Tuesday, December 22, 2020
#Pakistan - Imran Khan admits his incapacity to run the government
Deputy information secretary of Pakistan Peoples Party, Palwasha Khan in a reaction to the prime minister Imran Khan’s speech in front of his ministers has said that at last the selected and puppet prime minister has admitted his incapacity and inability to understand the people’s problems and running of the government.
In a statement Palwasha Khan said that Imran Khan had claimed of having 200 economic experts in his disposal but the economy is down the drain and no expert is seen anywhere in the government. She said that Chairman Bilawal was right to say that the government has been handed over to incapable bunch of people. Palwasha said that Imran Khan has embarrassed the selectors as well. This novice prime minister is destroying the country bit by bit. The incapable and inept government has failed in every front., Khan concluded.https://www.ppp.org.pk/pr/24197/
Prominent Pakistani rights activist found dead in Toronto
Police say they have found the body of a Pakistani dissident living in the Canadian city of Toronto on refugee status, with rights group Amnesty International and others calling for a full and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.The body of 37-year-old Karima Mehrab Baloch was found on Monday evening, although no immediate cause of death was given by police, said Lateef Johar Baloch, a rights activist. “I am with her family [and] I was there when police came to us and confirmed that they found her body,” Lateef Baloch told Al Jazeera by telephone. “It is confirmed that she is dead, and her body was found from water near Toronto.” A Toronto police spokesperson confirmed the body of a 37-year-old woman had been located on Monday. “It is currently being investigated as a non-criminal death and there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances,” said Caroline de Kloet, a police media relations officer. Karima had earlier been reported missing by Toronto police, having last been seen at about 3pm local time (20:00 GMT) on Sunday in the Bay Street and Queens Quay West area, according to a police statement. Rights groups and Pakistani rights activists, particularly those living on asylum status in foreign countries, have called for a thorough investigation into her death, alleging it may have been carried out by state actors.Karima was a prominent ethnic Baloch rights activist, having led the Baloch Student Organisation’s Azad faction (BSO-A), an organisation at the forefront of the political movement calling for the independence of Pakistan’s ethnic Baloch areas and documenting alleged human rights violations there.Baloch activists, particularly those calling for independence, have been subject for years to a sustained and documented campaign of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, local and international rights groups say. Located in Pakistan’s southwest, Balochistan is the country’s largest but least populated province and is rich in minerals and other resources. Baloch rights groups have long decried what they term Pakistan’s extractive policy towards the region, mining it for resources but leaving it languishing at the bottom of most socioeconomic indicators in the South Asian country. For more than a decade, armed ethnic Baloch groups have also been fighting a separatist war against Pakistani security forces, killing many Pakistani security forces and civilians in attacks they say are aimed at achieving independence. Pakistan’s military routinely denies allegations of rights abuses, saying most of the region’s “missing people” are members of armed groups who fled their homes voluntarily.Karima was one of the most prominent voices calling for justice for political activists who were allegedly abducted or killed by Pakistan’s intelligence services. She took over the leadership of the BSO-A after the disappearance of its previous head, Zahid Baloch, in 2014.In 2016, the BBC named her as one of its 100 “inspirational and influential women” for that year, citing her activism.Facing threats to her life, she fled to Canada and was granted permanent political asylum in 2017. Pattern of violence “Recently, her husband told me that he got some threats regarding her [in the last week],” said Lateef Baloch, who is not related to Karima but is a close friend and associate. “People that sent messages to him saying that they will send a ‘gift’ to Karima by Christmas or something like this.” A screenshot of those threatening messages was shared with Al Jazeera. On Tuesday, international rights organisation Amnesty International called for a thorough investigation into the rights activist’s death. “The death of activist Karima Baloch in Toronto, Canada is deeply shocking and must be immediately and effectively investigated,” the group said in a tweet. “The perpetrators must be brought to justice without recourse to the death penalty.” Karima’s is the second death of a Pakistani dissident under mysterious circumstances this year. On March 2, Sajid Hussain, a Pakistani activist and journalist who often wrote on human rights violations in Balochistan and was living in self-imposed exile in Sweden, was reported missing. His body was found almost two months later in a river near the Swedish town of Uppsala, authorities said. Police did not investigate Hussain’s death as a crime, but media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said there was “a strong possibility that he was killed in connection with his work as a journalist”. In February, rights activist and critic of Pakistan’s powerful military Ahmed Waqass Goraya was physically attacked outside his home in Rotterdam, where he lives in self-imposed exile.Pakistani activists living in exile say the deaths and attacks come after a sustained increase in the number of threats they have faced in the last year.Taha Siddiqui, a prominent Pakistani journalist known for his strident criticism of the military, fled the country in 2018 after he escaped an attempted abduction. He was granted political asylum in France later that year. Siddiqui told Al Jazeera he had received multiple warnings from the United States and French intelligence agencies since he moved to the French capital Paris regarding threats to his life, and documented at least three incidents of what he deemed to be surveillance of his activities there. “In Pakistan, we are seeing that there has been a growing oppression and crackdown and suppression of independent voices,” he said. “Now that they’ve done it at home, it seems they are replicating that model and expanding this model globally.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/22/prominent-pakistani-rights-activist-found-dead-in-toronto
