Invitation from Javed Ahmed Qazi Secretary General, Forum for Secular Pakistan:
Forum for Secular Pakistan has organised a lecture on “Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s Political Career and Vision” by renowned Indian research scholar, Dr Ajeet Jawed, on Saturday 30th June, 2012, at 4:30 PM, at Jinnah Medical and Dental College, Shaheed-e-Millat Road, Karachi. You are cordially invited to have your input in the interactive session with the author of the book “Secular and Nationalist Jinnah”, a book which had raised a lot of debate especially in India. Continue reading →
Here’s what I wrote after the fundraiser with the great Jahangir Khan at the Pakistan Squash Federation (PSF) in conjunction with Dover Squash in Natick, MA – my first sports report (slightly abridged version published in The News).
From Beena Sarwar
BOSTON: The Pakistan Squash Federation has launched an ambitious project to revive the game in Pakistan, partnering with squash associations and academies in the United States to uplift, educate and groom Pakistani talent. (See Khalid Hussain’s earlier report in The News on Sundayhere)Continue reading →
Over 80 percent of cases of American sex slavery involve US citizens, not immigrants. It’s a problem this country must find creative solutions to solve through conferences like Demand Abolition, which took place in Bostonrecently.
Image: Ira Gelb (Flickr)
Beena Sarwar
BOSTON — She was only 15 when she escaped, but she had already been sold for sex up to nine times a day since she was two years old. Her parents pimped her out and beat her severely, but Mary (not her real name) is a survivor – no longer a victim. Twelve years later, she helps other survivors in the US and abroad, volunteering with the Not For Sale Campaign.
I met Mary over lunch at a convention on sex trafficking in Boston recently and she told me her story. It has taken “a lot of healing and hard work” to get this far,” she said.
Besides survivors like Mary, activists, government officials and law enforcement officers gathered at the intense, two-day event in Boston in May, organized by Demand Abolition, a program of Hunt Alternatives Fund. The focus of the conference was on abolishing the demand for commercial sex.
Continue reading →
The following email correspondence copied to me stems from a comment on my blog by Barrister Rizwan Ahmad, Advocate High Court, Lahore, Pakistan, addressed to Justice Katju, in response to Justice Katju’s views on the Pakistan Supreme Court judgement first published on this blog. I forwarded the comment to Justice Katju who replied to Mr Ahmad: “I was constrained to write such a hard hitting article because your Chief Justice and his colleagues have lost all sense of self restraint expected of a superior Court, and have been playing to the galleries for quite some time. Whether they have a hidden agenda or not I cannot say, but they will certainly wreck the Constitution if they go on like this.” Read their subsequent exchange below, arranged chronologically, starting with Rizwan Ahmad’s reply to Justice Katju’s email:Continue reading →
Justice Katju: “The Prime Minister holds office as long he has the confidence of Parliament, not confidence of the Supreme Court.”
Justice Markandey Katju, former Justice, Supreme Court of India and presently Chairman, Press Council of India just sent me an article about the recent order of the Pakistan Supreme Court declaring that Mr. Gilani is not the Prime Minister. Justice Katju writes, “In my opinion the Pakistan Supreme Court has gone totally overboard, flouted all canons of Constitutional Jurisprudence, and is only playing to the galleries and not exercising judicial restraint. It is thereby upsetting the delicate balance of power in the Constitutional scheme.”
In his article, Justice Katju explains the concept of immunity and stresses the need for balance between the organs of the state. He writes that it may be published freely in any newspaper:Continue reading →
The behind-the-scenes footage leaked from Dunya TV’s ‘interview’ of Malik Riaz conducted by Meher Bokhari and Mubashir Lucman on June 13, 2012 has exposed the corruption of these so-called journalists. Their clear connivance with the interviewee in order to make themselves look blameless is a disgrace to the profession. We commend the whistleblower who leaked this footage and exposed their reality, which is all the more shocking given their self-righteous public stands.We demand:Continue reading →
A 30-second ‘convict’ for ‘contempt of court’: Gilani. Reuters photo.
On Tuesday, June 19, the Supreme Court of Pakistan in an unprecedented judgement disqualified Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani from his membership of Parliament, also barring him from contesting elections for five years (scroll down for a Political Timeline putting the move in context).
The Court had on April 26, 2012, symbolically ‘convicted’ Gillani for contempt of court for less than a minute, due to his failure to ask Switzerland to reopen a corruption case against President Zardari, on the grounds that the president enjoyed immunity as head of state. According to some legal experts, as a ‘convict’ Gilani could no longer hold office.Continue reading →
Who says there’s no positive news coming out of Pakistan?
“Looking at the videos really changed my perception of the youth of Balochistan. Such brilliant young men and women, sitting together for a cause, enjoying, eating, singing, dancing and spreading the message of love” – Ali Rahman, on the First Quetta Youth Conference 2012
Screenshot of the video: the women sitting on the floor clap and sing a song… a man dances. Kohistan, Pakistan.
My article in weekly The News on Sundaypublished on June 10, 2012. I wrote it to meet their June 7 deadline, before the fact-finding team submitted its report. One of the members of that team was the activist Fouza Saeed who wrote about her experience in this article of June 8,A tipping point?: Real concerns in Kohistan.
Kohistan in context
The ‘religious’ militancy is adding to the social conservative values that weigh down women
By Beena Sarwar
Over the past few months, Kohistan has hit the headlines for reasons that symbolise much of what’s wrong in Pakistan: short-sighted policies that have given a boost to ‘religious’ extremists, poor law and order and prosecution systems that allow people to get away with murder, and conservative social values that reduce women to the status of chattel who can be killed for the sake of ‘honour’.Continue reading →
In Kathmandu for a meeting, on May 28, 1998 when Pakistan retaliated to India’s nuclear tests with its own, I found my journalist friend Kunda Dixit trying to draw this cartoon, that I re-drew for him. It was published with the commentary “Let them eat grass” in Himal Southasian, June 1998. I’d been trying to find it – thanks Roman Gautam at Himal for emailing the page scan.
Invitation from Javed Ahmed Qazi Secretary General, Forum for Secular Pakistan:
Journeys to democracy 