“I’ve been attending online events for the past two years, and this was the best, most engaging by far”, a young activist in Delhi after the South Asia Peace Action Network event on Sunday, featuring sportswomen from around the region and their stories.
This was the best feedback ever, especially with the tech issues we had behind the scenes.
International award-winning sportswomen from around South Asia participated in the event. We tried to do a ‘group photo’ but it didn’t go the way we were planned, so Aekta Kapoor found a creative solution and put together this collage for the Sapan website. Top row (L-R): Mabia Akhter Shimanto, weightlifter, Bangladesh; Sana Mir, former captain Pakistan cricket team; Ashreen Mridha, basketball player, Bangladesh; Nisha Millet, swimmer, India; Middle row: Ayesha Mansukhani, athlete and sports investor, India; Champa Chakma, cricketer, Bangladesh; Khalida Popal, former captain, Afghanistan football team; Preety Baral, tennis player, Nepal. Bottom row: Noorena Shams, squash player, Pakistan; Roopa Nagraj, cricketer, UAE/India; Gulshan Naaz, partially blind runner, India; Caryll Tozer, athlete, Sri Lanka; Rumana Ahmed, captain Bangladesh national cricket team.
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
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.
Women mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Lahore, November 25, 2010. (Getty)
Found this old report I wrote about a young woman who miraculously survived horrific domestic violence, published in The News on Sunday, 18 January 2004. What has changed in Pakistan since I reported on it and what hasn’t? Posting it here as I couldn’t find it online. Continue reading →
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.
Benazir Bhutto, arrival in Karachi, 2007. Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
A new fellowship at Harvard University to honor the late Pakistani political leader Benazir Bhutto, member of the Harvard College class of 1973, is now accepting applications. Continue reading →
Adil Najam, Nargis Mavalvala, Ateed Riaz at the speakers table. Photo: Beena Sarwar
Pitching in for education in Pakistan from Boston and beyond
Beena Sarwar
“The Citizens’ Foundation is doing an amazing job, and I’m honoured to be here,” said Nergis Mavalvala, giving the keynote address at the sold-out Third Annual The Citizen’s Foundation (TCF) Boston Fundraiser on Saturday, 7 May, 2016.
Propelled to celebrity status by her role in the recent breakthrough on gravitational waves predicted by Einstein, the Pakistani-American astrophysicist at MIT added, “TCF is fantastic – give generously”. Continue reading →
Updated version of my PERSONAL POLITICAL column published in The News op-ed and TOI blogs on Friday
Beena Sarwar
Shahid Afridi’s googly lobbed at women’s cricket in Pakistan in an interview, dismissing women as just good cooks, went viral on social media over the past few days.
Ostensibly very different, both stem from the same patriarchal mind-set that sees women as inferior to men, justifying itself by invoking religion or cultural traditions.Continue reading →
The Pakistan government is trying to hold talks with the Taliban, who should really be referred to as Fasadis*. There are no women in the government committee, and of course none on the Taliban side. One of the Taliban negotiators pulled out, refusing to participate until the agenda includes the imposition of Sharia law. Here’s a note posted by The Traitors of Pakistan and Pakistan Votes on Facebook, ’10 reasons why I do not want Shariah in Pakistan’. I have an additional question to the reasons they listed: 11. Whose Sharia? Each religious sect has its own version. Many of us reject the one propagated by the Fasadis and the Saudi-patronised Takfiris**. Here’s the note, for your information please, as desis say:
Malala Yousufzai’s conviction and sincerity shines as she speaks, even as the after-effects of the attack on her are still evident in the slight disfigurement of her facial muscles. And the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize nominee recently speechless even the satirical TV host Jon Stewart when she talked about her thoughts about the Taliban. Asked when she first learnt she was a target of the Taliban, she says it was through a visitor who told her to put her name in Google search.
“I just could not believe it, I said no, it’s not true,” she said. “We thought the Taliban were not that much cruel that they would kill a child – I was 14 at the time.” She was initially more afraid for her father but when she began thinking about it, she thought that if attacked she would hit the Talib with her shoe – a comment that raised a laugh.Continue reading →
Swat, 2009: A reminder of the Taliban’s brand of ‘justice’ – public floggings were the least of their punishments. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency
Keen to ‘negotiate’ with the Taliban in Pakistan? Really? First read Nazish Brohi’s oped in Dawn, reproduced below.
Failure of the war
By Nazish Brohi
IT is ‘APC’ season again. Karachi residents associate the acronym with armoured personnel carriers that contain and occasionally protect besieged policemen.
The political APCs on the other hand contain besieged politicians who are hoping for occasional protection. Take it from the Lyari cops in Karachi — if you underplay what you are up against, APCs don’t work.Continue reading →
Journeys to democracy 