Families in the militancy-stricken FATA, a hotbed of violence, blame the Pakistan military and the Taliban in equal measure for reducing the education system here to rubble.
Families in the militancy-stricken FATA, a hotbed of violence, blame the Pakistan military and the Taliban in equal measure for reducing the education system here to rubble.
If Pakistan is to be at peace with itself, the army must stop seeing everything through the prism of competition and war with India. To prosper, Pakistan must overcome its hatred for India and leave Kashmir as a problem to be solved by Kashmiris. Muddled thinking has left Pakistan exhausted and indifferent to its own suffering. The notion in army circles that Pakistan’s civil war is transient, and will disappear if unnamed string-pullers stop their mischief, is delusional — this war will be long and bitter. The military must limit itself to defending the people of Pakistan from violence and to ensuring that their constitutional and civil rights are protected. It must cease posturing as the defender of ideological frontiers. Our army must become Pakistan’s army, not an army of God.
We, the undersigned, condemn in the strongest terms the beheading of Rizana Nafeek – the Sri Lankan domestic migrant worker convicted aged 17 in 2005, for the accidental death of an infant – in Saudi Arabia on the morning of 09 January 2013. We urge local and international stakeholders in the labour migration process including governments, private employment agencies, national human rights institutions, and civil society organisations, to combine their efforts to protect the rights of migrant workers, ensure their equal and humane treatment, and stop trafficking, to avert future miscarriages of justice such as the judicial killing of Rizana Nafeek on 9 January 2013.
We note with grave concern that the Sri Lankan Parliament has decided to remove the Chief Justice of the country through a Parliamentary Select Committee, in contravention of a Constitutional determination by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court. The Court had determined that such a decision could only have been constitutionally taken through an Act of Parliament and not through a Standing order. This drastic move by the legislature began after the Supreme Court found a controversial Bill tabled in the Parliament unconstitutional. The Bill sought to grant disproportionate powers to the Minister of Economic Development. The impeachment moves were condemned internationally and domestically by civil society groups, intergovernmental institutions, and the legal fraternity.
The Delhi gangrape case has led to country-wide outrage, with young women and men still pouring out on to the streets to protest against the widespread culture of sexual violence. The outrage has not just stopped at Jantar Mantar, India Gate or university campuses; it has also led to a wave of intellectual reflection on the issue. For most protesters the demand for justice has not stopped with the Delhi gang rape victim, but has led to a demand for justice for all victims of sexual violence. These protesters have forced us to remember a litany of names that get buried by the TRP driven media and a public with a notoriously short attention span. It is time to remember names that we are losing to public amnesia, names like Soni Sori, Manorama, Asiya and Neelofar. It is time we remember another forgotten name – Laxmi Orang.
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