Suspicious Death of Baloch Activist in Toronto Raises Uncomfortable Questions for Pakistan
By Abhijnan Rej
Well-known Baloch activist Karima Mehrab (also known as Karima Baloch) was found dead by the police in Toronto on December 21. According to media reports, Mehrab, a former chairperson of Baloch Students Organization-Azad (BSO), a separatist group proscribed in Pakistan, was found dead a day after she was reported missing. At the time of filing this report, no further details around the circumstances of her death – including the result of the autopsy – is known. However, as many media outlets have already noted, the case’s similarity with that of Sajid Hussain Baloch’s – another activist who was found dead in a river outside Uppsala, Sweden in April this year – raises the distinct possibility of foul play. Baloch activists such as the 37-year-old Mehrab have long been at the loggerheads with Pakistan’s powerful army and intelligence service, as they have demanded justice for human rights violations in Balochistan and the right to self-determination towards an independent “Azad” Balochistan. Pakistan, for its part, accuses them of being terrorists engaged in anti-state activities, and of working at the behest of archrival India and its security services. Most key Baloch activists are in exile. Resource-rich Balochistan, the largest of the five provinces of Pakistan, has acquired additional salience for Pakistan in the recent years after China’s investments there toward the construction of the Gwadar port as well as other projects under the banner of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pakistan has also maintained that India seeks to destabilize CPEC through the deployment of Baloch separatists. Named as one the 100 most “inspirational and influential” women by the BBC in 2016, Mehrab’s asylum claim proceedings in Canada were suspended that year by the Canada Border Services Agency pending review in 2017 due to its determination that the BSO was engaged in subversive activities against Pakistan, the Toronto Sun reported in December 2016. While India has traditionally eschewed expressing overt support for Baloch activists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke new ground in 2016 when he referred to the province in his Indian Independence Day address on August 15. In his speech, Modi had thanked the people of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan for the “goodwill” they had shown him. Three days after Modi’s speech, Mehrab appealed to him to diplomatically intervene on behalf of the Baloch people. “We appeal to you that as our brother, you speak about the genocide and war crimes in Baloch on international forums and become the voice of the sisters of Baloch,” she said at that time. However, there is little public evidence that India has provided material support to Baloch rebels despite periodic accusations by Islamabad to that effect, the latest installment of which was a “dossier” Pakistan apparently sent to the United Nations and key countries in November. According to Pakistani officials, the dossier included concrete evidence of India’s involvement in anti-Pakistan terrorist activities. While it is too early to determine who or what may have caused Mehrab’s death, pending further investigation by Canadian authorities, civilian experts of South Asian security and intelligence issues point to the distinct possibility that she was assassinated by, or at the behest of, Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). When asked about the motivations that the Pakistani state may have had when it comes to the alleged assassination, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), London professor Avinash Paliwal told The Diplomat: “The main message is to dissidents of the Pakistani security establishment the world over … that exile is not escape, and that they’ll have to cull criticism of, and activism, against the fauj [Pakistan’s Army].” “It comes at a moment when the threshold for dissent within Rawalpindi [the headquarters of Pakistan Army] is at an all-time low given the domestic situation,” he added. Pakistan is currently in the throes of major political agitation organized by a coalition of 11 opposition parties, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), against the military-backed Imran Khan government. One of the parties, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), has, in one instance during the protests, gone as far as to demand the resignation of not only Khan, but also that of army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed. While Khan supporters are putting up a defiant face and point to many cracks within the PDM that are already visible, there is no denying that the Pakistan military is under considerable pressure because of it. Additionally, Balochistan has seen a spate of violence over the past year. A Baloch separatist group – the Baloch Liberation Army – took responsibility for an unsuccessful attack on the Karachi Stock Exchange in June this year that killed two guards and a policeman. Paliwal suggests that all of the above-mentioned factors – Pakistan’s need to secure CPEC, the rising level of violence in Balochistan and elsewhere, as well as pressure on and within the Pakistan army – may explain the timing, should it indeed be established that Mehrab was assassinated by Pakistan-linked entities. “Pakistan’s recent dossier against India offers another contextualizing element that a momentum has been built according to the ISI which enables it to credibly counter India or those individuals and groups it perceives to be connected to India,” he added by way of an additional hypothesis.Another SOAS scholar Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on Pakistan’s military establishment, told The Diplomat: “This is the second mysterious death of a Baluch dissident in exile in a year that is being applauded by Twitter accounts acclaimed to be close to Pakistan’s agencies.” “If the ISI is involved it would indicate the agency downgrading Western states in its estimation as places where crime can be committed without retribution or getting caught,” Siddiqa noted, echoing something Paliwal had also told The Diplomat. “The question is will the COVID-19 environment be used as creating bigger space to attack the dissidents?” Siddiqa wondered. https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/suspicious-death-of-baloch-activist-in-toronto-raises-uncomfortable-questions-for-pakistan/Karima Mehrab was outspoken in her criticism of
Pakistan’s powerful military.
