Born: June 7, 1914, Panipat. Died: June 1, 1987, Bombay.
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Filed under: Art and activism, Culture, Freedom of expression, Literature, Pakistan-India | Tagged: Anwar Abbs, Dr Mubashir Hasan, K.A. Abbas, Syeda Hameed | 3 Comments »
It is outrageous that for nearly a month now, chief editor and owner of the country’s largest media group has been behind bars. Mir Shakilur Rahman was arrested by Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau on March 12, in connection with a 34-year old land case. Leading lawyers agree that the case is baseless. They are among the many voices – journalists, international human rights organisations and media platforms, rival media groups, civil society organisations at home and abroad – outraged by this travesty of justice and urging MSR’s release #FreeMirShakilurRehman.
The detention is widely seen as part of an ongoing attack on media freedom in Pakistan. The case, clearly motivated by vendetta, is particularly disturbing at a time when everyone needs to be on the same page in fighting the global COVID-19 pandemic. See my story in Naya Daur, also posted below with updates, about a maverick poet and intellectual with no affiliation to the Jang/Geo media group, on hunger strike since March 29 for MSR’s release.
Continue readingFiled under: censorship, Freedom of expression, journalism, Media, Pakistan, Politics | Tagged: #FreeMirShakilurRehman, coronvirus, covid-19, Geo, Geo Aur Jeenay Do, hunger strike, Jang, land case, media freedom, MSR, Pakistan | 1 Comment »
Published in Cambridge Chronicle, September 24, 2019.
Sunday, 22 September, Cambridge MA: “Resist to exist” proclaimed a placard on the steps of MIT. The placard featured the picture of a woman in a red pheran, the long woolen tunic traditionally worn by Kashmiris from the Himalayan region in India’s north-west tip.
The woman holding the placard also wore a red pheran, her mouth taped shut like the others in the pheran-clad group she stood with to symbolize the communications blackout in her home state since 5 August this year. The pheran reflects an iconic image that has become integral to the Kashmiris’ resistance movement, as covered by NPR news recently (Finding resistance in fashion, Kashmiri creator turns to the pheran).
The color red, taken up by thousands in their social media profile images, has come to symbolize the Kashmiris’ spirit of resistance and defiance.
The woman and her companions stood with other peace-loving South Asians and friends on the steps of MIT this past Sunday at noon, to demand that the Indian government “immediately restore communication in Kashmir, remove the draconian measures enforced in the name of security and order, and respect Kashmiris’ right of self-determination”.
The next day, Monday 23 September, marked Day 50 of “the unprecedented and total communications blackout for 8 million Kashmiris enforced on them by the Indian government. Kashmiris, living in the most militarized region on earth, now fear that the present communications blackout is part of a larger plan to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Kashmir,” according to the statement read out at the event.
The event at MIT was part of a series of peaceful protests that weekend in solidarity with the Kashmiri people, coordinated by a small coalition called the Global Standout for Peace in South Asia.
Besides Boston, the Standouts took place in the San Francisco Bay area, Kolkata (India), Gotenburg (Sweden), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Kathmandu (Nepal), on the same weekend as Indian Prime Minister Modi shared the stage with U.S. President Trump in Houston. Solidarity with Kashmir protests took place in Houston also, as well as Seattle WA.
Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan both lay claim to Kashmir. The Global Standout protestors showed their rejection of these territorial claims by not carrying the flags of any nation or state.
Supporting organizations in Boston included Massachusetts Peace Action, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, MIT Students Against War, Stand With Kashmir, Coalition for Democratic India, Alliance for a Secular and Democratic South Asia, and Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine.
Addressing the participants, Cambridge City Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui encouraged them to keep ‘speaking out for justice’.
The event ended with a drum sounding 50 beats, one for each day since the communications lockdown up to that point.
(ends)
Filed under: fascism, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Kashmir, Peace | Tagged: #StandwithKashmir, Activism, Global solidarity, Kashmir, women | 1 Comment »
Prof. Higgins haranguing Eliza in My Fair Lady
We raised eyebrows when Higgins asked
“why can’t a woman be more like a man?”
Look how whole nations now build upon
That thought in the Professor’s brain. Continue reading
Filed under: Culture, fascism, Freedom of expression | Tagged: democracy, equality, fascism, Gender, gender equality, Human rights, India, lynching, Middle East, poetry, racism, usa | Leave a comment »
Something I wrote about sexual harassment and abuse, published inThe News on Sunday. It was a difficult piece to write, took a lot of thought, time, and research, and forced me to introspect on uncomfortable ideas. I went through a learning process that I’ve have tried to share. One idea links to the concept of restorative justice. Another is that, regardless of whether or not guilt is proven, such cases are forcing society to re-evaluate acceptable behaviour. This, in fact, may be the #MeToo movement’s most enduring contribution.
