Saturday, August 7, 2021
Opinion: Get Vaccinated. Get Masked. It’s the Only Way Out of This.
leaders around the country still have not learned the most important lesson of the past 18 months: It takes quick, decisive action and clear communication to get ahead of this virus. Temporary restrictions now are the only way to avoid more stringent ones down the line. We know that masks work. That vaccines work. That mandates work. To keep schools, restaurants and other businesses and institutions open — and to bring the Delta variant to heel — communities will need to use all of those tools together. To be clear, the Delta surge is poised to be less severe than previous surges in the United States. Thanks to a largely successful vaccination campaign, roughly half the population, including 80 percent of seniors, is fully inoculated against the virus this time around. That means in most places, even accounting for a very small portion of breakthrough infections among vaccinated people, hospitalization rates and death tolls are not likely to be anywhere near as high. But when it comes to the coronavirus, any surge is bad: The longer the virus spreads, the greater its chances of evolving in ways that make it more transmissible, or more deadly, or that render existing vaccines impotent. The surest way to avoid that dreaded outcome is to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as humanly possible. And the fastest way to do that now — after months of concerted effort to persuade the wary and reach the disenfranchised — is with vaccine mandates. Some 93 million people who are eligible for the shots have yet to receive any. Surveys suggest, and experts believe, that a good portion of those holdouts would get vaccinated if they were made to, by their employers or schools, or if it were required for certain activities, like traveling, attending cultural events or dining out. The power of federal officials to issue a national vaccine mandate is questionable at best. (It has never been tested, but most legal scholars say it would not withstand court challenges.) But a 1905 Supreme Court decision made clear that individual states can indeed require people to get vaccinated. State and local officials have made regular use of that power in the century since — among other things, requiring children to get vaccinated against a roster of other diseases to attend public school. They should use that power now to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Officials in every state should make coronavirus vaccination a requirement for participation in a whole roster of social activities, from indoor dining to theatergoing and gym use. They should also require all public employees — including police officers, firefighters and teachers — to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as a condition of employment. Hospitals and long-term care facilities should require all of their employees to be vaccinated as well. (Nursing homes have not yet been required to report vaccination rates for their employees, but by some estimates, those rates hover below 50 percent. The elderly continue to be among those most vulnerable to the virus’s worst effects.) Some entities already have taken steps in this direction. Many universities require proof of vaccination for students to enroll. In California and New York City, hundreds of thousands of government workers must now show proof of vaccination or submit to weekly testing. At least some private companies are also starting to issue employee mandates. But so far, many of the unions that support these workers have resisted mandates, making the work of state officials that much more difficult. In fact, as Joseph G. Allen, the director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, recently noted in The Washington Post, vaccination rates for many unionized workers are abysmal. In New York City, as recently as late June, they hovered around 40 to 50 percent for police officers, firefighters and corrections officers. That’s not nearly good enough. Average people don’t often have a choice about interacting with these professionals. It’s fair and right for unions to protect their members from unjust policies; workers should be given paid time off to get vaccinated, and should not be penalized if they have cause for a legitimate medical exemption from vaccination. But the virus is not going to wait for those issues to be resolved. Employers and workers need to come to agreements now. Unions are not the only institutions whose support is needed. The Food and Drug Administration can help clear the way for mandates by granting the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna full approval as quickly as possible. (It is welcome news that the agency is reportedly aiming to accelerate its timetable.) Public health experts agree that the shots are both safe and highly effective, but state leaders and private businesses have been reluctant to mandate them without cover from federal regulators. (It would also help if the F.D.A. had a permanent commissioner; it’s bewildering that President Biden has yet to appoint one, in the middle of a pandemic and more than six months after he took office.) Until vaccination rates increase, masks — and thus, mask mandates — will continue to be necessary. Resistance to this idea is understandable. The mask culture war has been exhausting, the people most likely to abide by mandates are the same ones who need those mandates the least because they are already vaccinated, and in the long run it will be far more important to get people vaccinated than to pester them about face coverings. But public policies should reflect what science has made clear: Masks work. They are cheap and easy to use, and it still makes sense to require them in public indoor spaces, in places where the virus is spreading rapidly. