09 Apr 14 | News and features, Pakistan, Politics and Society
(Image: Aleksandar Mijatovic/Shutterstock)
In the sixth attack on Express Media employees unknown assailants threw a hand grenade at the gate of Express News bureau chief’s house in Peshawar’s Murshidabad area. Though no one was injured in Sunday’s incident, it highlights the dangers for Pakistan’s journalists.
“It was 6:30 am. I woke up to a loud screeching made by a motorbike, followed seconds later by a thunderous sound. I ran out and saw a cloud of smoke,” said 38-year old Jamshed Baghwan, speaking to Index over phone from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s provincial capital, Peshawar.
The main gate and the walls of neighbouring houses, said the journalist, were pocked with holes made by ball bearings packed in bomb.
This was the second attack on Baghwan. On March 19, he had found a 2 kg bomb “at exactly the same place” which was diffused in time by the bomb disposal unit.
“I have no idea why anyone would attack me,” he said. “I’ve covered the army operation in Swat when the security forces cleansed the place of militants; I’ve covered conflicts in Bajaur and South Waziristan, but there never was a threat from any quarter, so why now?” he is perplexed.
This is the sixth attack on Express Media organisation in the last nine months. Four of Express’s employees have been killed.
On March 28, a senior Pakistani analyst, Raza Rumi, working for Express News, came under a volley of gunshots after his car was intercepted by gunmen on motorbikes, while passing a busy market place in Lahore. He has been vocal in his condemnation of the Taliban and religious extremist groups. While Rumi narrowly escaped, his driver died and his guard remains critically injured.
An editorial, by Express Tribune, a sister organisation, had frustration and helplessness written all over when it read: “Shall we just close shop, keeping in mind that we are no longer safe telling the truth and the state clearly cannot, or may not want to, provide us protection or even justice?”
The same day as the attack on Baghwan, in the eastern city of Lahore, in the Punjab province, a rally was held by journalists and civil society to protest the death threats on Imtiaz Alam, secretary general of South Asia Free Media Association.
Political leaders and the government routinely condemn attacks on media workers, but have yet to take concrete action. In the meantime, journalists continue to die. Declan Walsh of the New York Times tweeted: “When militants take on journalists, this is how it goes – one by one, they pick them off. Outrage is not enough.”
With no let up in the attacks, journalists are saying they need to watch their own as well as their colleagues’ backs.
But is it possible when journalists have yet to come together?
Kamal Siddiqi, editor the Express Tribune lamented: “…there is no unity amongst the journalist community. We have a great tradition of abiding by democratic traditions but at the same time we have done poorly in terms of sticking together. There are splinters within splinters,” he wrote in his paper.
However, media analyst Adnan Rehmat, finds solidarity and sympathy for those who have been attacked or are under threat among the journalists. “It’s the media owners who are not forthcoming. The pattern and nature of attacks is consistent; but not the response from media owners,” he says.
He recently published a book titled Reporting Under Threat. It is an “intimate look into the harsh every-day life of journalists working in hostile conditions” through testimonies from 57 Pakistani journalists, including editors, reporters, camerapersons, sub-editors, news directors, photographers, correspondents and stringers working for TV channels, newspapers, radio stations and magazines.
“They don’t consider the attack on one individual an attack on all,” he points out. “While Rumi’s attack elicited a strong reaction from civil society, there was little condemnation from media houses. On the other hand, because Alam does not work for any competing newspaper or channel, it was easier to support him and this was across the board.” Part of the problem, said Rehmat was the media owners were not journalists and therefore did not equate themselves with journalists.
Rehmat believes, it is time, the media owners gathered on platforms like the All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Pakistan Broadcaster’s Association (representing private TV channels) and the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors and come up with a “singular response” in the form of policies that reflect that “safety of journalists is their number one priority”.
“I think the media owners are playing into the hands of the militants,” pointed out Shamsul Islam Naz, former secretary general of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists. “If this is a dangerous business, why hasn’t a single media owner been killed yet?” He said he had been observing the way private news channels had been covering militancy and giving unsolicited air time to banned militant outfits infraction of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.
Ironically, these attacks follow a high level meeting of Committee to Protect Journalists delegation with prime minister Nawaz Sharif in which the latter had pledged to address the threats to country’s journalists. Among the several commitments, was putting protection of journalists on the agenda in the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban.
