The second wave of the pandemic has infected many politicians including Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah, MQM leader Farooq Sattar, Captain (retd) Safdar Awan, and PPP leader Qamar Zaman Kaira.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/698016/bilawal-to-attend-lahore-rally-as-he-becomes-covid-19-free/
In October, a 13-year-old Christian girl named Arzoo Raja was abducted as she played outside of her family’s home in Karachi, Pakistan. Arzoo’s parents reported the abduction to local police but were told two days later that their daughter had willingly converted to Islam and married their 44-year-old Muslim neighbor, Ali Azhar.
Since then, Arzoo’s case has made headlines in Pakistan and around the world.
Unfortunately, Arzoo’s case is not unique in Pakistan. According to a 2014 study by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace Pakistan, as many as 1,000 Christian and Hindu women and girls are abducted, forcefully married, and forcefully converted to Islam every year.
Many victims are minors taken from their families, sexually assaulted, married to an assailant, and held in captivity justified by falsified marriage and conversion documents. Violence and threats are used to compel victims to make statements in court supporting their captors.
Despite the odds stacked against them, some victims resist and escape to freedom. Reunited with their families, these survivors often have to go into hiding to maintain security.
International Christian Concern (ICC) recently interviewed one of these survivors to get a more in-depth view of abductions, forced marriages, and forced conversions in Pakistan. The details of the abduction, including names, have been changed or left out to maintain the survivor and her family’s security.
“I will never forget what I went through,” Maria Bibi told ICC. “Although I was able to rejoin my family after two months, the wounds of this inhuman act will stay with me until the last breath of my life.”
In early 2019, Maria, a 15-year-old Christian girl, was abducted from a relative’s house in Pakistan’s Punjab province by an adult Muslim man named Iqbal. After the abduction, Maria was raped multiple times over several weeks and kept in Iqbal’s custody.
Maria’s father filed a report with local police soon after the abduction. However, local police took more than a week to officially file a report and start the investigation into Maria’s disappearance.
After approximately a month in captivity, Iqbal took Maria to a mosque where she was told by three men she must recite the Islamic proclamation of faith. When she refused, the men beat her and forced her to place thumb impressions on several blank papers. The three men then performed a marriage ceremony and again forcefully put her thumb impression on a document used as a falsified marriage certificate.
The next day, Maria was taken to the local court. Before giving her statement, Iqbal told Maria that if she did not say she had converted to Islam and married him of her own free will, he would kill Maria’s parents and siblings. According to Maria, Iqbal made it seem like he already had some of her siblings in his custody.
In court, Maria gave into Iqbal’s threats. She claimed she was 20-years-old, converted to Islam, and married Iqbal of her own free will. The fake marriage certificate and conversion documents were submitted to the court, and Maria was renamed Ayesha.
With extraordinary bravely, however, Maria was eventually able to resist Iqbal and his threats. In a subsequent court hearing, Maria claimed that she was forcefully converted, forcefully married, raped, and abducted by Iqbal.
Within a week, Maria’s new testimony was recorded in front of a judge, and police were ordered to investigate the claims of forced marriage and forced conversion. However, even though the marriage and conversion were in doubt, Maria remained in Iqbal’s custody.
Police attempted to interview Iqbal, but he and his family fled, leaving Maria locked in a room in their house. Maria was eventually rescued by neighbors who broke into the locked room after hearing her cries for help.
Free, Maria called her parents. She was soon reunited with them and taken into protective custody by local police.
After more than two months in captivity, the Lahore High Court found that Maria was abducted, forcefully married, and forcefully converted. The court went on to order that Maria return to her parents and that Iqbal be arrested.
Since gaining her freedom, Maria and her family have lived in hiding. They have changed where they live, their phone numbers, and even the names they use in public. The family faces continuous threats from Iqbal’s relatives and supporters, claiming that Maria should be reunited with Iqbal and not stay with a Christian family.
