Opiates of the Environmentalists? Anthropocene Illusions, Planetary Management & the Capitalocene Alternative
2021, Abstrakt
Top 3%239 Views19 Pages
1 File ▾
Thursday, December 23, 2021
HERESIOLOGY
The Origins of the Counterculture Movement: A Gathering of Anarchists, Occultists and Psychoanalysts for a New AgeCynthia Chung
November 21, 2021
The third part of Cynthia Chung’s series discusses how Aldous Huxley’s form of ideological spirituality went on to shape the drug-counter-culture movement.
“…’If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers’ – and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of the World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World…The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries… Under a scientific dictatorship education will really work – with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.”
– Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World Revisited”
This new era of the World Controllers where revolution will become irrelevant since the masses will come to love their servitude is referred to as the “Ultimate Revolution” by Huxley, a clearly borrowed phrase from H.G. Wells’ 1933 book “The Shape of Things to Come: The Ultimate Revolution.”
It is the ultimate revolution, since it will be the last of the revolutions, the most perfect revolution that will end any need for further change, since we will have finally achieved a stable world order.
It will be the beginning of the era of the World Controllers and it will be regarded as a modern Utopia, for everyone will be supposedly content within the controlled reality that shapes their caste, a caste that has been scientifically determined.
Anyone wishing to understand today’s Great Reset agenda which professes to radically alter humanity’s values amidst a vast systemic collapse, would do well to see how these ideas took root well over a century ago in a strange village in Switzerland.
[This paper is the third part to a four-part series. See Part I and Part II.]
Monte Verità (The Mountain of Truth): A Modern Utopia
In 1900, artists Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann founded an anarchist, bohemian, nudist, sun-worshipping, vegetarian artists’ colony within the small village of Ascona, Switzerland, and named it Monte Verità, meaning “mountain of truth.”
The concept for Monte Verità began with the arrival of Mikhail Bakunin, the recognized leader of international anarchism, in 1870, when he moved to Locarno, Switzerland (less than 2 km away from Ascona) and lived there for several years, attracting expressionist writers, artists, anarchists and radicals who took up residence in the surrounding region. Bakunin’s influence in the area would be the inspiration for the formation of a commune years later, Monte Verità.
Monte Verità became the international meeting place for all those who rebelled against science, technology, and the rise of the modern industrial nation-state. On the surface it was and is popularly regarded as a nature cure resort, offering treatments that include a vegetarian diet, health foods, fasting, earth cures, water cures, nude sun baths, nude air baths, and nature hikes.
The region of Ascona attracted an eclectic array of guests, from anarchists, theosophists, communists, psychoanalysts, vegetarians, rhythmic dancers, nudists, and bohemians alike. Among the notable regulars at Ascona were Herman Hesse, Carl Jung, Peter Kropotkin (who became an anarchist, after joining the watchmakers of Jura in Switzerland, who were the disciples of Bakunin), Rudolf Steiner, D.H. Lawrence (a mentor of Aldous Huxley), and the list goes on.
It had developed such a strong reputation as a Utopia, that even H.G. Wells was smitten, placing his utopia in Ticino, the Italian region of Ascona in his “Modern Utopia” (1905), and “In A World Set Free,” (1914) setting the rebirth of society in Lago Maggiore near Ascona.
In 1905, Otto Gross (an early disciple of Sigmund Freud) moved to Ascona and quickly became a sort of ruler amongst the diverse membership. Otto Gross was considered a major force in the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis, and also became a key figure in the anarchist, psychoanalytic and spiritual circles. He would conduct psychoanalysis sessions, where he would advise his “subjects” to act out their sexual fantasies, often with himself and/or his wife. Gross wanted to revive pagan mysticism, with the freedom to engage in heavy doses of sex orgies.
In 1908, Gross’ addiction to morphine and cocaine (to which his mentor Freud shared), would lead him to commit himself to the Burghölizi Mental Hospital in Zurich, where he was put under the care of Carl Jung.
At Burghölizi, Jung diagnosed Gross as a schizophrenic. Over the course of the therapy, however, Carl Jung claimed his entire worldview had changed when he attempted to analyse Gross and partially had the tables turned on him. (1) This led Jung to visit Ascona for himself, whereupon he adopted the ideas of Gross, turning to pagan sun worship and sun mythology.