According to CPJ, since 1992, 54 journalists have been killed with their motives confirmed, meaning CPJ is reasonably certain that the journalist was killed in line of duty.
While militants openly admit to the attacks, this is not the only threat to journalists. There are state elements including its intelligence agencies, members of elected political parties, even those from the business community, who may go from simply roughing up, torturing, detaining, to even killing if the dissenting voices get relentless and refuse to keep quiet.
This article was posted on 9 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
27 Mar 14 | India, News and features, Pakistan
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Shapoorjee Sorabjee, the first historian of cricket in India, had cautioned more than a century ago in 1897- “… to expect all political difference to disappear or all available self-interests to be foregone on the institution of cricket relations is to live in a fool’s paradise.” Sorabjee’s words echo loudly in the persecution of 67 Kashmiri Muslim students in the city of Meerut on March 6. Historian Ramachandra Guha’s statement- “post-independence, cricket was equated with patriotic virtue”, echoes louder.
These local college students had cheered the Pakistan cricket team which trounced India in a cricket tournament. In normal circumstances, cheering a team would not have been considered perfidious or criminal. Unless of course one is thrown back to 1945, when Orwell acerbically noted that there’s nothing like certain spectator sports to add to the fund of ill-will between nations and their populations. Or, more recently, to the times of Norman Tebbit and David Blunkett for whom a cricket match was the perfect crucible to test one’s loyalty to his country.
But Indo-Pak cricket matches are anything but “normal”. On the Indian side of the border, they are nothing but battles to be won, and once victory has been achieved, to be celebrated by humiliating, vilifying and demonising “the other”, that is, Muslims. And when there are Kashmiri Muslims, the viciousness is increased manifold.
So it happened that these students were charged with sedition, which under Indian criminal law, is equivalent to treason, and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which in its present incarnation can give the British National Party and United Kingdom Independence Party lessons in jingoism and xenophobia, quickly bared its fangs, and raised a din about bringing these “terrorist” students to justice. Not unsurprising, when its senior leader and a proclaimed patron of cricket, states with pride that cricketing nationalism is an integral aspect of a person’s national identity. When the charges were withdrawn following a loud backlash, the BJP rushed to the election commission alleging that the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh (where Meerut is located) was violating the poll code by this act of pandering to anti-national Muslims.
This sordid affair brings back memories of March 2003. The police top brass in Calcutta had planned how to prevent Muslims from supporting Pakistan during the World Cup quarter-final against India. When India won, a precedent of sorts was set- the army chief, the prime minister and deputy prime minister rang up the players and congratulated them. Such praise is usually reserved for occasions when the team wins the tournament, and not a particular match. In Ahmedabad, riots broke out when Muslims were prevented from celebrating India’s win.
It is easy to excoriate the Hindu right wing parties, but rabid Islamophobia is par for the course in so far as they are concerned. The Meerut incident demonstrates a new use of sedition initiated not by the usual suspects but by a state government which professes to be secular.
An incident of 2010 brings out the novelty factor. Arundhati Roy had criticised the government for decades of brazen civil rights violations in Kashmir, and demanded that the people of the disputed territory be allowed to exercise their right of self-determination. The “patriotic” Hindu right went ballistic, and demanded that she be tried for sedition and also deported. Charges were pressed, and even some sections of the media were complicit in an all-out attack against her, as this report details.
But Meerut is not the bastion of the rabid fundamentalists, so what could have happened? The answer is found in the antecedents of the college administrators who went to the police in the first place. The rector and chancellor are a retired police officer and army general, respectively. Representatives and agents of the Indian state, which has always used the sedition law to squelch dissent and perpetrate impunity. Almost like Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the state of Jammu & Kashmir, who exposed his real stance by calling the charges harsh and unacceptable, and in the same breath, labelled the students’ actions as “wrong and misguided”. But more striking is the cynical opportunism by the government of Uttar Pradesh. It had done nothing to stop the bloody riots in Muzaffarnagar last year but beat the tin drum of it being “secular” to the core. Taking it one step further, it used a law described as “objectionable and obnoxious” by none less than India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to curry favour with the majority Hindu constituency on the eve of national elections.