“This should not happen to a girl of any caste or creed,” Maria shared with ICC. “There should be a law in Pakistan that protects girls from religious minority communities.”
“Kidnapping girls, abusing and converting them against their will is like the law of the jungle,” Maria continued. “The kidnappers are misusing religion for their pleasure. The authorities must protect religious minorities, and there must be a campaign or orientation session for police to learn how to deal with these cases without bias.”
Since Maria has returned to her family, dozens of similar incidents have been reported by Christians across Pakistan. Famous cases like that of Maira Shehbaz, Huma Younas, and Arzoo Raja have dominated headlines in Pakistan for months. As Maria suggests, more decisive action must be taken by authorities in Pakistan to curb this abuse. Until this is done, abductions, forced marriages and forced conversions will continue to be perpetrated against the country’s young and vulnerable.
https://www.persecution.org/2020/11/17/christian-teen-shares-survivors-testimony-abduction-forced-marriage-pakistan/
Pakistan on Saturday reported 44 COVID-19 related deaths in the last 24 hours as the nationwide tally of fatalities has jumped to 8,303.
Citing the latest figures by the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), Dunya News reported that 3,119 persons tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
The number of positive cases has surged to 413,191.
Sindh remains the worst-hit province by the pandemic in terms of cases followed by Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Punjab has overtaken Sindh in the most number of casualties, Dunya News reported.
There are 180,904 coronavirus cases in Sindh; 122,293 in Punjab; 48,683 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; 17,392 in Balochistan; 31,992 in Islamabad; 7,219 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and 4,708 in the occupied Gilgit-Baltistan.
Furthermore, 3,137 individuals have lost their lives to the epidemic in Punjab, 2,991 in Sindh, 1,399 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 169 in Balochistan, 334 in Islamabad, 175 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and 98 in the occupied Gilgit-Baltistan.
https://in.news.yahoo.com/pakistan-records-44-covid-19-070829980.html
NAILA INAYAT
@nailainayat
The Opposition believes the virus is a 'bahana' and the real 'nishana' is to squish the mass movement against the PTI government.
Not too long ago, the government of Pakistan won the coronavirus world cup, leaving behind everyone. Congratulations were in order. It was the smart lockdowns of handsome Prime Minister Imran Khan that were a global success, we were told. The smugness over Pakistan being fortunate, unlike the unfortunate neighbour India, was also a home run. It was as if there was no tomorrow for the pandemic. But then, Covid-19 made a comeback and now people are asking the government: Coronavirus? What is coronavirus?
In the last two months, Pakistan has witnessed a spike in infections with more than 400,000 reported cases of coronavirus. On 2 December, the country recorded 75 deaths, which is the highest number of single-day fatalities since 9 July. The positivity rate is now up at 8.04 per cent in the second wave of the pandemic. The spike and the fatality rate is a cause of concern for the Imran Khan government.
The reasons for the boom are many. Pandemic politics being one. The notion that the novel coronavirus only spreads in opponents’ jalsas (gatherings) being the other. While the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was too busy appreciating itself for its own Covid success, it almost forgot that we were still in the middle of the pandemic. As the alliance of Opposition parties began public rallies for the ouster of the government, PM Khan also began his own jalsas, drawing large crowds that followed no SOPs whatsoever. In his last month’s jalsas of Swat, Hafizabad, and at the convention of Tiger Force, coronavirus seemed like the last of 99 problems the prime minister had. But now, the PM has a problem and how.