Herman Hesse and Carl Jung are described as among the many who had found themselves under Otto Gross’ spell. Historian Arthur Mitzman writes in his “Anarchism, Expressionism and Psychoanalysis,” that:
“Otto Gross, as Jung’s guru throughout most of this evolution and a man capable of exerting a remarkable charisma among the Bohemian artists and outcasts in Munich, Berlin, Ascona and Vienna, must be considered the principal source of the ideas inspiring Jung and his friends in the decade before 1920.”
What was Otto Gross’ philosophy?
Gross believed that in order to achieve freedom, one must never repress any desire. Nothing was forbidden no matter how seemingly irrational, even the encouragement of suicide if his patient so desired. Gross believed that Western civilization lay at the centre of this oppression of the individual’s freedom. Those who were coming to Monte Verità were ultimately all sick, and they were made sick by the repressive ideals and values of Western civilization.
At Monte Verità, Gross promised to cure them by arousing the animal desire from within, promising to free them from their inhibitions, fears, and self-imprisonment. It was uncommon for Gross not to have sexual intercourse with his treating patient as part of the prescribed therapy.
Gross became increasingly political, particularly in Ascona, where Jung himself writes, Gross had planned “to found a free college from which he thought to attack Western civilization, the obsessions of inner as well as outer authority, the social bonds which these imposed, the distortions of a parasitic form of society, in which everyone was forced to live from everyone else to survive.”
One particular individual named Max Weber found himself devoting his passion to Otto Gross in the construction of this free college. Although this project didn’t become reality as these reformers hoped (Otto Gross became too unstable to lead anything), it is interesting to note Weber’s career as a co-founder of the Frankfurt School in 1923. Among the goals of the new school was the merging of Freudian Psychoanalysis with Marxist theories of sociology in order to engage in an international cultural war that would create the conditions for an ultimate global revolution. The Frankfurt School, whose influence vastly shaped much of the post WWII period, Max Weber, George Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and other misanthropes pioneered the growth of Critical Theory, the “Authoritarian Personality”, political correctness and other intellectual viruses.
Gross would encourage the suicides of Lotte Hattemer (in 1906) and Sophie Benz (in 1911) as the only way to liberate themselves. They had also been among his many, many lovers.
He had diagnosed the two women as having suffered from incurable mental illness (dementia praecox). He had left the poison with which Lotte Hattemer killed herself lying within her reach. He informed psychiatrists in 1913 (during one of his many visitations to the asylum between 1912 and 1920), “When I could no longer intervene analytically, I had a duty to poison her,” in reference to Sophie Benz.
Gross is also quoted commenting “A beautiful death is better than a low probability of cure.”
Before Jung, it had been the expectation of Freud that Gross would be his heir in the psychoanalytic field, however, Gross was becoming increasingly unstable.
By 1912, Gross was forcibly interned in a psychiatric institution in order to avoid being tried for murder and assisting suicide. Otto’s father, Professor Hans Gross who is considered the founder of criminology, was behind this intervention.
In 1913, at the lunatic asylum in Tulln, Gross is recorded saying:
“My whole life was focused on overthrowing authority, for example that of the father. In my view there is only the maternal right, the right of the horde…So when I’ve finished my work, let come what may. Actually, I would like to live to the age of forty-five, and then go under…preferably participating in an anarchist assassination…That would be the most beautiful way.”
Some have credited Otto Gross as the founding grandfather of the 20th century counterculture, a pioneer as the first rock n roller, hard punk lifestyle so to speak. And he did not disappoint. Gross died in 1920, at the age of forty-three, a few days after being found in the street, near-starved and freezing after eight years of going in and out of asylums, largely revolving around drug addiction. Not even Sid Vicious could ask for a more apt role model.
The same year that Gross was forcibly interned in a psychiatric institute, the start of his downward spiral of “individual freedom” to do whatever one wishes, Jung published “The Psychology of the Unconsciousness,” where he began to spiritualize the psychoanalysis movement and wrote of sun worship and sun mythology as the original natural religion of the Aryan people. (2)
It gave an academic respectability to Ascona’s Aryan sun religion, and he began to receive followers from all over the world, who wanted to experience the mythos of their own unconsciousness.