Whoever thought that the odious doesn’t have its productive uses?
This article was posted on March 27, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
18 Mar 14 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
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Pakistan’s record of abuse of its dubious blasphemy law has been criticised by a report from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. The country currently has 14 individuals known to be on death row while 19 others are serving life sentences on charges of committing blasphemy.
Take for example the case of Aasia Bibi, accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad. The 45-year old Christian and mother of five says she was “falsely accused to settle an old score”. In jail since June 19, 2009, she has yet to have her appeal heard. Sameena Imtiaz, founder of Islamabad-based Peace Education Development Foundation (PEAD) says the commission’s findings are another “reminder of the religious intolerance that has permeated the society at large”. The hearing on March 17, before the Lahore High Court was “cancelled by order” yet again, informed her lawyer Mohammad Yasin Badar, who does not know the reason. “I got a text message from the court,” he said but surmises: “This is a very sensitive case.”
But while Bibi may be only Pakistani woman to have been sentenced to death for blasphemy, she is not alone. In November 2013, a 72-year old homeopath doctor Masood Ahmed, a British national of the minority Ahmadi sect, which has been declared non-Muslim by the constitution, was jailed for discussing Islam — a criminal offence punishable with death under Section 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). His conversation was filmed using a mobile phone in which he is seen reciting verses from the Quran. He has been released on bail. Then there is a mentally ill, 69-year-old British citizen, Mohammad Asghar, convicted in January this year, for sending letters proclaiming he was Prophet Mohammad. He remains in prison today.
The original blasphemy law, drawn up by the British and amended in 1986 by then-dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, puts in place a mandatory death sentence under section 295-C. Imtiaz says since the amendment more than a 1,000 cases have been registered against Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus and even Muslims.
The National Commission for Justice and Peace has also been keeping a close watch on the numbers. According to them, from 1987 to 2013, as many as 1,281 people have been charged, of which 616 are Muslims, 474 Ahmadis, 171 Christians and 20 Hindus.
Pakistan has never executed anyone under the offence but the between 1990 to 2012, several of the accused have been killed in associated vigilante violence outside the courts or in prisons.
According to a report by the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, since 1990, extra judicial murders of 52 accused have taken place.
In its State of Human Rights in 2012 report, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan states: “Abuse of the blasphemy law continues to take a heavy toll in terms of human lives and harassment of citizens.”
“The sheer number of cases registered in the past 25 years suggests the law has been widely abused,” concedes Imtiaz, adding that investigations have revealed that often the reasons for the abuse stem from personal enmity, property disputes, religious hatred.
“Decades have passed but none of the governments that followed, found the courage to repeal the discriminatory laws that have contributed significantly to intolerance, violence, bigotry, hate and injustice in the country,” says Bushra Gohar, a senior member of the Awami National Party. A legislator in the last assembly, she had submitted a bill in the assembly for the repeal of the blasphemy clauses inserted by Zia ul Haq, but it was never tabled in the assembly.
And for that reason, says Imtiaz there was an urgent need for debate to include “all segments of society on the pros and cons of the law and how it is abetting religious intolerance”.
In the meantime, she said, “an effective counter law that prohibits the abuse of the law for settling personal gains and inciting hatred” should be implemented. “The current law is not only vague but is rarely put to use due to fear of persecution and pressures,” she points out.
There have been half-hearted attempts to initiate a debate but after two high profile assassinations — of Punjab governor, Salman Taseer and minister for minorities, Shahbaz Bhatti — took place, for speaking on Bibi’s behalf and opposing the blasphemy laws, all efforts have been stalled.
“Political expediency, compromise and appeasement of a handful of religious extremists have prevented each subsequent government to initiate a meaningful debate, or even initiate pertinent legislation in the parliament to repeal or amend the discriminatory laws that continue to play havoc with the lives of women, minorities and the poor,” Gohar said.
Citing the recent torching of a temple in Larkana, in Sindh over blasphemy allegations, she says: “It shows how easy it is to incite mob violence and as in numerous similar cases in the past the root cause will not be addressed.”
According to the former legislator, strong political will is seriously lacking to review and amend or repeal the blasphemy law. “We cannot hope for justice for the victims and their families if we cannot even have an open debate on the discriminatory laws in the parliament and if the parliament, the courts and the government are threatened, coerced and silenced by a bunch of religious extremists.”
