Filed under: Blasphemy Laws, fascism, Health, Kashmir, Progressive politics, Resistance, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: #MashalKhan, #MusicForHope, #RememberingMashalKhan, Baisakhi, covid-19, Jallianwalla Bagh, Kashmir, Live performance, lockdown, Mashal Khan, Vaisakhi | Leave a comment »
Filed under: Gender, Health, Pakistan-India, Southasia, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: aurat azadi march, Aurat March, CAA, coronavirus, mera jism meri marzi | 1 Comment »
Something I wrote about sexual harassment and abuse, published in The 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 | 1 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 »
The Hazara community’s sit-in, Quetta, protesting their target killing. Photo: IRNA
Had the Hazaras who were killed in a bomb blast in Quetta died in the Notre Dame fire instead, there might be more outrage about their persecution and targeted killing in Pakistan, comments a designer friend disgusted by the apathy of Pakistan’s elites to the Hazara community’s ongoing sit-in, braving the rain and cold of Quetta while his “timeline is on fire with pix of the burning cathedral and people’s pictures in front of it”. Continue reading
Filed under: 'War on terror', Afghanistan, Balochistan, Human rights, Interfaith, Islam, Terrorism, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: assange, Assange arrest, boston, Boston marathon bombing, Christchurch attack, Hazara genocide, Hazarganji, Irfan Khudi Ali, Jacinda Ardern, Notre Dame burns, Quetta blast, social media | Leave a comment »
Lahore, 28 Feb: Salima Hashmi holds up a placard demanding that Pakistan return the captured Indian Air Force pilot – a step that Pakistan announced that day.
As tensions between India and Pakistan continue to keep the region hostage people everywhere are stepping up to urge the governments to resolve all issues through dialogue. They include:
Filed under: Kashmir, Pakistan-India, Resistance, Terrorism, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: Abhinandan, IAF pilot, India, Pakistan, Peace demo, POW | 1 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 | 4 Comments »
ANP’s Haroon Bilour, whose father was killed in the 2013 election campaign, was among those killed at an election rally in Peshawar on 10 July, 2018.
My comment contextualizing the politics of the upcoming Pakistan polls for India Today’s digital edition Daily O, shortly after a deadly suicide bombing at an election rally in Peshawar. The next day, there were two attacks at election rallies, one in Bannu which fortunately took no lives, and a bomb blast Mastung in which the death toll has risen to over 200.
Politics of the upcoming Pakistan polls
With a queered pitch and biased umpires, Pakistan’s struggle for democracy is far from over
Filed under: 'War on terror', democratic political process, Pakistan-India, Resistance, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: deshatgardi wardi slogan, Elections 2018, Gen. Zia, good taliban bad taliban, Haroon Bilour, Hindutva, Mastung blast, MMA, Modi, nawaz sharif, Pakistan, Taliban | Leave a comment »
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
From progressive.org, forwarded by Isa Daudpota. So relevant not just to USA and the time it was written, but today and elsewhere too.
4-5 min read
Editor’s Note: The late historian and Progressive columnist Howard Zinn shared these words with us back in 2006. His message is still just as compelling A World War II bombardier, Zinn was the author of the best-selling book A People’s History of the United States.
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism—that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder—one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking—cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on— have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
Continue readingFiled under: Education, fascism, History, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: history, Howard Zinn, indigenous people, July 4, massacre, US foreign policy | Leave a comment »
Wrote this piece for the Economic and Political Weekly (Vol. 53, Issue No. 12, 24 March 2018). Unedited version here with additional links, photos and videos.
Asma was all this and so much more. Continue reading
Filed under: Human rights, Pakistan, Pakistan-India, Southasia, Violence in the name of religion | 2 Comments »
Journeys to democracy 