Tag Archives: Pakistan

Feb 11 2018

Asma Jahangir Life and History

Asma Jilani Jahangir born 27 January 1952 in Lahore – died 11 February 2018 in Lahore) was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She is widely known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers’ Movement and serves as the trustee at the International Crisis Group. Born and raised in Lahore, Jahangir studied at the Convent of Jesus and Mary before receiving her B.A from Kinnaird and LLB from the Punjab University in 1978. In 1980, Jahangir was called to the Lahore High Court and to the Supreme Court in 1982. In the 1980s, Jahangir became an democracy activist and was imprisoned in 1983 for participating in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy against the military regime of Zia-ul-Haq. In 1986, she moved to Geneva, and became the vice-chair of the Defence for Children International and remained until 1988 when she moved back to Pakistan.
In 1987 she co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and became its Secretary General until 1993 when she was elevated as commission’s chairperson. She was again put under house arrest in November 2007 after the imposition of emergency. After serving as one of the leaders of the Lawyers’ Movement, she became Pakistan’s first woman to serve as the President of Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan. She has co-chaired South Asia Forum for Human Rights and was the vice president of International Federation for Human Rights.
Jahangir served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion from August 2004 to July 2010, including serving on the U.N. panel for inquiry into Sri Lankan human rights violations and on a fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements. Jahangir is the recipient of several awards including the 2014 Right Livelihood Award (along with Edward Snowden), 2010 Freedom Award, Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2010, Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Ramon Magsaysay Award, 1995 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, and the UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights. She was awarded an Officier de la Légion d’honneur by France. Her prominent writings include The Hudood Ordinance: A Divine Sanction? and Children of a Lesser God. She passed away on February 11, 2018.
 
Life and History
Jahangir was born into a prosperous and politically active family with a history of activism and human rights work. Her father, Malik Ghulam Jilani, was a civil servant who entered politics upon retirement and spent years both in jail and under house arrest for opposing military dictatorships. Her father was imprisoned on several occasions for his outspoken views, which included denouncing the Pakistani government for genocide during their military action in what is now Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Her mother, educated at a co-ed college at a time when few Muslim women even received higher education, also fought the traditional system, pioneering her own clothing business when the family’s lands were confiscated in 1967 as a result of her husband’s opinions and detention.
Jahangir herself became involved at a young age in protests against the military regime as well as opposing her father’s detention by then president, Benazir Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1972. She received her B.A. from Kinnaird College, Lahore and her law degree in 1978, and her Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from Punjab University. She also holds an honorary doctorate from University of St. Gallen in Switzerland., Queens University, Canada, Simon Fraser University, Canada and Cornell University, United States. She is married and has a son and two daughters, Munizae Jahangir, a journalist and Sulema Jahangir, who is also a lawyer.
Author
In addition to many publications, Jahangir has authored two books: Divine Sanction? The Hudood Ordinance (1988, 2003) and Children of a Lesser God: Child Prisoners of Pakistan (1992). One of her major publications is titled “Whither are We!” and was published in Dawn, on 2 October 2000.
Death
Asma Jahangir suffered a cardiac arrest in Lahore on 11 February 2018 and died when was taken to the hospital. 11 february 2018
Oct 3 2016

India evacuates thousands living near Pakistan border

India evacuated over 10,000 people living near the border with Pakistan in Indian Punjab and ordered security forces to upgrade surveillance along the frontier. Hundreds of villages were being cleared along a 15 kilometre strip in held Kashmir. Authorities in India’s northern Punjab state said they were evacuating villages within 10km of the border. “Our top priority is to move women and children to government buildings, guest houses and marriage halls,” said Nirmal Singh, deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