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs to do a much better job of explaining this to the public. Officials there erred not by dropping mask recommendations earlier this year but by implying that the move was permanent. The agency is now scrambling to correct course. Last week the C.D.C. advised vaccinated people to wear masks in public indoor spaces in regions where the virus is surging. But officials were slow to share or explain the data behind this latest change in guidance. There is no good excuse for such communication blunders at this stage. Reversing public health edicts is frustrating — and politically fraught — but it’s also part of good public health practice. Leaders at every level should frame it that way. They should also make clear that no success against this virus will ever be secure until the vast majority of people are fully vaccinated against it. In the pandemic’s early days, the most prescient doctors and scientists described a future in which mask mandates and other restrictions were repeatedly imposed and lifted as the virus waxed and waned. We are living in that future now, and we are likely to be stuck here for a while longer, even if the Delta surge suddenly fades, as it did in Britain. The best way to protect ourselves, and to prevent more surges, is to get vaccinated. But until many more people do just that, we’ll need to keep our masks handy. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/opinion/coronavirus-mask-vaccine-mandates.html
Pakistan briefly detains journalists over 'scandalous' talk
BABAR DOGAR and MUNIR AHMED
Pakistani authorities briefly detained two prominent journalists in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday, drawing condemnation from human rights activists, political leaders, and the country’s media.
A senior official from Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, the FIA, said Amir Mir and Imran Shafqat were detained after posting “scandalous content" on social media, prompting a complaint from the government's minister. He did not say whether the two had been charged with any crime.
“They uploaded scandalous content on YouTube and they are being questioned about a complaint lodged by a minister, Murad Saeed," said the FIA’s Babar Bakht Qureshi. Later, the FIA issued a statement saying that the two had been released on bail after questioning and that charges would later be filed in court.
The video in question was an informal roundtable discussion where journalists discussed the army's role in politics and the judiciary in Pakistan. The government did not have any immediate comment about the detentions, which were made in two separate raids.Mir’s brother Hamid broke news of the two detentions on Twitter. Hamid is himself a prominent journalist, who hosted a popular TV talk show but was taken off the air two months after criticizing the country’s powerful military. Since then the elder Mir has not been reinstated by his channel, Geo News.
The other journalist who was detained Saturday was Imran Shafqat. He had worked for several newspapers and is also active on social media.
The detentions come as press freedom is increasingly under threat in Pakistan, where advocates and journalists often accuse the military and its agencies of harassing and attacking them.
In one recent unsolved case, Asad Ali Toor, a critic of the army's role in politics, was beaten up by three unidentified men in his apartment in Islamabad. Police said those involved would be brought to justice, but so far no one has been apprehended. The government insists it supports freedom of speech.
In a statement on Twitter, Pakistan's Human Rights Commission denounced the detentions, urging the end to what it called a “heinous practice” threatening.
https://news.yahoo.com/pakistan-briefly-detains-journalists-over-154940643.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
An uneasy limbo for US-Pakistan relations amidst the withdrawal from Afghanistan
Madiha Afzal
Six months into the Biden administration, amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and increasing violence on the ground there, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship stands in uneasy limbo. Pakistan has indicated repeatedly that it wants the relationship to be defined more broadly than with regard to Afghanistan — especially based on “geo-economics,” its favored current catch-all for trade, investment, and connectivity — and has insisted that it doesn’t want failures in Afghanistan to be blamed on Pakistan. At the same time the U.S. has made it clear that it expects Pakistan to “do more” on Afghanistan in terms of pushing the Taliban toward a peace agreement with the Afghan government. Pakistan responds that it has exhausted its leverage over the Taliban. The result is a relationship with the Biden administration that has been defined by Pakistan’s western neighbor, as has been the case for U.S.-Pakistan relations for much of the last 40 years. And the situation in Afghanistan may define the future of the relationship as well.
