Saturday, July 31, 2021
There is not one but two #Pakistans
“If coronavirus spreads in the province or in Karachi like [it did] in India then Khan sahab and his ministers will be responsible,” he said while addressing a press conference in Islamabad. The PPP chairman said that the current back and forth is sending a message of “not one but two Pakistans” and pointed out the lockdowns placed by the PTI government on various cities in Punjab in the wake of rising cases.”They are undermining our efforts when in Karachi, the biggest economic capital of the country, the positivity rate is more than 30 per cent,” he said. Bilawal said the Delta variant was “100pc more infectious” compared to the original virus, adding that it was the federal government’s responsibility to take care of every citizen. “Instead of taking care of us […] we are being called jahil (illiterate).” Bilawal hit back at the government for its cavalier attitude, adding that this demonstrated that the government wanted to politicise all issues, including people’s health and lives. “They are not ready to do anything themselves and don’t let anyone else do anything.” Bilawal said if government ministers were not satisfied with the policies adopted by the province then they should’ve “stayed quiet” and tried to help. “Instead they are sabotaging the Sindh government’s steps to protect the people.” He said the federal government had access to and looked at the same data available with the Sindh government including the extent of the disease spread in Karachi.”They knew that the Sindh government would have to adopt such strictness. [Despite] this, people’s health and lives are being played with due to political reasons,” he said.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/799789/there-is-not-one-but-two-pakistans/
Brutal killing spotlights violence against women in Pakistan
By KATHY GANNON
Noor Mukadam’s last hours were terror-filled. Beaten repeatedly, the 27-year-old jumped from a window but was dragged back, beaten again and finally beheaded. A childhood friend has been charged with her killing.
The gruesome death last week in an upscale neighborhood of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, is the latest in a series of attacks on women in Pakistan, where rights activists say such gender-based assaults are on the rise as the country barrels toward greater religious extremism.Mukadam was the daughter of a diplomat, and her status as a member of the country’s elite has shone a spotlight on the relentless and growing violence against women in Pakistan, said prominent rights activist Tahira Abdullah. But the majority of women who are victims of such violence are among the country’s poor and middle classes, and their deaths are often not reported or, when they are, often ignored.
“I could give you a list longer than my arm, only in one week” of attacks against women, said Abdullah. “The epidemic of sexual crimes and violence against women in Pakistan is a silent epidemic. No one sees it. No one is talking about it.”
Still, Pakistan’s Parliament this month failed to pass a bill that seeks to protect women from violence in the home, including attacks by a husband. Instead, it asked an Islamic ideology council to weigh in on the measure — the same council that previously said it was OK for a husband to beat his wife.
Data collected from domestic violence hotlines across the country showed a 200% increase in domestic violence between January and March last year, according to a Human Rights Watch report released earlier this year. The numbers were even worse after March, when COVID-19 lockdowns began, according to the report.
In 2020, Pakistan was near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s global gender index, coming in at 153 of 156 countries, ahead of only Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan, which held the last spot despite billions of dollars spent and 20 years of international attention on gender issues there.
Many of the attacks in Pakistan are so-called honor killings, where the perpetrator is a brother, father or other male relative. Each year, more than 1,000 women are killed in this way, many of them unreported, say human rights workers.
“The authorities have failed to establish adequate protection or accountability for abuses against women and girls, including so-called ‘honor killings’ and forced marriage,” according to the HRW report.
Rights groups have been sharply critical of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his government, saying he panders to the religious right and excuses the perpetrators of attacks on women.
A former cricket star who has married three times, Khan once had a reputation as a womanizer but has now embraced a conservative Islam. He keeps close ties with a religious ceric who blamed COVID-19 on “the wrongdoing of women.” He once appeared to blame women for attacks by men saying, “if you raise temptation in society ... all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences in the society.”
His information minister, Fawad Chaudhry, says Khan’s statements have been taken out of context and denied violence against women is on the rise, without offering evidence. He said his government encourages women in politics and sports and in provinces where Khan’s party dominates human rights legislation has been strengthened.
“I think this perception is not really close to reality, that in Pakistan women are not safe or maybe that there’s a misogyny in practice in Pakistan,” Chaudhry said in an interview.
Yet last week, one of Khan’s Cabinet ministers, Ali Amin Gandapur, told a rally of thousands of mostly male supporters, that he would “slap and slap” a female opposition political leader.
Last September, a senior police officer blamed a woman who was ambushed and gang raped in front of her two children, saying she should not have been travelling at night and without a man.
Such remarks reflect an increase in ultraconservative and even extremist religious values in Pakistan, said Amir Rana of the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies.