With the publishing of “The Psychology of the Unconsciousness,” a split began to develop between Jung and Freud.
In the years that followed, it became fashionable among banking and intelligence circles, to go under analysis with Jung. In 1913, Edith Rockefeller traveled to Zurich to be treated for depression by Carl Jung and contributed generously to the Zurich Analytical Psychology Club. She would later become a Jungian analyst with a full-time practice in the States attracting many socialite patients. She also paid for Jung’s writings to be translated into English in order to help disseminate his ideas. (3)
Paul (son of Andrew Mellon, co-founder to the Mellon National Bank) and Mary Mellon financed the Bollingen Foundation dedicated to disseminating Jung’s work. In 1957, Fortune magazine estimated that Paul Mellon, his sister Ailsa, and his cousins Sara and Richard Mellon were all among the richest eight people in the United States with fortunes between $400-700 million each (around $3.7-6.5 billion in today’s dollars).
Through these initiatives, there was a spill over of the ideas of Ascona into the circles of the rich and powerful. British central banker Montagu Norman and members of the Dulles family also went under Jungian analysis.
Allen Dulles would be at the center of the formation of a vicious CIA program named MKULTRA during the Cold War. The relevance of this will be made clear in part 4 of this series.
Ordo Templi Orientis: The Secret Doctrine of “Sex Magic”
“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”
– The core tenet of the Ordo Templi Orientis
Ascona was considered sacred ground for occultists going back hundreds even thousands of years, the area containing ruins of ancient ritual sites and artifacts.
In 1916, Theodor Reuss, under the sponsorship of Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann (the founders of Monte Verità), arrived in Ascona. Reuss had been building a Masonic empire and he wanted to transfer its headquarters to the Swiss village. While in Basel, Switzerland, he established the “Anational Grand Lodge and Mystic Temple” of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), and the “Hermetic Brotherhood of Light” at Monte Verità.
The Ordo Templi Orientis is the ecclesiastical arm of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.), dedicated to the advancement of Light, Life, Love and Liberty through alignment with the Law of Thelema. The Law of Thelema follows the mandate that each person follow their True Will to attain fulfillment in life and freedom from restriction of their nature.
Aleister Crowley is credited as the early developer of Thelema as a spiritual philosophy and religious movement. Its maxim is: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
It was to herald a new age.
Such a maxim was in full accord with the anarchist views of Mikhail Bakunin, followed by Otto Gross and those he influenced. The founders of Monte Verità were very clear in what they intended as a desired ideology for their followers.
Reuss would be issued warrants allowing for him to operate three systems of high-grade Masonry: The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis, The Ancient and Primitive Rite of Mizraim, and The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. (4)
Along with Reuss’ control of the Swedenborg Rite, the Rites combined provided Reuss with a complete system of Masonic initiation, independent of the regular British Masonic system.
In 1905, out of this new system of Masonry, (5) which was the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O), Reuss formed the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light, as a branch of O.T.O. which was located at Monte Verità. Reuss declared himself the Outer Head of the Order.
The Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O) distinguished itself by allowing membership to women, and advocating a new secret doctrine called Sex Magic.
Sex Magic is the corrupted Western version of Kundalini Yoga or Tantric Yoga of the East. It is sometimes referred to, in the translation of Sanskrit into English, as “Serpent Power.”
In 1912, Reuss conferred Aleister Crowley the IX° and appointed him National Grand Master General X° for the O.T.O. in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland by charter dated June 1, 1912.
In August 1917, Reuss issued a manifesto for his Anational Grand Lodge (O.T.O), called “Verità Mystica.” He then held the “Anational Congress for Organizing the Reconstruction of Society on Practical and Cooperative Lines” at Monte Verità August 15–25, 1917. He wanted to create a new ethic, a new social order, and a new religion, to be achieved through the establishment of utopian-bohemian colonies and settlements throughout the world.
By 1921, Crowley succeeded Reuss, to become the Outer Head of the Order. Crowley had become notorious for his excesses with drugs and women and for his practice in Sex Magic which he held as of high occult importance. He became known as “The Great Beast 666” and “The Wickedest Man in the World” and would become an icon for the counterculture movement.
