Defenders of Internet freedom protest Pakistan facebook ban

Posted on May 20, 2010 by beenasarwar

Press Release received today:

Karachi, May 20, 2010

Defenders of Internet Freedom Protest Against Nationwide Government Ban of Facebook

On Wednesday 19th May 2010, the Lahore High Court ordered the banning of Facebook across Pakistan. Facebook is the world’s most popular social media network and is used by over 400 million globally. In Pakistan, over 2 million people use Facebook to stay in touch with their friends and family, conduct business, manage events, and share photos, news, and other content. A few days ago, a page called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” was created on Facebook asking users to submit drawings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on 20th May 2010. This page, interpreted as blasphemous, has triggered a nationwide ban on the entire Facebook domain.
While we recognize that sites on the Internet are used to spew hatred and incite violence, we steadfastly believe that governments have no right to control access to information. We believe that every citizen has an inalienable right to freely access information and by censoring Facebook, the Government of Pakistan has taken away that right. This action will have a very negative impact on Pakistan, especially considering that countless small businesses, nonprofit organizations, restaurants, art galleries, magazines, and media outlets use Facebook to conduct day-to-day business and share information with their stakeholders.
In 2006, the Supreme Court of Pakistan banned the entire blogspot.com domain for over 18 months over a similar incident where only one blog carried blasphemous cartoons. Thousands of Pakistani bloggers were deprived of the freedom to express themselves and interact with others. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority now has the ability to block specific pages on the Internet and could have banned just the single blasphemous page. As members of civil society and professionals who depend on social media networks for our daily communications, we demand the immediate restoration of Facebook and an end to Internet censorship by the Government of Pakistan.
Press conference to discuss the worrying trend of Internet censorship and the resulting impact on civil liberties and the free and unfettered exchange of ideas and information, today, 5:00 pm,Karachi Press Club

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

Peace hankies + trade + business = reduce hostilities

Posted on May 17, 2010 by beenasarwar

Happy Home School students display their Aman ki Asha 'peace hankies'. Photo: Naqeebur Rehman

Another Aman ki Asha event in the offing -‘Partners in peace and progress‘, the trade and investment meeting between top Indian and Pakistani business executives, taking place in Delhi May 18-19, 2010. This is the latest in the chain of events since the initiative was launched on Jan 1, 2010, by two media giants of Pakistan and India. Since then, there have been several events in both countries – literary festivals, music concerts, mushaira, editors and anchors’ meeting, a seminar on strategic issues, the ongoing peace hankies campaign, and now this major economic conference. The coverage of these events in the media, especially the sponsoring media groups Jang, News, Times of India and Geo TV, has created a buzz around peace. Crucially, it has helped to create ‘an enabling environment’, as Geo TV President Imran Aslam terms it, that may well have contributed to the thaw in India Pakistan relations. (For more peace hankies photos see my Flickr site). For those cynics and the critics – yes we all know peace is not going to happen overnight, but when the critical mass of people is clearly for it, it might not be so far away as it once had seemed.

Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Conversations 10: The trust deficit

Posted on May 11, 2010 by beenasarwar

May 6 2010

Dear Beena,

I am heartened too by our PMs meeting in Thimphu. But let me say that I also have hope from such events as your Aman ki Asha seminar, where there’s discussion between folks from both sides who have less political pressures on them than ministers.

Still, while I don’t mean to second-guess what happened at the seminar, I wonder about the urge to build a “consensus” in discussions like these. Is that always necessary or useful, what do you think? I wonder if we end up watering down our own emotions and concerns in the search for consensus, and thus leave them essentially un-addressed. If that’s at all true, it’s not a good prescription for peace. Continue reading →

Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Mother’s Day, BB murder and Irom Sharmila

Posted on May 9, 2010 by beenasarwar

Irom Sharmila is force-fed in the secure wing of a hospital in Imphal. Photo: The Independent

Some links I posted to my yahoogroup today:

Why I hate Mother’s Day: “Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents…. (it) benefits no one but Hallmark” – well argued piece by Anne Lamott in Salon.com

Analysis: They killed Benazir Bhutto and this is how it happened – Anas Abbas’ painstakingly researched piece at his blog, titled AA@Counterterrorism, Imperialism, Extremism, Bigotry

One woman’s silent quest for peace on India’s wild frontier: Exclusive interview of Manipur’s Irom Sharmila, who has been on the world’s longest known hunger strike since 2008 – good article by Andrew Buncombe in The Independent

Filed under: Gender | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

PERSONAL POLITICAL: What a blast

Posted on May 9, 2010 by beenasarwar

Panicked schoolgirls being evacuated after a bomb blast outside their school that killed one boy, Apr 19. AP photo

My monthly column Personal Political in Hardnews India
 April 26, 2010

Beena Sarwar

On April 19, there were two bomb blasts in the heart of Peshawar – a low intensity one outside a police-run school as parents were picking up children that killed a small boy, followed hours later by a second detonated by a suicide bomber, in the famed Kissa Khwani Bazaar (story tellers’ market), killing over 20 people including one of Peshawar’s senior-most police officials.

