Saturday, January 22, 2022
Pakistan is paying the price for Dasu attack that killed Chinese workers — $11.6 million
SONIYA AGRAWAL
Beijing had demanded that the Imran Khan government pay $38 million to the families of 36 Chinese workers killed or injured in the Dasu dam terror attack in July 2021. Nine months after a terror attack on Dasu dam killed 10 Chinese construction workers in Pakistan, the Imran Khan government has finally agreed to pay less than half of what Beijing demanded — $11.6 million. The government approved the amount to be given to the families of the Chinese workers killed or injured in the terror attack that took place on 14 July 2021.The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of Pakistan, which is the prime minister’s consulting forum, met Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin on Friday and took the decision. China had previously demanded that the Pakistan government pay $38 million to the families of 36 Chinese workers affected in the attack. The attack had also claimed lives of four Pakistani workers. Allegations suggesting that the Chinese contractor had vacated the site and raised several demands as preconditions to resume work. But these were rubbished by Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian in a press conference on Friday. He reportedly said: “I’m not aware of the situation you mentioned. As far as I know, the Dasu hydropower project has resumed.” “Recently, we have seen [the] president of Pakistan, Dr Arif Alvi, Prime Minister Imran Khan and some media’s positive comments on the progress made in the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) flagship project,” he added. The Dasu Hydropower Project in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which has now resumed operation, is funded by the World Bank. It, however, is not a part of the CPEC. According to a statement by PM Imran Khan, the dam will provide low-cost, clean energy. “Phase one of Dasu Dam will be completed by 2025, which will add 2160 megawatts of electricity to the national grid. This capacity will increase to 4320 megawatts with the completion of its second phase by 2029,” he had said. Allegations on India In August 2021, former member of Senate Sehar Kamran alleged that the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghan National Directorate of Security was involved in the attack. Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had also made a similar statement, alleging that the bombing was carried out by terrorists backed by the Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies.Reports suggested that the Pakistani intelligence found the involvement of Pakistan Taliban in the attack and also claimed involvement of Indian and Afghan intelligence. It was also claimed that the vehicle carrying the explosives was smuggled into Pakistan.India’s Ministry of External Affairs rejected the allegations, calling them ‘absurd’. “This is yet another attempt by Pakistan to malign India, in a bid to deflect international attention from its role as the epicentre of regional instability and a safe haven for proscribed terrorists,” MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said.https://theprint.in/go-to-pakistan/pakistan-is-paying-the-price-for-dasu-attack-that-killed-chinese-workers-11-6-million/810221/
Pakistan: 'WhatsApp blasphemy' death sentence reinforces dangerous trend
Aneeqa Ateeq, a 26-year-old Muslim woman, was arrested in May 2020 and charged with posting "blasphemous material" as her WhatsApp status, according to a summary issued by the court. A man urged her to change it, but she instead forwarded the material to him, it said.
Caricatures of Muhammad are forbidden by Islam. The court in the city of Rawalpindi found Ateeq guilty, gave her a 20-year jail sentence and ordered her to be "hanged by her neck till she is dead." The death sentence is subject to confirmation by the Lahore High Court. 'Revenge' for refusing 'to be friendly'? Ateeq, who has stated that she is a practicing Muslim, denied the charges. During the trial, Ateeq told the court that she believed the complainant, Hasnat Farooq, deliberately pulled her into a religious discussion so he could implicate her and take "revenge" after she refused "to be friendly" with him.Farooq contended that the accused shared the allegedly blasphemous material as a WhatsApp status and refused to delete it when he confronted her on the messaging platform.She "deliberately and intentionally defiles sacred righteous personalities and insulted the religious beliefs of Muslims," according to the charge sheet. Legal experts, however, said no proper legal aid was provided to Ateeq during the trial. "The defense lawyer failed to defend her during the entire trial period and even admitted her crime in the court proceedings, which led to Ateeq's death sentence," said Saiful Malook, a senior lawyer who represented Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who spent years on death row following blasphemy allegations before she was acquitted by the nation's top court in 2019. Blasphemy to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas Blasphemy is a sensitive topic in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where about 97% of the 180 million inhabitants are Muslim. In 1947, Pakistan inherited the blasphemy laws from its British colonial rulers, who had made it a criminal offense to commit "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religious belief." In later decades, the Islamic military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq introduced extensions of the laws between 1977 and 1988, including life imprisonment for people found guilty of defiling or desecrating the Holy Quran. Later, the death penalty was declared mandatory for anyone blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad.According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, about 80 people are known to be jailed in Pakistan on blasphemy charges — half of whom face life in prison or the death penalty.People have been lynched and even killed following allegations of insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. In December, a Sri Lankan working in a factory in the eastern business hub of Sialkot was killed by an enraged mob over blasphemy suspicions, an incident that grabbed global headlines. Activists and rights groups believe that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are draconian and are often misused. The laws are often employed in cases that have little to do with blasphemy and are used to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas. Christians, Hindus