1.08bn Indian company that operates more than 80 television channels and reaches 173 countries. Zee5, which offers a range of television shows - many produced in Pakistan - commissioned the show under its Zindagi brand, which highlights Pakistani content. The content is not geo-limited, meaning subscribers anywhere in the world can watch it for as little as $0.50 per week. 

 Rizvi says Pakistan's television production industry could certainly benefit from the investment and the relative freedom that producing for a streaming platform offers. "It is exciting that there is funding coming in from other parts of the world ... the industry needs it, although it results in a different kind of gatekeeping," she says. "It would be interesting how that plays out in the future."Kazi points out that by being aired on a streaming platform, the show also manages to short-circuit a growing movement by certain Pakistani conservative parties to ban cultural products that are not deemed to fit their idea of being either Pakistani or pious."The most insidious thing about individuals or organisations that hope to stifle artistic expression in Pakistan is that they are methodical and effective," she says, offering the example of award-winning film Zindagi Tamasha, which was passed by the censor board but blocked from release by far-right anti-blasphemy groups. "They used sentiments, and trigger words, but at the end of the day, they took advantage of the very nature of a traditional film industry setup. That you need permission to exhibit, and ticket sales that rely on audiences, to regain investment." Digital streaming platforms like Zee5, she says, bypass all that.

Ultimately, even with questions around how it deals with its subject matter, is the space better for having Churails in it?

"One hundred percent, there is no question of it," says Rizvi. "I hope that it sets a precedent and shows artists that there is room to talk about these issues, that we should be creating art about women that centers women."

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/tv-show-churails-pakistani-women-society-demons-200914103028048.html

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari: Strengthening the roots of democracy in the world was the responsibility of individual nations and the collective responsibility of the democratic world

Long Live Bhuttoism!!!

Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has said that strengthening the roots of democracy in the world was the responsibility of individual nations and the collective responsibility of the democratic world. In his message on the eve of the International Day of Democracy being observed by the United Nations and its member states on Tuesday, the PPP Chairman emphatically endorsed the UN statement that, “the values of freedom, respect for human rights and the principle of holding periodic and genuine elections by universal suffrage are essential elements of democracy.”

 Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that the fight between democratic and dictatorial forces which began in Pakistan after the death of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, is still raging despite the sacrifices of democratic leaders Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto and others who laid down their lives for democracy and human rights. He said the democratic workers of Pakistan suffered capital punishments, solitary confinements, tortures, public lashing, long imprisonments and fabricated cases at the hands of tin-pot dictators and their puppets, but never compromised on democratic and human rights of the people. 

The Pakistanis struggle for democracy and the huge sacrifices made to achieve it, stands out in the contemporary struggles for democratic systems, he added. 

 Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pointed out that PPP gave to the people of Pakistan their first-even unanimous Constitution, the first-ever directly Prime Minister Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the first-ever woman elected Prime Minister of Islamic world Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, besides the first-ever democratic government in Pakistan to complete its tenure under President Asif Ali Zardari. PPP Chairman pledged that his Party, together with other democratic parties would continue the struggle for strengthening of democracy, because a strong democracy is the sole guarantee for a strong Pakistan. “Victimisation, intimidation and fake cases cannot deter our Party and the democratic forces from carrying out the mission of our democratic leaders who embraced martyrdom but didn’t surrender,” he added.

https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/23746/