Sonnenkinder: The Children of the Sun
Another theme of Monte Verità that hopefully has become apparent to the reader is the worshipping of the sun. This appears to have been largely influenced by the work of Johann Jakob Bachofen, whose theory of cultural evolution, in his 1861 work “Das Mutterrecht,” was described as four phases: 1) wild nomadic phase (proto-Aphrodite), 2) matriarchal lunar phase (early Demeter), 3) transitional phase (original Dionysos), 4) the patriarchal solar phase called The Apollonian, in which all trace of the Matriarchal and Dionysian past are eradicated and modern civilisation emerges.
Bachofen’s cultural evolution theory greatly influenced Otto Gross, and thus was adopted as a central philosophy of Monte Verità. As already mentioned, Carl Jung’s work became very much focused on this Aryan sun-worshipping religion to which he wrote “Psychology of the Unconscious: a study of the transformations and symbolisms of the libido, a contribution to the history of the evolution of thought.”
D.H. Lawrence had also been forever changed by the influence of Otto Gross and Herman Hesse, the latter whom Timothy Leary has credited as the Patron Saint of Cyberpunk (Leary was “turned on” to Hesse by Aldous Huxley). More on this in an upcoming paper.
Although Aldous Huxley would first meet D.H. Lawrence in 1915, it would be during the period of 1926-1930, that they would become close friends (1930 was the year D.H. Lawrence died at the age of forty-four).
The timing could not have been more ripe it seems for Aldous’ introduction into mysticism, having just written “Those Barren Leaves” in 1925 whose title was derived from William Wordsworth’s poem “The Tables Turned” to which it ends with:
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
Aldous concludes that for all the high education of the cultural elite, they are nothing but sad and superficial individuals. This was a rather typical commentary from the “Lost Generation” that was to form as a consequence of the despair after WWI and the belief that civilisations striving towards industrialisation and scientific progress had been the cause of this seemingly pointless world war. And that it was just a taste of what awaited humanity in the future if it did not correct its ways.
Aldous had abandoned the “false altars” of knowledge through science and art. He was ready for entry into the secret arts, and D.H. Lawrence would be his guide. After all, his grandfather T.H. Huxley was the one to coin the term “agnosticism,” thus it was only natural that he keep an open mind…
It should also not be lost on the reader the relevance of Aldous’ uniting of his grandfather’s promotion of Darwinian evolution and that of Bachofen’s cultural evolution. (See Part 2 of this paper.)
Through D.H. Lawrence, Aldous was taught Lawrencian metaphysics. At the core of this was that self-division was the source of the woes of western civilisation. A dualism in which modern life had caused the splitting of humanity into two conflicting forces; passion and reason, that were always at war within the individual. As a way to save humanity from reason’s tyranny dominating over passion, Lawrence preached the cult of the body and of the “dark night-life of the blood.” He believed this to be the only way to return humankind to its true heritage of the emotions.
The only way to live as a whole man, was to abandon “mental self-consciousness” and rediscover instinct, to unify oneself, to put back the fragmentation that modern civilisation had caused. According to Lawrence this division within an individual was the root of all evil, and that the natural appetite, spontaneous instinctive desires, were the pure and the good. That it was the imagination, the intellect, its moral principles, its tradition and education that were the corrupting influence of modern civilization.
Through Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard and Christopher Isherwood would be forever changed by the ideas of Ascona. They would later be called the Sonnenkinder (The Children of the Sun), a term that came from Johann Jakob Bachofen and would become the leading influence that would shape the Human Potential Movement and the Esalen Institute.
Though it is beyond the scope of this paper to go through in detail how Ascona propagated a perversion of aspects of Indian philosophy (Herman Hesse played a large part in introducing this into Ascona), it should be noted that there is consistently an overlap with the Aryan sun-worship religion and certain aspects of Indian philosophy within Ascona, the Ordo Templi Orientis and the Sonnenkinder. This especially revolves around the Bardo Thodol (Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State), otherwise known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead focuses on the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth.
