Tuesday, August 4, 2020
#Pakistan - Chairman #PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pays glowing tribute to the martyrs of Police
In his message on Youm-e-Shuhda-Police being observed today, PPP Chairman said that police personnel who embraced martyrdom fighting the terrorists and criminals were heroes of the nation and we all are proud of them.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said Police force has always fought valiantly against the terrorists and hardened criminals as evident from their brave resistance to the terror attack on Karachi Stock Exchange a month ago.
PPP Chairman expressed solidarity with families of martyred policemen and asked the government to take every possible effort for their welfare and well-being including the provision of education and health facilities to them.
He said that law enforcement agencies including the Police have rendered great sacrifices for protecting lives and properties of the citizens and entire nation salutes as well as honours all our martyrs.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/2020/08/04/chairman-ppp-bilawal-bhutto-zardari-pays-glowing-tribute-to-the-martyrs-of-police/
Minority rights recognised only on paper in Pakistan
By Veronica Gill - Shafique Khokhar
“I saw my son bleed, bruised, unconscious. I shouted his name, splashed water on his face and gently slapped him to wake him up, but he no longer moved,” said Ghafoor Masih, a Christian, father of Saleem Masih, who was beaten to death in Baguyana village on 25 February.
The 24-year-old was punished for bathing in a tube-well pool used by Muslims. His father spoke about the incident that led to his son’s death in an interview with the British Pakistani Christian Association, a non-profit organisation.Pakistan broke away from India for the sake of religious freedom, but it is now the home of many Ghafoor Masihs, who seek justice for their loved ones; all religious minorities are discriminated against in the country, not only Christians.
Why are minorities in Pakistan the victims of repression? Was the country founded only for Muslims? Of course not. Its founder, Quaid-e-Azam (Great Leader) Muhammad Ali Jinnah paid great attention to religious freedom.
“You are free;” Jinnah said, “you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State".
For not following Jinnah's words, Pakistan has become the 7th most dangerous place in the world for religious minorities, according to Human Rights Watch.
The problem goes way back. Discrimination began in 1949, right after the Constituent Assembly approved the Objectives Resolution whereby all laws must conform with Islamic precepts.
Pakistan’s first foreign minister, Zafarullah Khan, an Ahmadi, paid the price and was removed at the request of religious scholars.
Ever since the resolution was adopted, minorities have lived in fear as discrimination spread across the land, making life worse for them.
According to government statistics, Pakistan’s minorities dropped from over 20 per cent in 1951 to 3.74 per cent today, as noted in the latest census.
Minorities in Pakistan have had to suffer a lot, from rape to forced marriages, verbal abuse to mental torture, physical injuries to brutal killings.
Pakistan’s constitution gives ample space to freedom for minorities. The country is also bound by numerous international treaties that protect their rights. However, there is a huge difference between what is written and what is practised.
The state’s constitutional and international obligations
Under Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Pakistan must guarantee every minority the right to freely profess and practise their religion and use their language.
Similarly, Article 22 (1) of the Pakistani Constitution bans schools from forcing students to receive instructions or take part in any ceremony other than those of their faith.Despite what is in the law, various school boards impose the teaching of Qurʼānic and Islamic verses. Non-Muslim students are asked not only to read them, but also to memorise them.Ethics has been introduced into the national curriculum as an alternative subject to Islam for non-Muslim students. However, many schools still do not teach this course for lack of trained staff.
Equality
Article 25 (1) of the Constitution guarantees full equality for all citizens. At the same time, article 18 of the ICCPR recognises the freedom to have and adopt the religion or faith of one's choice.
However, according to the Movement for Solidarity and Peace, about a thousand girls and young women, aged 12 to 28, of non-Muslim (mainly Hindu) origin, are converted by force every year and compelled to marry Muslim men. The authorities usually take no serious action against such criminal acts.
Religious institutions
Article 20 of the Constitution gives every faith community the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institution.
Research by the Centre for Social Justice and the National Justice and Peace Commission found more than 50 cases of criminal attacks against minority places of worship in the past two decades.
During the same period, almost 40 armed actions by extremist groups were reported.
Representation
Article 36 of the Constitution protects the legitimate rights and interests of minorities, including their representation in federal and provincial institutions.
The problem is that the authorities – at various levels of government – have failed to ensure the protection of minority interests.
The country’s National Assembly reserves them 10 seats out of 342. In Punjab’s provincial parliament, 8 seats are reserved out of 371; 9 out of 168 in Sindh; 3 out of 124 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; and 3 out of 51 in Baluchistan. Is this a fair share?
Many other rights are formally recognised by the laws, but not in everyday reality. The framers of the constitution had established that the state would not be ruled under theocratic principles.
Unfortunately, discrimination against minorities shows that theocracy has deep roots in Pakistani laws.