Karima Baloch, Pakistani human rights activist, found dead in Canada
A dissident Pakistani human rights activist living in exile in Canada has been found dead in Toronto after going missing. Karima Baloch, 37, was granted asylum in Canada in 2016 after her work as a human rights activist in the troubled Pakistan state of Balochistan had led to her being followed and threatened by the authorities. The first chair of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad), a political student organisation, she had been advocating for the rights of those in a region home to a long-running insurgency movement, and raising the ongoing issue of enforced disappearances. She was listed by the BBC in its 100 most inspirational and influential women of 2016 for her work in human rights. Baloch is the second Pakistani dissident from Balochistan living in exile to be found dead this year. In May, Sajid Hussain, a journalist who wrote about human rights violations in Balochistan, was found dead in a river in Sweden, where he had sought asylum after threats to his life in Pakistan. Baloch’s husband, Hammal Haider, also a Pakistani activist living in exile, said she had left home at midday on Sunday for a walk on Toronto’s Centre Island as she often did, but never returned. Toronto police later put out an appeal for information on Twitter and her body was found on Monday on the island. “I can’t believe that it’s an act of suicide. She was a strong lady and she left home in a good mood,” Haider said. “We can’t rule out foul play as she has been under threats. She left Pakistan as her home was raided more than twice. Her uncle was killed. She was threatened to leave activism and political activities but she did not and fled to Canada.” Later on Tuesday, Toronto police said Baloch’s death was “currently being investigated as a non-criminal death and there are not believed to be any suspicious circumstances.” They did not provide further details. But Haider said a month ago he had received multiple threatening messages over social media after raising the issue of human rights abuses and military operations in Balochistan. He said: “I was told that my brothers and wife can be targeted. I didn’t take them seriously. We often get such trolls and threats while talking about human rights abuses. Lateef Johar, a Baloch activist and close friend in exile in Canada, told the Guardian the police had said Baloch’s body had been found near a body of water. “The police have not provided any further details. They have not told us the cause of death nor have they returned the body of Karima.” Johar said he had met Baloch on Thursday at the University of Toronto, where they were both students. They talked on the phone on Friday. “I don’t think this is an accident or an act of suicide,” Johar said. “We all feel threatened here. Even after the killing of Sajid Hussain I fear when I find myself in a dark street.” Amnesty International said: “The death of activist Karima Baloch in Toronto, Canada is deeply shocking and must be immediately and effectively investigated. The perpetrators must be brought to justice without recourse to the death penalty.” Since moving to Canada, Baloch had continued to be vocal about human rights abuses in her home province and across Pakistan. She regularly spoke at conferences, addressed the media and attended protest rallies in Canada. “She had received threats from unknown Pakistani numbers on WhatsApp after a few Baloch students were abducted in late 2017,” said Johar. “Those threats also mentioned me. She was asked to come back to Pakistan and told that if she comes back, the cases against her would be quashed and those abducted students would be freed.” The Swedish authorities ruled out foul play in the death of Hussain but an autopsy did not confirm an exact cause of death. A friend of the family who has seen the autopsy report and police investigation told the Guardian: “The family was not convinced by the investigation and they have requested for more evidence from the Swedish authorities. Their request has yet to be entertained.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/karima-baloch-pakistani-human-rights-activist-found-dead-in-canada
Husband says foul play cannot be ruled out after body of 37-year-old dissident discovered in Toronto.
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