Through the lens of Lawrencian metaphysics, the Sonnenkinder would adopt the philosophies of the Tibetan Book of the Dead to their core. Aldous made no secret that during his last years of life, the book had become a sort of bible for him. Aldous would also introduce Timothy Leary to this, which in turn became a major influence on the counterculture guru.
According to Timothy Leary, his co-written book “The Psychedelic Experience,” published in 1964 was loosely based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Leary and his co-writers, described the Tibetan Book of the Dead as “a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and a guide for initiates, and for those who are seeking the spiritual path of liberation.”
It should also be noted that there is a great deal of overlap with the Ascona philosophy of Aryan sun-worship and that of Alice Bailey who was influenced by the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky, a sort of sister branch of Monte Verità. Bailey’s first work was titled “Initiation, Human and Solar.”
In Bailey’s “Esoteric Psychology II,” heavily influenced by Madame Blavatsky’s “The Secret Doctrine,” she references the mystery of the descent of “fall” to Earth of the rebellious angels – the solar angels or agnishvattas, to which Lucifer is the best known representative. And that the only true evil is the sin of separatism, to which she refers “the mind is the slayer of the Real. Slay thou the slayer.”
Bailey has stated that the majority of her works have been telepathically dictated to her by a Master of Wisdom, initially referred to as “the Tibetan” or by the initials “D.K.,” later identified as Djwal Khul.
In 1922 she co-founded the Lucis Trust with her husband (originally called “Lucifer Publishing Company) which has played a major role within the United Nations to this day.
It should also be noted that Alice Bailey’s interpretation of the mythology of Lucifer has a great deal of overlap with that of the Scottish Rite. Theodor Reuss, followed by Aleister Crowley oversaw a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany, and as already discussed Ascona had become a headquarter for the Ordo Templi Orientis, and thus we come around full circle.
Children of the Sun in this context, could also be connoted as Children of the Solar-Angels; and thus the Children of Lucifer.
In the words of Alice Bailey, we must add “darkness unto light so that the stars appear, for in the light the stars shine not, but in the darkness light diffused is not, but only focussed points of radiance.” (6)
Thus we must bring forth the darkness…
In 1935, Crowley founded the Agape Lodge No. 2 in Los Angeles.
In 1937, Aldous would move with his family and his fellow Sonnenkinder Gerald Heard to Hollywood, where he would remain until his death. Christopher Isherwood would make the move to Hollywood in 1939.
And just like that, the teachings of Ascona in Hollywood became a primary focus of Crowley and the Sonnenkinder, and together they would dominate the scene out of which the counterculture movement would be born.
[Part 4 of this series will discuss how the ideas of Ascona shaped Hollywood, the music scene and the Esalen Institute, as well as the role of the Tavistock Institute and the Frankfurt school’s in shaping the mass psychology of the counterculture movement.]
Also by this authorCynthia CHUNG
Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).
The War on Science and the 20th Century Descent of Man
COP26 & The Great Reset: The Not So Glorious Prospect of Owning Nothing and Passing a Cold, Dark Winter
The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/
(1) Ronald Hayman, A Life of Jung (1999)
(2) Noll, Richard. The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung
(3) Ibid
(4) Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from John Yarker dated September 24, 1902 for the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. On the same date, Yarker issued a warrant to Reuss to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in 1911 in Reuss’s newsletter, The Oriflamme. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss’s authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905.
(5) Reuss announced a constitution for this new, enlarged Ordo Templi Orientis on June 21, 1906 in London.
(6) Alice Bailey, “The Rays and the Initiations”
The author can be reached at https://cynthiachung.substack.com/
(1) Ronald Hayman, A Life of Jung (1999)
(2) Noll, Richard. The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung
(3) Ibid
(4) Reuss received letters-patent as a Sovereign Grand Inspector General 33° of the Cernau Scottish Rite from John Yarker dated September 24, 1902 for the Masonic Rites of Memphis and Mizraim and a branch of the Scottish Rite in Germany with charters from Yarker. On the same date, Yarker issued a warrant to Reuss to operate a Sovereign Sanctuary 33° of the Scottish, Memphis and Mizraim rites. The original document is not extant, but a transcript of this warrant was published in 1911 in Reuss’s newsletter, The Oriflamme. Yarker issued a charter confirming Reuss’s authority to operate said rites on July 1, 1904; and Reuss published a transcript of an additional confirming charter dated June 24, 1905.