WHAT PAKISTAN WANTS
Pakistan’s official stance is that it would prefer a peaceful outcome in Afghanistan, some sort of a power-sharing arrangement reached after an intra-Afghan peace deal. Many are skeptical of this given Pakistan’s support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s, and the sanctuary the group later found in Pakistan. But Pakistan argues that a protracted civil war in Afghanistan would be disastrous for it, on three dimensions: First, insecurity from Afghanistan would spill over into Pakistan. Second, Pakistan fears that this would set up space for the resurgence of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group responsible for killing tens of thousands of Pakistani civilians and attacking the country’s army, security forces, and politicians. Third, this would increase the amount of refugee flows to Pakistan (which has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the 1990s, including 3 million at present), which it can’t afford. These are well-founded fears.
Pakistan is less clear about what a Taliban military victory would mean for it, but discusses it in the same vein as the possibility of civil war in Afghanistan. The implication, presumably, is that the road to a comprehensive Taliban military victory would be violent, setting up many of the same concerns identified above. As part of the Extended “Troika” on Peaceful Settlement in Afghanistan — which also includes the U.S., China, and Russia — Pakistan has signed a statement saying a Taliban emirate would be unacceptable to it.
What Pakistan doesn’t discuss openly is this central tension: Pakistan has long treated the Afghan Taliban as friends — preferring them to Pashtun nationalists (which it viewed as threatening, fearing that they would mobilize Pashtuns on the Pakistani side of the border as well) and to the current Afghan government (which it sees as friendly with India) — while the Afghan Taliban’s friend and ideological twin, the TTP, has posed an existential threat to Pakistan and killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis. This tension is clearly making Pakistan nervous. Pakistan routed the TTP in military operations starting in 2014, but many of them sought refuge across the border in Afghanistan, and have been regrouping since last year. The Afghan Taliban’s potential rise in Afghanistan will almost certainly embolden the TTP, and threatens to engulf Pakistan in the kind of violence it experienced between 2007 and 2015. There’s some speculation that Pakistan could work out a deal with the Afghan Taliban to constrain the TTP, but even if it comes to pass, there is a real question of how effective it would be.
This tension is not apparent to Pakistan’s public. You’ll see Pakistanis being supportive of the Afghan Taliban and against the TTP, because the Pakistani state has obfuscated the connections between the two groups. The only time top officials have admitted to these recently is behind closed doors, when the army chief and the head of the military intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) called the Afghan Taliban and the TTP “two faces of the same coin.”
Amid the increased violence in Afghanistan, with fingers being pointed at Pakistan’s relationship with Taliban, Pakistan has been trying to distance itself from the group. Prime Minister Imran Khan recently said that Pakistan doesn’t speak for the Taliban, nor is it responsible for it. Pakistan argues that a “rushed” U.S. withdrawal before peace talks has set the stage for the current situation. Khan has said that the Taliban’s battlefield victories render moot any leverage Pakistan could have over it. He’s even disingenuously argued that the Taliban are hiding among Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
Yet the world remains skeptical, amid reports of purported Taliban fighters being treated across the border in Pakistan, and statements such as those made by its interior minister, who recently said that the Taliban’s families live in Pakistan.
WHAT AMERICA WANTS
From America’s perspective, the main ask is for Pakistan to exercise its leverage in pushing the Taliban to reduce violence and toward an intra-Afghan peace deal. The second is the potential for counterterrorism cooperation in the post-withdrawal landscape. But a checkered past colors the relationship. For Washington, part of the reason it lost the war against the Taliban is because the Taliban found support in Pakistan, including sanctuary for the Haqqani network and the Quetta shura. That Osama bin Laden was found in Abbottabad in 2011 eroded any remaining trust from the U.S. side. Yet as matters stand, America still needs Pakistan’s help in the region, especially as it withdraws from Afghanistan. And Pakistan largely delivered on the Trump administration’s main request, to bring the Taliban to the table for talks with the United States.
