Why #NotInMyName protests against vigilante violence, mob lynchings in India resonate elsewhere too

Posted on June 28, 2017 by beenasarwar

My piece published in The Wire today. Also posted below.

Not in my name-Orijit Sen

Image by graphic artist Orijit Sen.

Catalysed by the mob murder of a teenager in India on June 24, followed by a Facebook post on June 24 by filmmaker Saba Dewan, a #NotInMyName campaign is taking off across India with simultaneous protests in several cities on Wednesday, June 28, 2017, against the ongoing mob lynchings and vigilante violence targeting Muslims and Dalits. Continue reading →

Filed under: fascism, Human rights, Islam, Pakistan-India, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Remembering Indira Gandhi’s Emergency

Posted on June 27, 2017 by beenasarwar

Jaspal SinghEmail from friend Jaspal Singh on June 25, 2017 that I meant to post earlier about a situation that feels all too familiar to Pakistanis. The long-running democratic political process in India – interrupted only by Indira Gandhi’s three-year long Emergency in 1975 is one of the reasons the country has done so much better than neighbouring Pakistan. Until the current scenario where, fuelled by signals from the top, mob lynchings and vigilante violence in the name of religion are rising. Some argue that the Emergency sowed those seeds. Read on. 

Reflections. June 25,2017

Forty two years ago today, a state of emergency was declared in India by Indira Gandhi  I remember that day very clearly. I had summer job in Vermont and lived in this idyllic village west of Burlington. The rolling hills were full of flowers. There was a small mountain stream in my backyard. I would wake up and go for a bath in the stream. Every where greenery and flowers. It was like being in paradise. I had no TV, no radio. So I was cut off from the world. A friend  who lived close by came and told me that she had heard on the radio that the prime minister of India had declared emergency and thousands of people had been arrested.
Continue reading →

Filed under: democratic political process, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Why being a bystander is not an option

Posted on June 8, 2017 by beenasarwar
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Cambridge Public Library park: Unlikely scene of hatespeech. File photo by Harsh V.

My column Personal Political published in the Cambridge Chronicle, June 8, 2017

Beena Sarwar

“You don’t even speak English,” comes a male voice across the fading evening light.

We glance past Cambridge Public Library’s main entrance. The man is bending close to someone sitting on a bench on the other side. A couple of homeless guys slightly drunk, ribbing each other?

The voice breaks through the dusk again. “This is not your country. Why don’t you go back?”

I jump up and walk purposefully towards them, suppressing a reminder that I’m a small brown woman heading towards an unknown situation.

Continue reading →

Filed under: fascism, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

RIP Mashal Khan – University Student, Latest Victim of Pakistan’s ‘Blasphemy’ Vigilantism

Posted on April 15, 2017 by beenasarwar

Here’s the story I wrote for The Wire about journalism student Mashal Khan and his barbaric murder on campus yesterday – a tragedy I felt quite gutted by and felt compelled to write about (text below). For a short, sharp analysis of the phenomenon that led to the brutality, read Raza Rumi’s piece in The Daily Times, ‘Blasphemer Hunting must Stop’.

Mashal Khan-poem

Facebook post by Mashal Khan with an Urdu couplet (roughly translated): Along the way sometimes I feel / As if those hidden eyes are watching me.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, Human rights | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Don’t snuff out the lights

Posted on April 14, 2017 by beenasarwar

The horrific murder of a journalism student lynched on a university campus in Mardan on April 13 after being accused of ‘blasphemy’, 2017 has revived the urgency of coming together on a joint platform with a minimum common agenda to uphold humanitarian values. Nothing will bring back Mashal Khan, a poet, self-declared humanist and “voice of the voiceless”, but we can at least try to ensure that no other mother loses her Mashal (light) to such barbaric ignorance and orchestrated violence.

Mashal Khan: student, poet, humanist, “voice of the voiceless”

We drafted this statement a few months after the massacre of schoolchildren in Peshawar, signed by over a hundred activists, teachers, lawyers and other professionals as well as students in March 2015: Pakistanis against terrorism: Minimum common agenda against violence in the name of religion – below. Does it need to be amended or updated?  Continue reading →

Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, Human rights | Tagged: , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Women’s Action Forum letter to the Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Pakistan

Posted on January 27, 2017 by beenasarwar

recover-activistsReproducing below the letter sent by the Women’s Action Forum letter to the Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Pakistan about the “disappeared” activists and the deliberate and sustained campaign against them in the media and on social media. This campaign, with its accusations of blasphemy and treason being leveled against the missing activists and those campaigning for their safe recovery poses a danger to those missing, their families and the human rights campaigners.