(5) Reuss announced a constitution for this new, enlarged Ordo Templi Orientis on June 21, 1906 in London.
(6) Alice Bailey, “The Rays and the Initiations”
PAKISTAN
ESSAY: THE POLITICS OF BLASPHEMY AND LYNCHING
On December 3, an angry mob lynched Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan man working as a manager in a garment factory in Sialkot. Kumara’s corpse was set on fire on the road over allegations of blasphemy. People recorded the bone-chilling tragedy, uploading videos on social media.
The cold-blooded murder that brought “shame to the nation” has potentially revived the public debate on blasphemy in the country. In such discussions, generally, the Pakistani media and civil society focuses on two points: the rise of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on the one hand, and the government’s inability to effectively contain its extremist ideology and to repeal the blasphemy laws on the other.
The problem with the recommendations is twofold. One, they ignore the historical roots of violence in the name of religion. Two, they also overlook how Islam relates to politics and modern ideas such as freedom of speech.
The popular — and somewhat ‘scholarly’ — reaction to these tragic incidents reveals that the state’s capacity to deal with such cases is often, if not always, overestimated. There is little a state can do in these matters when a major chunk of the society can potentially be out on the streets: take, for example, the backlash against the question of the sanctity of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). No law can ever punish a whole community. Laws are made to correct severe deviations which potentially endanger the political order, not general behavioural patterns.
Rethinking Pakistan’s blasphemy laws necessitates a probe into the rise of religiously inspired violence in the Muslim world and into Islam’s unique relationship with politics
Laws cannot, and should not, be made to correct entire communities or their ideological orientation. In the instant case, the vast majority, tacitly or otherwise, believes that “blasphemers must be beheaded.” Those who accused Kumara of blasphemy might have some personal grudges, but the hundreds of Muslims on the roads were religiously motivated. They had no personal enmity against him, and this demands a serious discussion.
This piece is an invitation to think about blasphemy laws, and the rise of religiously inspired violence in the Muslim world, in a historical context, with a focus on Pakistan. I do not claim to offer any definite answers. However, what I intend to do is the correct diagnosis of our multifaceted challenges: that it is not just a state matter, rather the problem is much deeper in society and history.
Violence in the name of religion is dangerously rampant in Pakistan. Though the country has not executed a single convict under the controversial blasphemy laws, yet from 1990 to 2021, 70 people accused of blasphemy have been killed by mobs. Last month, a charged mob set fire to a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda district when officials declined to hand over an alleged blasphemer to the mob.
Previously, in a high profile case in 2017, a 23-year-old student, Mashal Khan, was lynched and tortured to death by his colleagues on the campus of Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The blasphemy dynamic has been converted into a political movement, particularly in recent years. The killing of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, by his security guard, Mumtaz Qadri, the decision to hang Qadri for his crime, which helped TLP founder Khadim Hussain Rizvi to launch his party, the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy, by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and the recent rise of anti-Islam sentiments in France following French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that “Islam is in crisis”, have all contributed to the emergence of the militarised politics of blasphemy in Pakistan.
In an article published on December 12 in Eos, Nadeem F. Paracha wrote an intriguing essay. After giving a detailed historical account of blasphemy laws in the subcontinent, starting with the first-ever documented ‘blasphemy law’ of 1860, Paracha maintains that certain changes were made to it in 1927, and then finally it was made more rigid in scope during the Islamist military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.
Historically, and doctrinally, the impression that the British colonial government and Gen Zia are responsible for the creation of blasphemy laws seems problematic. The movement for Pakistan had a largely religious expression, the Objectives Resolution made it more explicit and Pakistan’s parliament declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims in the tenure of PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto are solid, empirical evidence that there has always been a deep and complex relationship between Islam and politics. British rule and Gen Zia played their due role in the historical development of present-day vigilantism, but they are definitely not the authors of this tragedy.
ESSAY: THE POLITICS OF BLASPHEMY AND LYNCHING
Published December 19, 2021
The mob lynching of Sri Lankan Priyantha Kumara, earlier this month, has revived the public debate on blasphemy in Pakistan
On December 3, an angry mob lynched Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan man working as a manager in a garment factory in Sialkot. Kumara’s corpse was set on fire on the road over allegations of blasphemy. People recorded the bone-chilling tragedy, uploading videos on social media.