The issue must be dealt with seriously, very seriously. Otherwise hundreds of thousands of Saleem Masihs will die every day, and offenders will never pay for their crimes.
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Minority-rights-recognised-only-on-paper-in-Pakistan-50616.html
Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By
By Maria Abi-Habib and Zia ur-Rehman
Dozens of Hindu families converted in June in the Badin district of Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Video clips of the ceremony went viral across the country, delighting hard-line Muslims and weighing on Pakistan’s dwindling Hindu minority.
The mass ceremony was the latest in what is a growing number of such conversions to Pakistan’s majority Muslim faith in recent years — although precise data is scarce. Some of these conversions are voluntary, some not.
News outlets in India, Pakistan’s majority-Hindu neighbor and archrival, were quick to denounce the conversions as forced. But what is happening is more subtle. Desperation, religious and political leaders on both sides of the debate say, has often been the driving force behind their change of religion.
Treated as second-class citizens, the Hindus of Pakistan are often systemically discriminated against in every walk of life — housing, jobs, access to government welfare. While minorities have long been drawn to convert in order to join the majority and escape discrimination and sectarian violence, Hindu community leaders say that the recent uptick in conversions has also been motivated by newfound economic pressures.
“What we are seeking is social status, nothing else,” said Muhammad Aslam Sheikh, whose name was Sawan Bheel until June, when he converted in Badin with his family. The ceremony in Badin was notable for its size, involving just over 100 people.
“These conversions,” he added, “are becoming very common in poor Hindu communities.”
Proselytizing Muslim clerics and charity groups add to the faith’s allure, offering incentives of jobs or land to impoverished minority members only if they convert.
With Pakistan’s economy on the brink of collapse in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the pressures on the country’s minorities, often its poorest people, have increased. The economy will contract by 1.3 percent in the 2020 fiscal year because of the pandemic, the World Bank predicts. And up to 18 million of Pakistan’s 74 million jobs may be lost.
Mr. Sheikh and his family hope to find financial support from wealthy Muslims or from Islamic charities that have cropped up in recent years, which focus on drawing more people to Islam.
“There is nothing wrong with that,” Mr. Sheikh said. “Everyone helps the people of their faith.”
As Mr. Sheikh sees it, there is nothing left for Pakistan’s more affluent Hindus to give to help the people of their own faith. That is because there are so few Hindus left.
At independence in 1947, Hindus composed 20.5 percent of the population of the areas that now form Pakistan. In the following decades, the percentage shrank rapidly, and by 1998 — the last government census to classify people by religion — Hindus were just 1.6 percent of Pakistan’s population. Most estimates say it has further dwindled in the past two decades.
Once a melting pot of religions, Sindh Province, where the conversion ceremony took place, has seen minority members flee to other countries in droves in recent decades. Many face harsh discrimination, as well as the specter of violence — and the risk of being accused of blasphemy, a capital crime — if they speak out against it.
“The dehumanization of minorities coupled with these very scary times we are living in — a weak economy and now the pandemic — we may see a raft of people converting to Islam to stave off violence or hunger or just to live to see another day,” said Farahnaz Ispahani, a former Pakistani lawmaker who is now a senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute, a research group in Washington.
Ms. Ispahani recalled the devastating floods of 2010 in Sindh Province, which left thousands homeless and with little to eat. Hindus were not allowed to sit with Muslims at soup kitchens, she said. And when government aid was handed out, Hindus received less of it than their Muslim peers did, she said.
“Will they be converting with their hearts and souls?” Ms. Ispahani said. “I don’t think so.”
The further economic devastation caused by the pandemic may spur more sectarian violence, and that may intensify the pressure on minorities to convert, Ms. Ispahani and others worry.
Murtaza Wahab, an adviser to the chief minister of Sindh, was among several government officials who said they could not address Ms. Ispahani’s accusation that Hindus received less aid after the floods, as it happened before they took office.
“The Hindu community is an important part of our society and we believe that people from all faiths should live together without issue,” Mr. Wahab said.
Forced conversions of Hindu girls and women to Islam through kidnapping and coerced marriages occur throughout Pakistan. But Hindu rights groups are also troubled by the seemingly voluntary conversions, saying they take place under such economic duress that they are tantamount to a forced conversion anyway.
“Overall, religious minorities do not feel safe in Pakistan,” said Lal Chand Mahli, a Pakistani Hindu lawmaker with the ruling party, who is a member of a parliamentary committee to protect minorities from forced conversions. “But poor Hindus are the most vulnerable among them. They are extremely poor and illiterate, and Muslim mosques, charities and traders exploit them easily and lure them to convert to Islam. A lot of money is involved in it.”
Clerics like Muhammad Naeem were at the forefront of an effort to convert more Hindus. (Mr. Naeem, who was 62, died of cardiac arrest two weeks after he was interviewed in June).