Jul 16 2016

Dispatch from Srinagar : Our nights are becoming longer and darker

“They are shooting above waists, right in the chest and sometimes in the head … this hospital is a war-zone.” These were the words spoken to me by a doctor at Soura Hospital in Srinagar where I am currently volunteering. At the time, a boy had been brought in from Qaimoh, a town south of Srinagar. His body had been sprayed with pellets and his right eye was punctured. I barely managed to hold my tears as he lay there writhing in pain. The doctor said he would not be able to see from one eye anymore: his pupil had been pierced by the pellet shell.
Pellet guns are supposed to be ‘non-lethal’, but in Kashmir, even a jackboot can take away people’s lives. On the third day of the siege, the Internet is still shut. Phone lines in South Kashmir are barred, 25 people have been brutally killed, and many hundreds injured. In the midst of all this chaos, Kashmiris have again attested to their steely-will. At the hospital, volunteers from the neighbourhood are running a soup kitchen for the stranded. Started by local mohalla committees, they serve meals three times a day and tea in between. Localities near the hospital have pitched in their supplies: sacks of rice, pulses and water. Hundreds of people have lined up to donate blood. There are dozens of volunteers around, taking in the injured and comforting the victims’ families. A woman on a stretcher is brought in and taken straight to the emergency ward. She was injured in Sopore, a town in the Barmulla district. As soon as we take a break from tending to her, another casualty arrives. This one is also from Baramulla — the hospital door seems to be welcoming an endless caravan.
Volunteers at the soup kitchen stay on their toes. “Nobody should stay hungry,” they remind us. “Some of the injured don’t have their families along, so we must stay with them.”A teenager, 15 years old, has succumbed to his injuries. By now, it is dark, and the bloodletting outside has not stopped. The sound of tear gas shots being fired splits through the eerie silence. The dead boy’s friends decide to stay with him for the night; they will take his body home in the morning. “Things will get more violent if we go now. We will wait for dawn to break.”Ambulances standing outside have shattered windows. Attendants describe the horrors they’ve seen, passing through the monstrosity of Indian forces. They’ve been heckled, threatened and abused. But they managed to make their way back to the hospital.
A woman breaks down every time the injured are brought in. “They are my own.” Read next: A Kashmiri’s view: Is the Indian soldiers’ sentencing a good sign? At the hospital, doctors work relentlessly, not even stopping for a moment. I ask one medic to speak to journalists. He scolds me, “You can see we are busy! There are firearm injuries, nobody has the time for this.” I leave the hospital to catch a breath. An old friend from school joins me, telling stories of the dead. It’s getting dark and I want to make it home. My phone shows 15 missed calls from my mother. As we get ready to leave, a police van appears out of nowhere. For fear of being detained, people flee the area. The van opens and a man gets inside — perhaps an informer. He had been recording the names of the injured, and noting down their addresses. I fear for them… would they be ‘dealt with’ later on? Protests erupt and people jump fences. They hurl stones at a policeman. An old man screams, "Our sons have taken bullets. How dare they enter inside!”
Even the hospitals aren’t safe.
As soon as the van leaves, two more ambulances come in. Two more bodies with bullets from the police. From another corner, the song of freedom resounds at a high pitch. Someone is singing Azaadi, the song we all know. Another ambulance screeches in with the injured.
I wonder when this night will end.
Till yesterday, the death toll has risen to 34. The count of injured people has hit 1,500. I visit another hospital. An injured paramilitary troop is brought in, and everyone is wondering what has happened. I meet an old man. He tells me he has been beaten with a stick and he cannot walk. A 24-year-old girl is shot; the pellet piercing her spinal cord has left her paralysed. In the corner of Ward 16, a 10-year-old boy lays on the bed, watching volunteers swarming the room with food and drink. The pellets are still inside him. There are hundreds like him. Most of them will carry the pellets inside their bodies for the rest of their lives because the damage is too deep in their organs.
The boy’s brother has fallen asleep sitting on a chair nearby. For many, the nights have become longer and darker than ever before. A Kashmiri youth with an eye injury sits in a hospital after being hit by 
In another ward, a woman runs in swiftly, “Kati tchum theek” [He’s not fine]. Her son’s agony is unbearable. His father comforts her, saying he will be better. Both parents run to their son.
Will this nightmare end?
In the morning, as I leave my house for the hospital, I ask the young volunteers collect supplies from neighbours for the soup kitchen in Soura. They grab their gunny bags and start going from door to door. Along with the kids is an Indian migrant worker. He holds the gunny bag open as people start pouring rice inside, cup by cup. Outside the hospital, hundreds of volunteers remain stationed. Young and old reaching hospitals while breaking curfew in their locality. Many of them have donated blood, and some haven’t slept in days. Others give out free medicines or volunteer at soup kitchens; they carry the wounded on bloody stretchers and comfort the injured with conversation.
They define what it means to be a Kashmiri.
Small kids walk to the blood bank to donate their blood, but are deemed too young. Our hearts mourn but we do not give up. We have been there in those cold winter nights when our bodies were made to crawl on the snow. We have been there in those tiring crackdowns. We have been there in those long marches holding out drinks to the people. We have been there giving out tehar to the hungry when their houses were set on fire. We have been there when our youngsters were massacred. We have been there to rescue them from the barbarity of this occupation. We were there when the floods wreaked havoc in our homes. We are here now.
We are the state when the state fails.
In these moments, amid the sounds of screeching pellets and laboured breathing, we witness what it takes to be a free people. A feeling of brotherhood unites us all, in a common dedication to the cause of freedom — a collaboration is sifted from aspirations.
Today, at this hospital, I am a proud Kashmiri, more than I ever was before. This is who we are; this is our spirit, unconquerable.
MUHAMMAD FAYSAL 
Jun 8 2016