There was a haunting Associated Press photograph in newspapers the next day: four schoolgirls in their school uniforms in the back of a van being taken to safety. One clutches a water bottle. Wide-eyed with fear and bewilderment, they can’t be more than six years old. Continue reading →

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Seminar: Why Student Politics? & our documentary film

Posted on May 5, 2010 by beenasarwar

Title for the documentary film by K.B. Abro

Seminar on “Why student politics?” May 5, 11.30 am-1.00 pm in Islamabad at National Institute of Pakistan Studies (Quaid e Azam University campus). The documentary film ‘Aur NikleiN Ge Ushaq ke Qafley’ (And There Shall be More Caravans of Passion) on Dr M. Sarwar &  the 1950s student movement that Sharjil Baloch and I made will also be screened. The event is organised by students and faculty. All are welcome, and so is feedback

Filed under: Dr M Sarwar | 6 Comments »

Conversations 9: Perceptions, perceptions

Posted on May 2, 2010 by beenasarwar

Published in The News on Sunday, Political Economy section, Aman ki Asha page, May 2, 2010

April 22 2010
Dear Beena,

I know your Berlin adventure was stymied by, of all things, a volcano in Iceland. Who’d have thought it? Somebody more eloquent than I could probably find some kind of metaphor, for the prospects for peace between us, in those spewing ashes. Another time.

To get to your last missive. Yes, perhaps we are going round in circles to a degree; and yet I think we are indeed getting somewhere. For surely it’s when we come to grips with things we disagree on, whatever they are, that we will find what making peace really entails.

And there are things I disagree with in your last missive. Continue reading →

Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , | 3 Comments »

So beautiful and so bitter: Fatima Bhutto and her versions of truth

Posted on April 30, 2010 by beenasarwar
fatima-bhutto

Photo: Courtesy Mag Weekly

Post updated Jan 2019, on request by her agent, to embed a link to Fatima Bhutto’s profile page with the mention below “to help her to gain more traction and booking requests”. Interestingly the profile mentions an ‘aunt’ who was ‘violently killed’ without saying *who* the ‘aunt’ was… Also updated to add another link: if I can do that for Fatima, why not for Victoria Schofield?

——-

She’s beautiful and bright (looks so much like her late aunt Benazir) – no wonder journalists (outside Pakistan notably) have been bowled over, leading to an overdose of fawning media attention (Khuswant Singh’s article takes the cake) in which few have tried to go beyond the surface.

Her father Murtaza’s cousin Tariq Islam (Z.A. Bhutto’s sister’s son) is one of the few people to have publicly challenged her version of the truth in at least one aspect. In her recently published, highly publicised book, Fatima Bhutto alleges that Z.A. Bhutto wrote to Murtaza to set up a militant base Afghanistan to wage an armed struggle against the military dictator, Zia ul Haq. Continue reading →

Filed under: capital punishment, Gender, History, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Balochistan: Condemn the target killing of Nazima Talib

Posted on April 29, 2010 by beenasarwar

Quetta University teachers protest against Nazima Talib's murder. Photo courtesy Dawn

Another senseless death. Photo: courtesy BBC

Elaborating on the note posted to my yahoogroup this morning:
Condemn the cold-blooded target killing of Prof. Nazima Talib, gunned down while on her way in a rickshaw to the Department of Mass Communications of Balochistan University where she taught for 23 years. BLA claims credit… How can they hope to succeed if they kill educationists? Her murder is a devastating reminder of how the innocent pay for the political ambitions of the ruthless.

See also reports in CriticalPPP on the murder of Prof. Nazima Talib and report in Dawn today about the professor’s burial in Karachi. She leaves behind an elderly widowed mother and a son, 24.

HRCP says: “It is unfortunate that most of senior Baloch leaders have not condemned these ruthless killings strongly enough, some of them present conspiracy theories to divert the blame from the Baloch organisations… The discontent among the Baloch youth could not be assuaged though several months passed since the government made commitments to take measures to win over the Baloch nationalists, especially the young Baloch, under the Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan Package. The murder of the woman teacher at the Balochistan University should serve as a reminder to the powers that be that they need to act immediately and decisively to make things improve in the Balochistan province”. Complete statement at HRCP blog

TALES OF DEPRIVATION IN MINERAL-RICH PROVINCE in The Daily Tawar, Baluchistan, translation posted at NewAgeIslam

The Baloch people have a right to self-determination – A damning indictment of Pakistan’s continued military presence and human rights violations in Balochistan by the British activist Peter Tatchell, advocating Balochistan’s right to self-determination in Opendemocracy (thanks Anthony Barnett for flagging this)

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

Can a handkerchief bring peace? Indo-Pak school children’s campaign

Posted on April 29, 2010 by beenasarwar

HANKIES PEACE CHAIN initiative by Aman ki Asha, underway in India where thousands of schoolchildren have already signed & drawn peace messages for Pakistan. Launched yesterday in Pakistan. Below: text of the ad pubished in Pakistan on Apr 28, 2010 in The News and Jang

CAN A HANDKERCHIEF BRING PEACE?

Perhaps not. But there’s one small thing it could do. It could clean up a small space in the minds of our children. A little square piece where peace can bloom again. Just have your child write or draw a peace message on a handkerchief to children across the border and join in forming a chain that will stretch all the way from Lahore to Amritsar.

The Aman ki Asha peace chain is a nationwide schools initiative that will join hundreds of thousands of hankies in a chain of friendship that will stretch across generations to come.

Schools wishing to participate, please contact Aman ki Asha at amankiasha@janggroup.com.pk or phone 021-3221-5239; fax 021-3221-5238

Filed under: Peace | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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