Mr. Naeem said he had overseen more than 450 conversions over the past two years at Jamia Binoria, his seminary in Karachi. Most of the converts were low-caste Hindus from Sindh Province, he said.
“We have not been forcing them to convert,” Mr. Naeem said. “In fact, people come to us because they want to escape discrimination attached with their caste and change their socioeconomic status.”
Demand was so great, he added, that his seminary had set up a separate department to guide the new converts and provide counsel in legal or financial matters.
On a recent afternoon, the call to prayer echoed through a cluster of newly erected tents in Matli, a barren patch of Sindh. A group of Karachi’s wealthy Muslim merchants bought the land last year for dozens of families who had converted from Hinduism.
At a new mosque adjacent to the tents, Muhammad Ali — who was known by his Hindu name, Rajesh, before converting last year alongside 205 others — performed ablutions before praying.Last year, his entire family had decided to convert to Islam when Mr. Naeem, the cleric, offered to free them from the bonded labor in which they were trapped, living and working as indentured servants because of unpaid debt. Mr. Ali is originally from the Bheel caste, one of the lowest in Hinduism.
“We have found a sense of equality and brotherhood in Islam, and therefore we converted to it,” Mr. Ali said.
Lower-caste Pakistani Hindus are often the victims of bonded labor. It was outlawed in 1992, but the practice is still prevalent. The Global Slavery Index estimates that just over three million Pakistanis live in debt servitude.
Landlords trap poor Hindus into such bondage by providing loans that they know can never be repaid. They and their families are then forced to work off the debt. The women are often sexually abused, rights groups say.
Mr. Naeem’s seminary had rescued several Hindus — including Mr. Ali and his family — from bonded labor by paying off their debts in exchange for their conversions to Islam.When Mr. Ali and his family converted, Mr. Naeem and a group of rich Muslim traders had given them a piece of land and helped them find work, considering it an Islamic responsibility to help them.
“Those who make efforts to spread the message and bring the non-Muslims into the fold of Islam will be blessed in the hereafter,” Mr. Naeem said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/asia/pakistan-hindu-conversion.html
#Pakistan - "Political Absurdity": India's Sharp Response To New Pak "Political Map"
Earlier today, the Pakistan Prime Minister unveiled the map that, he claimed, negated India's "illegal action of August last year" - a reference to the withdrawal of special privileges to J&K under Article 370. The government today described as "political absurdity" a map released by Pakistan that includes Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh and parts of western Gujarat.New Delhi tore into the map, which it called a "ridiculous assertion without any global credibility" and emerged on the first anniversary of the decision to scrap special status for J&K under Article 370.
The map was released Tuesday evening by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.
"We have seen a so-called "political map" of Pakistan that has been released by Prime Minister Imran Khan. This is an exercise in political absurdity, laying untenable claims to territories in the Indian state of Gujarat and our Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and of Ladakh," the government said.
"These ridiculous assertions have neither legal validity nor international credibility. In fact, this new effort only confirms the reality of Pakistan's obsession with territorial aggrandizement supported by cross-border terrorism," its response added.
Earlier today, the Pakistan Prime Minister unveiled the map that, he claimed, negated India's "illegal action of August last year" - a reference to the withdrawal of special privileges to J&K under Article 370.
He also claimed the map had been endorsed by Pakistan's cabinet, was backed by its political leadership and would be used in schools.
Mr Khan also said Pakistan would continue diplomatic efforts to resolve long-standing border disputes with India.
After the terror attack in J&K's Pulwama district last year, in which 40 CRPF soldiers died, India had retaliated by launching strikes at terror camps in Pakistan's Balakot.
Pakistan then repeatedly sought to raise the Jammu and Kashmir and Article 370 issues on the international forum, but failed to find support.
On the insistence of China, Pakistan's all-weather ally, the United Nations held a closed-door meeting on Article 370 in August last year. The global body refused to censure India, agreeing that J&K was an internal issue.Except for China, the four other permanent members of the UN Security Council - France, Russia, the US and the UK - have consistently backed New Delhi's position that disputes between India and Pakistan are bilateral matters.Pakistan's multiple efforts to initiate dialogue with India also fell flat, with New Delhi maintaining that terror and talks cannot go hand-in-hand.India has also pointed out that Pakistan is still on the Grey List of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), after it failed to meet the global terror financing watchdog's deadline to stop funding of terror outfits operating from its soil.
Early last month, during a United Nations virtual event on counter-terrorism, India called on Pakistan to "introspect why it is universally acknowledged as the international epicentre of terrorism".
A two-day curfew has, meanwhile, been announced in the Kashmir Valley for Tuesday and Wednesday. In the order, the Srinagar district magistrate said the administration had information about "separatists and Pakistan-sponsored groups planning to observe August 5 as Black Day".
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/pakistan-political-map-political-absurdity-indias-sharp-response-to-paks-new-political-map-2274217
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