383 U.S. Drone Strikes In Pakistan Have Killed Thousands Of Civilians

Since 2004, the United States government has attacked thousands of targets in Northwest Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Special Activities Division. Most of these attacks are on targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the Afghan border in Northwest Pakistan. These strikes began during the administration of United States President George W. Bush, and have increased substantially under his successor Barack Obama. Some in the media have referred to the attacks as a “drone war”. The George W. Bush administration officially denied the extent of its policy; in May 2013, the Obama administration acknowledged for the first time that four US citizens had been killed in the strikes. Surveys have shown that the strikes are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, where they have contributed to a negative perception of the United States.
US drone strikes are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. A 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitude project found that only 17% of Pakistanis supported drone strikes. And remarkably, among those who professed to know a lot or a little about drones, 97% considered drone strikes bad policy. 
 According to a report of the Islamabad-based Conflict Monitoring Center (CMC), as of 2011 more than 2000 persons have been killed, and most of those deaths were civilians. The CMC termed the CIA drone strikes as an “assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign”, and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year so far regarding casualties resulting from drone attacks, with 134 strikes inflicting over 900 deaths. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based on extensive research in mid-2011, claims that at least 385 civilians were among the dead, including more than 160 children.
The CIA has claimed that the strikes conducted between May 2010 and August 2011 killed over 600 militants and did not result in any civilian fatalities; this assessment has been criticized by Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal and other commentators as being unrealistic. Unnamed American officials who spoke to the New York Times claimed that, as of August 2011, the drone campaign had killed over 2,000 militants and approximately 50 non-combatants. An independent research site Pakistan Body Count run by Dr. Zeeshan-ul-hassan, a Fulbright scholar keeping track of all the drone attacks, claims that 2179 civilians were among the dead, and 12.4% children and women.  A report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, released 4 February 2012, stated that under the Obama administration (2008–2011) drone strikes killed between 282 and 535 civilians, including 60 children.

May 22 2016

Who is Mullah Akhtar Mansoor?

Mullah Mansoor was born in around 1965 in a small village called Kariz in the Maiwand district of Kandahar. He belongs to Afghanistan’s Ishaqzai tribe.
He fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan for a brief period and was a member of Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami, a former paramilitary group formed by Maulana Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi to fight them.
One of his first jobs for the group was overseeing the security of Kandahar airport.
In 1996-2001, when the Taliban was in power, he oversaw ministry of civil aviation.
He rose to the upper echelons after Mullah Akhtar Osmani, a senior Taliban military leader and a close associate of Mullah Omar, was killed by US-led coalition forces in 2006 and Mullah Dadullah Akhund, the group’s top military commander, was killed in 2007 by British special forces.
Between 2007 and 2010 he was able to stake a claim for higher office when Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy of Mullah Omar, and Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the Taliban government defence minister, were captured by the Pakistan Intelligence agency ISI.
In July 2015, Afghan intelligence said that Mullah Omar had been dead for two years. Within hours of that announcement, the Taliban reportedly held a meeting and elected Mullah Mansoor as leader. But his appointment appeared to expose fissures in the group.
A few months after his appointment, Taliban fighters seized the capital of Kunduz province after launching a daring raid from multiple directions. The attack was the biggest blow to President Ashraf Ghani since he took office a year before.
In December 2015, Afghan officials said Mansoor had died after a gunfight. The Taliban later released an audio message from him in which he denied he had been killed.
Mansoor refused to join any of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) meetings, made up of representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States and aimed at reviving a peace process.
After his persistent refusal to join talks, Afghan officials told Al Jazeera that action against the Taliban would be on the agenda for the fifth round of peace talks in early May.
US officials briefed the media on May 21 that a drone attack authorised by President Barack Obama had “likely killed” him and another Taliban member.
With additional reporting by Shereena Qazi. 
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Mar 28 2016

Pakistan mourns Lahore victims

 At least 70 people – mostly women and children – have been killed at a crowded park in Pakistan in a suicide blast that also wounded more than 300 people, officials said. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, later claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern city of Lahore and said that it was aimed at Christians. The bodies of those killed continued to arrive at the city’s hospital morgues early on Monday, where friends and family looked for and registered loved ones still missing.