The annual report prepared by the Commission on International Religious Freedom looks at the state of religious freedom around the world.
This article was posted on March 18, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Mar 14 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
(Image: Aleksandar Mijatovic/Shutterstock)
The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) have pronounced that laws prohibiting child marriage in Pakistan are un-Islamic. The move has been slammed by a coalition of over a hundred Islamabad-based civili society organisations, who have labelled it a violation of Pakistani women’s and girls’ fundamental human rights. The CII is a constitutional body but its advice is non-binding on both the government and the parliament.
The CII’s declaration on early marriage follows hot on the heels of another controversial proclamation by its chairman Maulana Mohammad Khan Sheerani, saying that the current law requiring a man to seek written permission from his wife before contracting a second marriage should be amended.
Experts see these the CII’s priorities skewed at a time when the country is already reeling from an extremist onslaught for which there has been little condemnation from the same quarters. Instead, it has found fit to pick on issues that had long been settled and accepted by the Pakistani society.
“We are not conspiracy theorists, but are forced to wonder why such deliberately anti-women/girls advice comes now, 53 years after the Muslim Family Law Ordinance, 1961, was promulgated?” asked a group of civil society organisations, including Women Action Forum and Pakistan Reproductive Health Network, in a joint press release. The CII’s advice, it stated, came at a “critical juncture”, when the government was holding talks with the Taliban.
“Does the government wish to further appease and placate the bloodthirsty killers of 60,000 Pakistanis with further Islamisation and shariatisation measures? If so, why does the so-called Islamisation begin and end only with a violation of Pakistani women’s and girls’ fundamental human rights, enshrined in the unanimously endorsed constitution, and even before that, inherent in our humanity?” the statement read.
“This shows a mindset that is regressive,” says rights activist and documentary film maker Samar Minallah, who has worked extensively on highlighting traditions like Vani (women and girls given in marriage to hostile families as compensation for a relative’s crime to end feuds) and child marriage.
“It shows how Islam continues to be misinterpreted and distorted for political reasons,” Minallah continued, adding: “The shocking part is that the parliamentarians reinforce this mindset by remaining silent. It is a deliberate effort to create confusion and degrade women.”
Rafia Zakria, a lawyer and regular Dawn columnist, fears this may well legalise child abuse. She argues CII’s edict is unacceptable because “there are many Islamic scholars who have issued rulings opposing child marriage, highlighting the contractual aspect of Islamic marriage and the fact that minors cannot give consent hence making such marriages prima facie unacceptable.”
Zakaria also points out that Pakistan has ratified and signed several international treaties underscoring the necessity of protecting children especially girls. “Cumulatively it will serve to substantiate stereotypes about Pakistan as a country that cannot respect the rights of women and children, and which is oriented backwards into ignorance as opposed to forward into enlightenment.”
“Health consequences of early marriage are grave and many,” explains Dr Farid Midhet who heads the Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) in Pakistan for USAID.
The adolescent girl, he says, is incapable of fully understanding and bearing the burden of pregnancy and childbirth. “Probability of maternal death and neonatal death is significantly higher in the early ages (under 20 years).” Having worked in the field and with communities, Midhet says premature births and congenital abnormalities are higher among births to young mothers. In addition, he finds, there is an increased risk of malaria, sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer among women who marry early.
Apart from the physiological toll early marriage takes on a young girl, the social consequences are as grave. “Early marriage denies the girl child her right to education, bonding with her peers, personality development and mature thinking. Young girls are almost always married against their wishes, or they are unable to fully understand and give consent for the marriage,” he said.
And so Midhet feels it is important for public health experts to voice their concerns by “making a case against early marriage, listing the social, health, economic and religious factors, and then approach the CII (or other scholars/institutions) to request them to declare, or at least recommend, that girls must not be married while they are in puberty, and that delaying marriage is not against Islam.”
In their statement, the civil society coalition has urged the government to abolish CII and in the meantime replace chairman Maulana Mohammad Khan Sheerani with someone who is “educated, enlightened, progressive and a real Islamic scholar”. It also demanded that the government ensure at least 50 percent of CII members are female and 5 percent non-Muslims.
This article was posted on 14 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