Filed under: Art and activism, Freedom of expression, Gender, Human rights, Pakistan, Southasia, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: #metoo, ali zafar, aurat azadi march, child abuse, dialogue, forgiveness, jami, meesha shafi, Mukhtiar Mai, rape, restorative justice, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, shazia khalid, veena hayat | Leave a comment »
Top row (L-R): Sima Samar, Kanak Mani Dixit, Hamida Hossain. Bottom row (L-R): Uma Chakravarti, Shahidul Alam, Pamela Philipose, Beena Sarwar. Collage: TheWire.In
Thanks to friends who initiated this statement in solidarity with the artists, thinkers and people of Sri Lanka, that I have signed along with over 250 other activists, academics and journalists from across South Asia. Please feel free to endorse and share. Signatories include human rights activists from Afghanistan and Bangladesh, journalists from Nepal, Pakistan and India, and historians and feminists from India and Pakistan, among others who have been at the forefront of facing similar realities in their respective nation-states for decades. Full text below, updated from the version published earlier in TheWire.in.
May 2, 2019: Continue reading
Filed under: 'War on terror', enforced disappearances, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: Afghanistan, fundamental rights, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Southasia, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka bombings | Leave a comment »
Collage of Bushra Ansari’s YouTube channel screenshots, 4-30 April 2019.
I wrote this piece a few days after Neelum Bashir’s Punjabi poem ‘Humsaye Maa Jaye’ (children of the same soil) went viral over India and Pakistan. Originally published in The Wire, 6 April 2019, the updated piece below includes the revised poem-script that Neelum Apa kindly sent me. Her talented performer sisters Bushra Ansari and Asma Abbas’ musical rendition caught public imagination, cutting through the rising tensions between India and Pakistan after the Pulwama attack, forcing even the Indian media, including television channels in the thick of hectic pre-poll reporting, to take note. Updates include the the jump in Bushra Ansari’s YouTube channel subscriptions, from 34 to over 25,000 in just three days, and to nearly 70,000 by 30 April, besides millions of views and shares.
Filed under: Art and activism, Freedom of expression, Pakistan-India, Progressive politics | Tagged: Ahmed Bashir, Asma Abbas, Bushra Ansari, gwandne, Neelum Bashir, neighbors, poetry, Punjabi | 2 Comments »
A poetic dialogue between two neighbours separated by an insurmountable wall goes viral. Pictured here: Asma Abbas and Bushra Ansari, performing their sister Neelum Bashir’s poem.
There’s been so much going on that I haven’t shared any updates here for a while. On Tuesday 11 Feb., Bilawal Bhutto Zardari gave a talk on Pakistan and the Welfare State at Harvard that I reported on: “We can’t say we’re too poor to look after our people”, published in The News on Sunday, 17 Feb. I was going to post it with an important paragraph that got left out of my report when I cut it down, but the Pulwama attack of 14 Feb overshadowed everything. I’ll share it at some point. Continue reading
Filed under: Art and activism, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Music, Pakistan-India, Peace, Progressive politics | Tagged: aurat azadi march, Bilawal Bhutto, Bushra Ansari, India Pakistan, music video, Neelum Bashir, Pakistan, poetry, Pulwama attack, punjab, Punjabi, women's march, women's rights | Leave a comment »
I wrote this piece for a web dossier produced by Heinrich Boell Foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ 70th anniversary 2018 – Asma Jahangir – ein bedeutungsvolles Leben, ein inspirierendes Erbe. Sharing now, a year after Asma Jahangir has passed on. This piece doesn’t include her role for peace in the region and in the UN system that I’ve written about earlier and also detailed in a longer essay to be printed in an anthology titled Voices of Freedom from Asia and the Middle East, co-edited by Mark Dennis and Rima Abunasser, TCU, is under publication by SUNY Press. Above: Asma Jahangir at her office; still from my documentary Mukhtiar Mai: The struggle for justice (2006)
By Beena Sarwar
The field on the outskirts of Lahore was full of workers waiting to hear the woman from the city speak. They squatted on their haunches with dull hopeless eyes, the drab greys and browns of their clothes at one with the earth they fashioned into bricks to bake in bhattas — kilns that dot the rural landscape of Punjab and upper Sindh. For their back-breaking labour they were paid in kind, leading to generations of indebtedness as the traditional informal economy transitioned into a cash-based system.
Brick kiln workers, Pakistan. Photo: Shehryar Warraich/News Lens, 2015
Filed under: Freedom of expression, Gender, History, Human rights, Pakistan, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: Activism, Asma Jahangir, blasphemy, blasphemy law, bonded labour, forced disappearances, forced marriage, rule of law, UDHR, women | 3 Comments »
Got this email and image from Avaaz, subject line, “We’ve been hijacked”, that feels too important not to share. Here’s my biggest takeaway from it:
During Brazil’s election, Avaaz ran an experiment — just six people were given basic training to investigate the propaganda networks, and they shut down online fake news factories that reached *16 million* people. Imagine what ten times as many could do!
Filed under: fascism, Freedom of expression, Media | Tagged: Activism, democracy, disinformation, elections, fake news, Media, propaganda, social media | Leave a comment »
