Thursday, September 10, 2020
#motorwayincident - Outcry in Pakistan as police blame woman who was gang raped for driving at night
By Ben Farmer
The gang rape of a stranded woman motorist in front of her children has caused outcry in Pakistan with calls for the public hanging of the culprits.
Anger over the attack on a woman who had broken down on a motorway outside Lahore was then increased after a senior police officer appeared to blame the victim for her choice of route.
Police on Thursday said they had arrested 12 suspects for questioning during an extensive manhunt.
The woman with her two children was driving to Gujranwala when she was forced to stop at the Gujjarpura section of the motorway after her car ran out of fuel at around 1:30am.
She called relatives for help, but before they could arrive, two robbers approached the car, smashed the windows and dragged her and her children from the vehicle.
The attackers also took jewellery, bank cards and £466 in cash.
A senior Lahore police officer later provoked further condemnation when he appeared to blame the victim. Lahore Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Umar Sheikh questioned why the woman had taken that route and why she had not checked her fuel tank.
Opposition leaders quickly attacked what they said was the government's breakdown in law and order.
“This is a matter of national embarrassment and evidence of a completely broken down legal system,” said Shehbaz Sharif, opposition leader in the national assembly.
Gang rape is rare in Pakistan, although sexual harassment and violence against women is not uncommon. Nearly 1,000 women are killed in Pakistan each year in so-called "honour killings" for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/10/outcry-pakistan-police-blame-woman-gang-raped-driving-night/
Asim Bajwa’s dirty money is RAW saazish in Imran Khan’s #Pakistan
NAILA INAYAT
Before coming to power, Imran Khan used to ask Nawaz Sharif to produce receipts of his investment. Rules have changed now that he is PM.
Pakistan’s default option for any crisis is to blame India. As a country that relies on conspiracy theories to snuggle out of difficult situations, it was on expected lines that a great Indian saazish was discovered when allegations against Lt Gen (retd) Asim Saleem Bajwa surfaced that his family empire had grown in sync with his rise in the Pakistani military. But how does Pakistan do it? It’s simple: brush every logical critique with the paint of ghaddari – perfidy – and add a bit of India and R&AW into it.
Bajwa toh bahana hai, asal nishana CPEC hai.
Although, the paranoia that the world is conspiring against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is not new and continues to rear its head because it works like magic. One time, a man in Chitral was booked under blasphemy law for declaring himself a messiah. An official said that it was perhaps some sort of a conspiracy to “sabotage CPEC”. Terrorism that set its roots some 14 years before CPEC’s arrival also became part of the larger “conspiracy” to demolish CPEC.
In former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s case, we learnt that in Pakistan, you are guilty until proven innocent. Before coming to power, Imran Khan used to ask Sharif to produce receipts for the investments in London. He’d ask him and his family to give talashi (body search) for their ‘stolen wealth’. All that Pakistan’s mainstream media did then was ask for money trails, evidence, property transfers and whatnot.
But all that has withered away. Rules have changed now that Imran Khan is in power.
The story behind it
On 27 August, Fact Focus published an extraordinary account of the businesses of Bajwa family in four countries, which included pizza franchises, companies, real estate and commercial properties. Despite the story being backed by hundreds of documents, Bajwa, the chairman of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on information, found it easy to call it “malicious propaganda”.
The floodgates of conspiracy opened and in came the readymade Indian saazish (conspiracy) to malign Pakistan: ‘How a retired Indian army officer (Major Gaurav Arya) trapped a Pakistani journalist (Ahmad Noorani) into a web of lies’. ‘How’ remains the operative part here. But ‘patriotic’ canines in the controlled media had no interest in asking how — their job was to shoot the messenger.
The chronology
Gaurav Arya, in one of his YouTube shows, claimed that Bajwa owns pizza franchises and other real estate businesses outside Pakistan on 25 July. Now, since the story came out on 27 August — after Arya’s show — it was proof enough of collusion. It doesn’t matter that chatter around what is now called “Bajwa Leaks” began on social media days after PM Imran Khan’s advisors made their assets public on 19 July. Moreover, Bajwa, in his declaration, had said that his wife did not hold any “business capital outside Pakistan”, which was the main premise of the investigation report.
But who cares about the chronology as long as the messenger can be successfully smeared. If there was even a slight possibility of establishing links between Papa John’s franchises and India’s R&AW, then the Pakistani spin masters would have done that too.
ARY News ran a sustained campaign against the journalist, flashing Noorani’s photographs, calling him an Indian agent orchestrating anti-Pakistan propaganda. The campaign worked. Noorani started receiving death threats. His former employer Jang Group, whose owner is currently languishing in jail, published an article asking the Imran Khan government to strip him of his Pakistani citizenship because he was “maligning Pakistan” on the behest of some foreign powers.
Bajwa’s free pass
The irony of ironies is that Bajwa, faced with the severity of the allegations, decided to leave the post of PM’s advisor, which was later turned down. But none of those going after Noorani deem fit to ponder for a second why Bajwa was offering to resign if the charges against him were an Indian saazish. But no, they wouldn’t do that, because the instructions to the freest media in the world were to ‘celebrate’ the resignation as a great precedence, which no leader had set before.
Bajwa’s one-day TV outing with the news anchors showed that he was shaken-if-not-stirred. In one show, he dropped the call after a question; in another, he was edgy over being asked to produce the money trail. “Kaun si (which) money trail,” he snapped back. Later, he began his own Kaun Banega Crorepati with the news anchor, asking him if he has money trail of his house. Interestingly, the same government is currently prosecuting a sitting judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Qazi Faiz Isa, for allegedly concealing his and his family’s assets.
But PM Imran Khan says he is satisfied with Bajwa’s paperless defence and wants him to stay on. It’s a bit odd for a PM who rode to office on the high horse of bringing accountability. That he is okay with Bajwa being the chowkidar of the $64 billion cookie jar is a change no one voted for.
#Pakistan - Asif Ali Zardari is the founder of #CPEC-Chinese Ambassador
The Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, H. E.Yao Jing called on the former president Asif Ali Zardari at Zardari House Islamabad on Thursday. Ms. Aseefa Bhutto Zardari, Senator Sherry Rehman and Deputy Chairman Senate Saleem Mandviwalla were also present during the meeting.
The Chinese Ambassador enquired about the health of the former president and invited him to China for his treatment. During the meeting, the Ambassador declared Asif Ali Zardari as the founder of CPEC and said that the relations between the PPP and China ago back a long way. He also said that China totally supports Pakistani stance on Kashmir.
President Zardari said that China is a trusted friend of Pakistan and Pakistani people take pride in this friendship. He said that both China and Pakistan suffered great human and financial losses due to Covid-19. Both the leaders discussed international and regional issues, as well as matters of mutual interest.
https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/23729/
Two-Pakistans theory negates Quaid-e-Azam’s ideology: Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
PPP Chairman pointed out that former Prime Ministers Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto fought for the ideology of Pakistan and its strengthening through giving its first-ever unanimous Constitution, strong foundations for defence, macro-economic basic strucuture, social sector reforms and empowerment of the people.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari pledged that his Party would continue to be the torch-bearer of the vision and ideology of the Founder of the Nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah adding that PPP shall remain in the forefront of resistance whenever attempts are made to trample upon it.
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