and Ahmadis — a minority Islamic sect — are often victimized as a result, they point out. "The current version of the blasphemy law is indeed draconian. It is often misused, abused and exploited by individuals for their own ulterior motives and vested interests," Tahira Abdullah, a human rights activist, told DW. Amending the 'untouchable laws' Rights organizations have long called on the government to amend or repeal the contentious laws. "The law should be amended, and, at the very minimum, there is a need to amend the procedural aspects of the Pakistan Penal Code Sections. For example, we need to change FIR filing process, enforcement of the 2017 law for the protection of the accused and witnesses and the judges' protection. The misuse of the cybercrime law (PECA 2016 law) also needs to be stopped," Abdullah said. "No law, including the blasphemy law, is untouchable," she added. Conservative and right-wing groups, however, have vociferously opposed allowing even a slight amendment to the blasphemy laws. Ayesha Ijaz Khan, a lawyer and columnist, told DW that it was impossible to have a rational conversation on the issue given the prevailing climate of fear. "It is impossible to speak freely about matters tied to religion in Pakistan, although calls for reform have cited examples from other Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia, where prison sentences for blasphemy vary from 3 to 5 years and do not carry the death penalty," she said. Anti-blasphemy politics by religious-political groups Abdullah said Pakistani politicians appeared to lack the courage to tackle the problem. "They are too afraid of the noisy street power of the mullahs and religious-political parties like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)," the expert underlined. TLP is a largely Barelvi (a sect in Islam) party, founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. The core ideology of this party revolves around the "finality of Prophet Muhammad" and the protection of Pakistan's blasphemy laws. "Groups like TLP have been used over the years for short-term political gain while overlooking the damage they do to the fabric of society and rule of law," Khan said. She noted that the group had protested against the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 2017 after the release of a proposed new version of an oath to be taken by lawmakers that omitted mention of the Prophet Muhammad. "The state capitulated to their demands, emboldening them. Later, this allowed them to demand the expulsion of the French ambassador over offensive cartoons of Prophet Muhammad published in France in 2020, she noted. Multiple reasons for the rise in blasphemy cases At the time of the 2017 protests, Prime Minister Imran Khan — who was then in the opposition — had sided with the protesters instead of with the then government, the lawyer said. "This came back to haunt him when they created mayhem again during his rule." Abdullah said the TLP's cynical manipulation of the blasphemy law to gain political objectives was not the only reason for the increasing number of blasphemy-linked court cases and vigilante killings. "Other factors include the misuse of religion for personal ulterior motives, the ignorance of the masses regarding the Quranic injunctions on the subject, the fear factor among witnesses, judges and lawyers, and the absence of political will to focus on the problems in the law itself," she said. Another big reason, Abdullah said, is "the ease with which vigilante mobs are permitted to carry out extrajudicial killings of blasphemy-accused individuals and then get away with impunity."https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-whatsapp-blasphemy-death-sentence-reinforces-dangerous-trend/a-60511046
Pakistan: Bilawal Bhutto Launches Tractor-trolley March To Protest Against Imran Khan Govt
By Rohit Ranjan
Tractor marches in each division
Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari claims that from the Larkana and Sahiwal divisions, they will begin the protests on January 21 and that they will support and protest alongside their farmers, according to ANI. He further said that the PPP would hold farmer and tractor marches in each division. He further said that due to a shortage of water last season, the paddy crop suffered. He also said that the wheat crop is now being harmed due to the urea fertiliser shortage.
Farmers protesting Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI's) poor agricultural policies were joined by the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in a tractor-trolley march on Friday. As per the report of Dawn, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari told the farmers that "this handpicked government" has harmed the country's agricultural economy as much as it had harmed the overall economy in the last three years. He also stated that agriculture was the country's economic backbone and offered his support to farmers protesting the government's alleged inadequate agricultural policies. Since Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) came to power in 2018, he claimed that farmers have not been obtaining adequate prices for their crops, while input costs have skyrocketed.Farmers protesting the government's poor agricultural policies were joined by the chairman of PPP, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari in a tractor-trolley march on Friday.
PPP information secretary and MNA Shazia Marri stated on Thursday that farmers are facing major challenges like a lack of urea fertiliser and have been protesting the PTI government's anti-farmer policies, according to Dawn. She stated that a bag of urea fertiliser could get as much as Rs 3,500 on the illicit market and that the federal government was not helping farmers. She also said that the PPP would stage protests against the federal government's anti-farmer policies.Marches would be expanded to other parts of the country in the second phase
The party already held marches in Sindh's Larkana division and Punjab's Sahiwal division's Okara city during the first phase. Such marches would be expanded to other parts of the country in the second phase, beginning January 24, according to Dawn. The protest in Larkana will be led by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, while the farmers' gathering in Okara will be led by Punjab PPP President Raja Pervez Ashraf.https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/pakistan-news/pakistan-bilawal-bhutto-launches-tractor-trolley-march-to-protest-against-imran-khan-govt-articleshow.html