The country has seen an explosion of religious organizations and religious political parties, many with extreme beliefs, said Rana, whose organization tracks and documents extremism in Pakistan.
These organizations have tremendous reach in most cities and towns, where they provide services from education to health care, and thus have extensive ability to influence social values, said Rana.
The history of religious extremism in Pakistan is complicated, and Chaudhry, the information minister, argued that America shares responsibility for the role it played in the region in the 1980s. At that time, Pakistan’s military dictator aided by the U.S. used religious fervor to inspire Afghans to fight an invading Soviet Union. Many of those Afghans ended up in Pakistan as refugees.
“And very conveniently now, the U.S. media and U.S. authorities ... blame everything on Pakistan and have left the region,” he said.
But Abdullah, the rights activist, said Pakistan cannot shirk its own responsibility, noting that same dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia-ul Haq, introduced Islamic laws that, among other things, reduced women’s rights to inheritance, limited the value of their testimony in court and made reporting a rape almost impossible by requiring four male witnesses.
In Mukadam’s assault, police have charged Zahir Jaffar, the son of a wealthy industrialist, with murder. Initial reports say she was killed after spurning his marriage proposal. It’s not clear whether Jaffar has a lawyer.
The brutality of the assault — the attacker used so-called brass knuckles — and the fear that his high social status means he could be freed, galvanized many in Pakistan to speak out. They have held protests and a candlelight vigil and launched a social media campaign #justicefornoor to preempt attempts to use influence and money to whisk the accused out of the country.
In one petition circulating online, the author demanded the country’s judicial system “hold perpetrators of violence responsible. We demand justice. We demand it swiftly. We demand it for Noor. We demand it for all women.”
Zarqa Khan, a student who attended a candlelight vigil for Mukadam, bemoaned how religion now pervades so much of life in Pakistan and how today she fears walking alone on the streets.
“I just didn’t feel safe outside anymore,” said Khan. “And that shouldn’t be the scenario.”
https://apnews.com/article/health-pakistan-coronavirus-pandemic-fea3f1c2bc170756443a6a578cd365f3
Experts say ‘redeployment’ of Pakistan terror groups in Afghanistan serious threat to India
As the Taliban tightens its grip over Afghanistan, the redeployment would undermine the aspirations of the Kashmiri population for peace, said regional expert Olivier Guillard.
With the deadline of US troop’s withdrawal barely a month away and the increasing grip of the Taliban over Afghanistan, experts anticipate the “redeployment” of Pakistani terrorist groups like Lashkar- e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) that have historically targeted India. Writing for Asialyst, regional expert Olivier Guillard said that the redeployment would seriously undermine the aspirations of the Kashmiri population for peace and the desire of the Indian government to work for the sustainable development of the region. This security concern comes amid the second anniversary of the revocation of article 370. Around two years are about to pass since the historic decision took place and everyday life today has witnessed a return to normalcy. “It should be noted in this regard that Jammu and Kashmir organized two local elections, in the fall of 2019 and the end of 2020, without these electoral political meetings being hampered by a crippling level of violence or minimal popular participation,” the writer added. He further noted that initiatives taken by the Central government were not limited to the administrative and electoral fields alone. “The launch and implementation of various infrastructure projects accompanied the will of the central power to influence more favorably the very sensitive link between Srinagar and New Delhi.”Guillard also pointed out that since August 2019, the level of violence has decreased significantly in the Kashmir Valley. “Although efforts are being made on several fronts for the benefit of the sought-after political stability and economic development in J-K, there remain a number of challenges that the Indian government will need to address in the coming years to achieve the target with success.” Given the current geopolitical situation in the region, especially with respect to Afghanistan, the writer suggests that New Delhi will need to arm itself with patience and resilience to meet the aspirations of the Kashmiri population, but also vigilance and firmness in its ties with the authorities of neighbouring Pakistan. Recently, the Afghan government said that more than 10,000 terrorists, backed by Pakistani institutions, have entered Afghanistan. A spokesperson for President Ashraf Ghani said in a video message sent to media that thousands of terrorists enter Afghanistan from Pakistan to carry out the country’s proxy war. “We have accurate intelligence reports that more than 10,000 Pakistani have entered Afghanistan from Pakistan while another 15,000 are encouraged to come. This shows that a regular institution is training and financing Taliban,” the message said. In the past few weeks, Afghanistan has witnessed a surge in violence as the Taliban has intensified their offensive against civilians and Afghan security forces. Experts believe that a civil war-like is possible in Afghanistan which is likely to have repercussions for the regional security paradigm.
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