‘Can journalists be activists?’ – Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture 2023 – II

Following up from my earlier post, here’s the video recording of the Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture 2023 I delivered online recently for the Center of Excellence in Journalism at IBA, Karachi.

Text of my talk below with slides.

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‘Can Journalists be Activists?’ Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture 2023

Wednesday, 22 March 2023, 6 pm Pakistan time / 9 am ET

Register at this link

Honoured and humbled to be invited to present this year’s Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture, named for someone who remains a role model for so many journalists and women, someone I knew personally and admired greatly.

Time: Wednesday, March 22, 2023 06:00 PM (Pakistan)

Agenda

  • 5:50 – 6pm Producer at CEJ to admit registered attendees
  • 6:00 pm: Amber Shamsie, CEJ director, – Welcome and introduction to Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture lecture series
  • 6:05 pm: Remarks by Dr Akbar Zaidi, IBA Executive Director
  • 6:10 pm: Umber Khairi, Coordinator RBMI Lecture Series, introduces lecture and speaker
  • 6:18 -7:00 Beena Sarwar
  • 7:00: Umber Khairi moderates Q&A session and discussion (questions sent via zoom chat)
  • 7:30 pm: Umber Khairi will conclude and thank

I believe the session will be broadcast live at the CEJ-IBA YouTube channel. If not, the recording will be available there later anyway,

Asma Jahangir Conference; Pakistan-India cross-border collaborative reporting; a cautionary tale from Sri Lanka; and a Bhutan peace initiative – Sapan News Network

Justice Qazi Faez Isa, late Asma Jahangir, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Manzoor Pashteen: Collage by The Friday Times/Naya Daur

Sharing four recent offerings from Sapan News Network – the most recent one in full below, pegged on the Fourth Asma Jahangir Conference in Lahore, on the ‘ ‘Crisis of Constitutionalism in South Asia’, that I’m thrilled to have co-authored by aspiring young journalist Abdullah Zahid, published in The Friday Times/Naya Daur, South Asia Monitor and other media outlets. Plus three other recent syndicated features:

A teach-in on Sri Lanka’s ongoing crisis, with eminent thought leaders Amita Arudpragasam, Nalaka Gunawardene, Marlon Ariyasinghe, Rehana Thowfeek.
East-West Centre Fellows and alumni from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka converge in Kathmandu – Photo: courtesy Lubna J. Naqvi
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Sara Suleri bows out

Sharing personal memories of the brilliant Sara Suleri whose genre-defying book Meatless Days inspired generations of writers, feminists, memoirists and dislocated Southasians. Thanks Ailia Zehra at The Friday Times for asking me to write this piece. Published as a Sapan syndicated feature in TFT, The Wire, Geo TV blog, South Asia Monitor and The Print – shared here with additional pix and links.

February 2018: Sara Suleri pays tribute to Asma Jahangir. Photo: Beena Sarwar.

PERSONAL-POLITICAL

By Beena Sarwar

March 25, 2022, Sapan News Service:

Aur bataiye” – tell me more, a polite invitation to keep talking. I can hear her voice, perhaps naturally husky, made deeper with years of cigarette smoking and perhaps more recently with pain and other medications.

She’d send her love to Pakistan whenever I’d call before flying out from Boston, where we had both ended up around ten years ago – she after retiring as Professor Emeritus of English from Yale University. I had transplanted myself from my home city Karachi where I was editing Aman Ki Asha, hope for peace – between India and Pakistan.

“Dream on!” I hear Sara say. And yet, she agrees, it’s important to keep going. She’s also a hundred percent supportive of our push for a regional approach – the South Asia Peace Action Network, or Sapan, the more recent endeavour, launched last year with a wonderful group of inter-generational, cross-border peacemongers.

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PFUJ condemns abduction of two journalists, announces countrywide protest on Monday

UPDATE 5.45 PST: Journalists Amir Mir and Imran Shafqat released on bail. Federal Investigation Agency says they were arrested for their alleged contempt against Judiciary, Army and some “women”…

Tweet from Amir Mir’s brother journalist Hamid Mir

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I don’t normally post back-to-back but the situation warrants it. Hours after my last blogpost Stand in solidarity with journalists, two more journalists have been picked up. What is this andher nagari, land in darkness…?

Image of HRCP tweet – Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

Pakistan Federal Union of Journalist (PFUJ) has strongly condemned abduction of two senior journalists Syed Imran Shafqat and Amir Mir from Lahore from their residences in Lahore on Saturday and demanded their immediate release.

The PFUJ also announced to hold countrywide protest from Monday against growing incidents of journalists’ abductions in Pakistan.

The abductors were reportedly from Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) which, PFUJ, believes is involved in taking actions against the journalists at the behest of the government.

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As journalists around the world face growing threats, President Biden must lead by example

An oped that my fellow professor of journalism James McManus at Emerson College and I co-wrote recently, published in The Wire:

As the newly-sworn in United States President Joseph Biden begins his tenure, he has a lot of salvaging to do from the wreckage left by his predecessor.

Representational image. Illustration: Wikimedia Commons

One of the more disturbing messages arising out of the attack by violent pro-Trump insurrectionists at the US Capitol on January 6 involved frightening threats to a free press. Scrawled on a door at the building were the words: “Murder the Media.”

That pithy, vile phrase represented the raw culmination of five years of rhetorical attacks by Donald Trump and his political allies against critical media coverage.

Read the rest of the oped here: Why Restoring Press Freedom Globally Should Take Precedence on Biden’s Priority List

MSR’s ongoing incarceration: “There still remain journalists in this country determined to hold their ground”

The March 12 arrest of Mir Shakilur Rahman sent shockwaves through journalist and human rights communities, Here’s a link to my piece about this issue in The Washington Post today: In Pakistan, a bizarre arrest shows how media freedom is being squeezed.

But even if he is granted bail now – after over 100 days of being denied his liberty and that too at a time of Covid — this will be a minor victory  achieved at a huge cost, not only for Rahman, but also for media freedom and democracy in Pakistan.

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Commemorating K. A. Abbas: Ideas, ideals and more

Born: June 7, 1914, Panipat. Died: June 1, 1987, Bombay.

This post has the following sections:

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V for virus, V for vendetta… In ongoing case against media boss, calls to #FreeMirShakilurRehman fall on deaf ears

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.

Leading international organisations have called for MSR’s release

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.

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Cambridge event Standout for Peace in solidarity with #StandWithKashmir

Demonstrators at MIT, part of a series of peaceful world-wide protests in solidarity with Kashmir on the weekend of 21 September, International Peace Day. Photo: Beena Sarwar

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.

Visual by Zarina Teli, based on a photograph by Sumaya Teli.

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”.

Boston event – Global Standout for Peace in South Asia. Photo: Beena Sarwar

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.

Standout for Peace in solidarity with Kashmir, Goteburg, Sweden

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)

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