There is some question of what U.S. discussions with Pakistan for counterterrorism cooperation have entailed — “bases” in Pakistan are a nonstarter in Islamabad, and a question that may not even have been asked, though it occupied the domestic conversation for a time. Yet intelligence sharing and other forms of cooperation are presumably all on the table and being discussed behind closed doors.
The sticking points from the U.S. side, however, remain: a wariness about trusting Pakistan, and a desire for Islamabad to put pressure on the Taliban. Pakistan argues the requests to “do more” from the U.S. side are never-ending.
THE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT
President Joe Biden still hasn’t — somewhat inexplicably — called Prime Minister Khan. But U.S.-Pakistan engagement continues, mainly on Afghanistan. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi have spoken multiple times. U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad continues his visits to Islamabad and Rawalpindi, including one in July. Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns visited Pakistan in a secret trip that was later made public. Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa has received multiple calls from officials in Washington, including from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The countries’ national security advisors have met twice in person, and the ISI chief visited Washington just last week. A new quadrilateral relationship has been announced between America, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. The U.S. has also delivered millions of doses of the Moderna vaccine to Pakistan to aid its pandemic response. Yet despite all this, there has been no movement on intra-Afghan peace talks beyond a set of inconclusive meetings in Doha in July — and the situation in Afghanistan is worsening rapidly. As it deteriorates, it appears the U.S. is in wait-and-see posture in terms of the relationship with Pakistan.
STARK CHOICES
As for the future, it is becoming obvious that Pakistan will find it impossible to separate itself from what happens in Afghanistan. As the Taliban gains ground, fingers are pointed toward Pakistan’s relationship with the militants. Whether Pakistan likes it or not, whether this is unfair given Afghan, U.S., and Russian responsibility for bad outcomes in Afghanistan, the reality is that the world sees a Taliban advance as a product of Pakistan’s long-alleged double game. This means that there will be little to no appetite in Washington to engage with Pakistan on other matters going ahead if Afghanistan is embroiled in violence or in Taliban hands. (Pakistan’s closeness with China won’t help it either, in an era of increasing U.S. confrontation with Beijing.)
If Pakistan truly means what it says about wanting a peaceful Afghanistan, then it is time for it to exert all the effort it can to force the Taliban to cease violence and come to the table for peace. No other country’s interests would be better served — in terms of domestic security, international standing, and the relationship with America — by such an effort than Pakistan’s own. The Taliban will be recalcitrant given its newly garnered international legitimacy, beginning with the U.S.-Taliban deal and continuing with its current travels around the globe, and its recent battlefield victories. Yet Pakistan has no other choice but to put pressure on it, for its own sake, and certainly for its neighbor next door. Pakistan’s alternative — betting on the Afghan Taliban while at the same time planning to tackle a resurgent TTP at home — will be disastrous, both for itself and for Afghanistan.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/08/06/an-uneasy-limbo-for-us-pakistan-relations-amidst-the-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/
‘Isolated incident’, says Pakistan’s President on Hindu boy forced to chant Allahu Akbar: Here is how his claim is nothing but codswallop
By Jinit Jain
After the egregious video of a Pakistani Muslim man coercing and threatening a Hindu boy into chanting Allahu Akbar and abusing Hindu Gods and Goddesses went viral on the internet, triggering widespread outrage and concerns over the plight of minorities in Pakistan, the President of the country took cognizance of the incident and took to Twitter to comment about it.
In a tweet, the official Twitter account of the President of Pakistan informed that President Dr Arif Alvi took serious note of the incident of the harassment of a Hindu boy in Tharparkar, Sindh and on his directions, the accused, Abdul Salam Abu Daud was arrested by the Sindh Police.
