Why Pakistan must repeal the ‘blasphemy law’

Posted on June 30, 2011 by beenasarwar

Posted to the Citizens for Democracy blog, via the Council on Foreign Relations: Two high-profile Pakistani politicians were assassinated earlier this year for calling for reform of the country’s blasphemy laws which allow offenders to be punished by death. Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, says the laws are discriminatory by nature and must be repealed. The context of this brief interview is available at the CFR study: Islam and Politics in Pakistan

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Baloch Hal Editorial: People’s Right to Know What Happened in Kharotabad

Posted on June 30, 2011 by beenasarwar

One of the injured women raises her hand before being silenced forever

Once again, an important editorial from Baloch Hal online daily, being reproduced here because the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) has since November 2010 blocked the Baloch Hal website in Pakistan

Editorial: People’s Right to Know What Happened in Kharotabad

The Kharotabad tragedy was simply as tragic as tragedy can be.  The brutal killing of Chechen nationals, mainly women, including a pregnant lady, on May 27th left us all totally speechless as the nation watched on TV the extremely perturbing imagines of the victims of shooting  allegedly by the police and the Frontier Corps.

Tragedy aside, we witnessed a rare but an encouraging development for which the government of Balochistan must be commended. The investigations into the incdent, no matter how defective and imperfect, were successfully completed. Continue reading →

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