WAF urges that the state, its institutions and agencies be held responsible for the recovery of the missing bloggers/activists and inform what the investigation has yielded, and that the federation be held answerable for non-compliance of SC orders on the issue of enforced disappearances.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Media, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Ongoing worldwide protests against “missing” bloggers

Posted on January 15, 2017 by beenasarwar
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Lahore protest. Photo: Khalid Mahmood

January 15, 2017 marks just over two weeks since the professor, poet and activist Salman Haider was abducted from Islamabad, followed soon after by more such “disappearances”. Human rights activists around the world are demanding that Pakistan produce the missing bloggers and end the climate of fear being created. Disappearing activists is not a new tactic, as Pervez Hoodbhoy reminds us – been happening with alarming regularity in Balochistan. But these abductions happened in Punjab. Meanwhile, the propaganda machinery of the dirty tricks brigade (#DTBPk) is out in full force painting as ‘blasphemers’ and ‘traitors’ the missing bloggers and those supporting them – which in the context of Pakistan is a clear incitement to violence and vigilante action. Below: photographs from some of the protests – Peshawar, Toba Tek Singh, Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Dallas TX and London, England.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

“Future of Pakistan” Conference: London Declaration 2016

Posted on October 31, 2016 by beenasarwar

IMG_0602.JPGLondon Declaration for Pluralism and Democracy in Pakistan
October 29, 2016

Several prominent liberal, progressive and nationalist intellectuals, human rights and social media activists, and public figures from Pakistan gathered in London for a conference on ‘The Future of Pakistan’ organized under the banner of South Asians Against Terrorism and for Human Rights (SAATH), co-hosted by US-based columnist Dr Mohammad Taqi and former Pakistan ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FImam6%2Fvideos%2Fvb.621360947%2F10154657030630948%2F%3Ftype%3D3&show_text=0&width=400
Continue reading →

Filed under: Human rights, Progressive politics | Tagged: , , , , , | 6 Comments »

World Polio Day, Oct 24: ‘Any number more than zero is too much’

Posted on October 24, 2016 by beenasarwar

A slightly revised version of my article in The News on Sunday on Oct. 23, 2016, posted here with additional links and photos. The world watches as the last three polio endemic countries strive to relegate the crippling virus to history

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Polio survivors Ramesh Ferris and Minda Dentler share their experiences – and dreams about a polio-free world. Photos: Beena Sarwar

“In 1955 Dr Jonas Salk invented the preventive vaccine. It is outrageous that 25 years later I contracted polio,” says author and global health advocate Ramesh Ferris.

Standing on his good leg, a crutch compensating for the paralysed one in braces, eyes gleaming behind black-rimmed glasses, Ferris passionately addresses the audience of about a hundred physicians, scientists and international diplomats. They include representatives from the world’s three remaining polio endemic countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. Continue reading →

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Lifting the veil: Queer life undercover in South Asia

Posted on August 6, 2016 by beenasarwar
AMZ-photo

“Secret” – fine art photo by Ali Mehdi Zaidi

The struggle of Muslim homosexuals in Pakistan, South Asia, or as expatriates is not just about LGBTQ rights but part of the larger fight for inclusion and pluralism within Islam. My essay published in The Boston Globe Ideas section (July 31, 2016)  on South Asian and Muslim attitudes towards homosexuality, reproduced below with additional links, info and photos, as well as parts not included in the final published version. The attack in the Orlando gay nightclub put the spotlight not just on the perpetrator, but his victims — Muslim gay (queer) folk who are particularly vulnerable to homophobia besides facing Islamophobia in the West, and receiving little or no support from the Muslim community at home and abroad. Plus they are now increasingly targeted by extremists claiming legitimacy from Islam. Thanks to all those who took the time to speak to me, gave feedback and entrusted me with their stories, and to the Boston Globe editors for their empathy and openness.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Art and activism, Culture, Human rights, Islam, Southasia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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