However, this was not before social media users and activists expressed their outrage over the incident, raising larger questions about the predicament of minorities, especially Hindus, in Pakistan. As the video of the Hindu boy being intimidated and threatened into chanting Allahu Akbar and abusing Hindu Gods and Goddesses went viral, concerns regarding the fragile safety of minorities in Pakistan began to be raised, prompting the President of Pakistan to condemn the incident.
In a bid to allay the mounting criticism about Pakistan’s inability to safeguard the rights of its minorities, the President of Pakistan posted a string of tweets denouncing the harassment of the Hindu boy.
However, the President of Pakistan’s condemnation came with a caveat. Instead of issuing an unconditional denouncement of the incident, the President termed it as an “isolated” occurrence that he claimed was used to vilify the country.
“Our society should remain alert. Such isolated ugly incidents are used to give a bad name to the country. I condemn it and I assure all citizens that we in Riasat-e-Madina cannot and will not allow this to happen,” the President’s official Twitter account posted.
The President was more concerned about the bad name that the incident brought to the country instead of the harassment meted out to the Hindu boy by the member of the majority. In the subsequent tweet, the Pakistani President tried to water down the religious bigotry of the aggressor, holding forth on the cliches about Islam protecting minorities and the constitution ensuring equal rights, freedom and security.
“Pakistan has and will always ensure protection to its minorities as enshrined in our constitution,” he said in another tweet.
While the Pakistani President called it an “isolated” incident, a look at the perpetrator’s social media handle tells that the man is a habitual offender. His social media comments are full of blatant Hinduphobia and hatred against Hindus. There was another video where he was interacting with a Hindu child, claiming to the camera that he could have assaulted the Hindu child, but he was not doing so because he is a ‘virtuous’ man.
The systematic persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan
While the President of Pakistan would have his followers believe that the harassment of a Hindu boy in Tharparker was just a stray incident and that the state of Pakistan works scrupulously to uphold the rights of the minorities and ensure their protection, the incidents of persecution since its inception in 1947 do not jibe with his recent assertions.
From 14 August 1947 Hindus in the country have been systematically persecuted, a trend that reached a crescendo during the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971 when millions of Hindus in Bangladesh were maimed, raped, brutalised, and killed. The trend continued well into the 1980s, the decade when Pakistan was Islamised under the rule of Islamic fanatic Zia-ul-Haq.
Later in the 1990s, the Islamic radicals and terrorists gained prominence as the United States egged them on to wage a jihad against the Soviet forces that had invaded neighbouring Afghanistan. The radicalisation of the population and the romanticism with the idea of jihad inevitably gave rise to Islamic terrorism and a growing number of radical fanatics started gaining currency. As a consequence, the country became a breeding ground for terrorists and radicals who believed in the puritanic version of Islam.
Subjugation of Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims within Pakistan
Since then, the persecution of minorities in Pakistan has only escalated. In fact, not just other religious minorities but Ahmadiyya, a minority group within Muslims, have also been subjected to violence, subjugation and brutality. Sectarian conflicts between Muslim groups have marred Pakistan as different radical groups vie to dominate the country’s larger Islamic doctrine.
The Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan is prohibited from referring to themselves as such, and from practising aspects of their faith under Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws. A recently published report in Al-Jazeera said there has been a spike in the persecution of Ahmadiyya in Pakistan in the last two years.
Last year, at least five Ahmadis were killed in targeted attacks by terrorists across Pakistan, while at least seven others were wounded in unsuccessful attacks, the community data says. Since 2017, at least 13 Ahmadis have been killed, and more than 40 wounded, as per the data.
Religious minorities, especially Hindus, in Pakistan living under the persistent shadow of fear and persecution
The threats faced by members of other religious minority communities in Pakistan are even more dangerous. Sikhs, Hindus and Christians in Pakistan lead a particularly vulnerable life in Pakistan, with the strict blasphemy laws being used by the members of the majority community as a tool to persecute them and settle personal scores.