The PM calls the Opposition callous for endangering the lives and livelihood of the people, and says that they are at the root of the coronavirus surge. But the Opposition says the virus is a bahana (excuse) and the real nishana (target) is to squish the mass movement against the PTI government. The Opposition questions — why does the government think that coronavirus spreads only in their jalsas and not in sarkari (government) mass gatherings? It thinks that Khan is more dangerous than the coronavirus. While the world fights Covid-19, they say they are fighting Covid-18 — Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Ahead of the Multan jalsa, the government arrested Pakistan Peoples Party leaders earlier this week and registered cases against them for violation of coronavirus SOPs. The Opposition called it a witch-hunt in the grab of the pandemic. Facing a two-year crackdown by the PTI government and finally getting some political space will be hard to let go of. But with government rhetoric amplifying that the Opposition is playing with the lives of people, it will be hard for them to continue the movement. Will the long march to Islamabad in January go as planned or will the Opposition reschedule?
For now, between the good jalsas and the bad jalsas, even the coronavirus stands confused.
Even in superspreader events, the hypocrisy of the government to pick and choose is rather endearing. While it will call out the political opponents aggressively, the government goes into hibernation when it comes to religious political parties protesting or coming together. Last month saw several anti-blasphemy rallies in the major cities of Pakistan against the French government’s support for the Charlie Hebdo caricatures. The two-day sit-in led by Tehreek-e-Labbaik in Islamabad consisted of thousands of protesters defying coronavirus protocols. The subsequent death and funeral of Labbaik’s chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi at Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore had a crowd of hundreds and thousands, one of the biggest in the history of the city. However, no one heard the PTI government grumble.
Other than ranting against the Opposition and telling us what the government is not going to do, what is it that PM Khan plans to do to tackle the second wave of coronavirus? Frankly, no one knows the answer. A ban on public rallies was imposed by the prime minister on 16 November after the spike in cases, yet the grand funeral of Rizvi and the Opposition rallies in Peshawar and Multan followed. So, exactly what kind of ban is it? Probably just a smart ban.
Wait, there is an upside. In the first wave of coronavirus, Pakistanis got the recommendation of Turkish series Ertugrul from PM Khan. The second wave, too, has a Turkish series recommendation — Yunus Emre, which is running on Pakistan Television for all of us interested in Sufism. However, what’s trending in Pakistan is not Sufism but Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives on Netflix. But who knows the Turkish shows might just be the survival kit in all future waves of Covid-19 in Pakistan.
https://theprint.in/opinion/letter-from-pakistan/pakistan-is-playing-pandemic-politics-imran-khans-good-jalsa-vs-oppositions-bad-jalsa/556398/
یوم ثقافتِ سندھ کے موقعے پر جاری کردہ اپنے پیغام میں پی پی پی چیئرمین نے کہا کہ یہ دن واقعتاً نوجوانوں کا دن ہے، جو اِس سرزمین کی عظیم ثقافت و تہذیب کے وارث و امین ہیں۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے زور دیا کہ یہ دن وادیِ مہران کی موسیقی و ڈانس جیسے قدیم فنون کے ساتھ ساتھ لذیذ کھانوں کو نئی جِلا بخشنے کا موجب بنا ہے، لیکن اس کے ساتھ ساتھ ہمیں دنیا سے یہ سیکھنے کی بھی ضرورت ہے کہ انہوں نے اِس طرح کی سرگرمیوں کو اپنی معاشرتی و معاشی نمو کے لیے پلیٹ فارم کیسے بنایا۔
انہوں نے اِس طرح کی سرگرمیوں کو اقوامِ متحدہ کی جانب سے منائے جانے والے دنوں کی طرز پر ہر سال ایک نئے نعرے یا تھیم سے منسلک کرنے کی بھی تجویز دی ہے۔
پی پی پی چیئرمین نے کہا مختلف ثقافتوں، مذاہب، اور رنگ و نسل کے لوگوں کا رواداری و امن کے ساتھ جینے کا نام دورِ جدید ہے۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے اپنی جانب سے سندھ سمیت چاروں صوبوں، آزاد کشمیر اور گلگت بلتستان کی عوام خواہ دنیا بھر میں یومِ ثقافتِ سندھ منانے والے پاکستانیوں کو دلی مبارکباد پیش کی ہے۔
https://jang.com.pk/news/854279