Hindus, in particular, live under a constant threat of persecution. Attacks on Hindus, kidnapping of Hindu daughters and their forcible conversions have become par for the course in Pakistan. Among Hindus, girls are especially targeted by the Islamic fanatics that run amok in Pakistan. The kidnappings, forced conversions and marriage of Hindu girls have become frequent in Pakistan, especially in the Sindh province. The Islamic fanatics routinely abduct Hindu girls, forcefully convert them into Islam before marrying them against their wish.
Recently, a case of a Muslim neighbour kidnapping, converting and marrying his Hindu neighbour was reported in Pakistan’s Kadio Ghanour. Reena Meghwar, a Hindu girl was forcibly converted and married after being abducted by a Muslim neighbourhood man she used to tie Rakhi to.
In March this year, a 13-year-old Hindu girl named Kavita Oad from the Kandhkot area of Sindh was reportedly abducted and then forcibly converted to Islam. A couple of days later, her house was set on fire by unidentified miscreants.
In the same month, a journalist in Pakistan was shot dead by unknown assailants for exposing the role of politicians and clerics in facilitating the forceful conversions of Hindu girls. A report published by Associated Press in December 2020 estimated that more than 1,000 girls, mostly Hindus, are abducted, raped and converted to Islam every year in Pakistan.
Families of the victims have accused the administration and the police of not acting against the culprits. Even the courts fail to do justice for Hindus in Pakistan. In fact, in some cases, the courts have actively participated in the injustice meted out to the Hindu and Christian minorities. In June 2020, a district magistrate allowed a Muslim man to keep his Hindu wife even after the parents of the girl alleged that their daughter was kidnapped and forcibly married off to the man.
So while the President of Pakistan might make light of the recent case of harassment of the Hindu boy by terming it as an “isolated” incident, the facts don’t add up with his assertions. On the contrary, they point towards a sinister pattern of unceasing persecution of minorities, carried out by Islamists and abetted by the judiciary, government authorities and members of civil society.
The Pakistani President might have resorted to using platitudes and laid claims to the lofty ideals of democracy but is it is an established fact that Pakistan is a dysfunctional country, much less a democracy. Therefore, his claim that the bullying of a Hindu boy into chanting Allahu Akbar is nothing but a shoddy attempt to whitewash the unspeakable atrocities meted out Hindus while shielding the perpetrators behind it.
https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/pakistan-president-violence-hindu-boy-viral-video-calls-it-isolated-incident/
Pakistan sees highest daily coronavirus deaths in fourth wave
- Pakistan reports the highest daily death toll of the fourth coronavirus wave.
- Infections have risen sharply in Pakistan in recent days, with the COVID-19 positivity rate currently at 8.24%.
- The country reports 4,720 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, NCOC data shows.
Pakistan recorded 95 deaths from coronavirus over the last 24 hours, the highest single-day toll during the ongoing fourth wave of the pandemic, National Command and Operation Centre's data showed Saturday morning.
On May 20, Pakistan had registered 131 deaths. With fresh fatalities, the overall death toll reached 23,797.
The country reported 4,720 new infections on Saturday, pushing the total caseload to 1,063,125. The NCOC data showed that 57,233 tests were taken in the last 24 hours to check for COVID-19.
Some 959,491 patients have so far recovered, whereas the number of active cases reached 79,837.
Infections have risen sharply in Pakistan in recent days, with the positivity rate currently at 8.24%.
Earlier this week, the COVID-19 positivity rate went over 9% for the first time in nearly three months. The country last recorded a coronavirus positivity rate of 9.12% on May 10.
Sindh is currently under a lockdown till August 8, while the Punjab and AJK governments, too, have imposed a partial lockdown. Punjab's lockdown covers Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan and Faisalabad.
Senator Taj Haider of the Pakistan People’s Party has released a book that analyses Census 2017 and all the issues linked to it
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/25316/
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