The cold-blooded murder that brought “shame to the nation” has potentially revived the public debate on blasphemy in the country. In such discussions, generally, the Pakistani media and civil society focuses on two points: the rise of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on the one hand, and the government’s inability to effectively contain its extremist ideology and to repeal the blasphemy laws on the other.
The problem with the recommendations is twofold. One, they ignore the historical roots of violence in the name of religion. Two, they also overlook how Islam relates to politics and modern ideas such as freedom of speech.
The popular — and somewhat ‘scholarly’ — reaction to these tragic incidents reveals that the state’s capacity to deal with such cases is often, if not always, overestimated. There is little a state can do in these matters when a major chunk of the society can potentially be out on the streets: take, for example, the backlash against the question of the sanctity of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). No law can ever punish a whole community. Laws are made to correct severe deviations which potentially endanger the political order, not general behavioural patterns.
Rethinking Pakistan’s blasphemy laws necessitates a probe into the rise of religiously inspired violence in the Muslim world and into Islam’s unique relationship with politics
Laws cannot, and should not, be made to correct entire communities or their ideological orientation. In the instant case, the vast majority, tacitly or otherwise, believes that “blasphemers must be beheaded.” Those who accused Kumara of blasphemy might have some personal grudges, but the hundreds of Muslims on the roads were religiously motivated. They had no personal enmity against him, and this demands a serious discussion.
This piece is an invitation to think about blasphemy laws, and the rise of religiously inspired violence in the Muslim world, in a historical context, with a focus on Pakistan. I do not claim to offer any definite answers. However, what I intend to do is the correct diagnosis of our multifaceted challenges: that it is not just a state matter, rather the problem is much deeper in society and history.
Violence in the name of religion is dangerously rampant in Pakistan. Though the country has not executed a single convict under the controversial blasphemy laws, yet from 1990 to 2021, 70 people accused of blasphemy have been killed by mobs. Last month, a charged mob set fire to a police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Charsadda district when officials declined to hand over an alleged blasphemer to the mob.
Previously, in a high profile case in 2017, a 23-year-old student, Mashal Khan, was lynched and tortured to death by his colleagues on the campus of Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The blasphemy dynamic has been converted into a political movement, particularly in recent years. The killing of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, by his security guard, Mumtaz Qadri, the decision to hang Qadri for his crime, which helped TLP founder Khadim Hussain Rizvi to launch his party, the release of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman falsely accused of blasphemy, by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, and the recent rise of anti-Islam sentiments in France following French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that “Islam is in crisis”, have all contributed to the emergence of the militarised politics of blasphemy in Pakistan.
In an article published on December 12 in Eos, Nadeem F. Paracha wrote an intriguing essay. After giving a detailed historical account of blasphemy laws in the subcontinent, starting with the first-ever documented ‘blasphemy law’ of 1860, Paracha maintains that certain changes were made to it in 1927, and then finally it was made more rigid in scope during the Islamist military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.
Historically, and doctrinally, the impression that the British colonial government and Gen Zia are responsible for the creation of blasphemy laws seems problematic. The movement for Pakistan had a largely religious expression, the Objectives Resolution made it more explicit and Pakistan’s parliament declaring Ahmadis non-Muslims in the tenure of PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto are solid, empirical evidence that there has always been a deep and complex relationship between Islam and politics. British rule and Gen Zia played their due role in the historical development of present-day vigilantism, but they are definitely not the authors of this tragedy.
Muslim scholar Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali
The issue’s complexity needs a historical and broader understanding of violence in the name of religion in the Muslim world. There have always been such cases throughout Muslim history. In the mid-14th century, Ibn al-Khatib, a scholar known as “the man who had two deaths”, disagreed with mainstream scholars who claimed the Black Death was not contagious in nature. He interpreted a Hadith to offer evidence that the illness was contagious. Unfortunately, the chief judge censored Al-Khatib and ordered the burning of all of his books. Later, he was arrested and tortured to death. Although he was buried the next day, an angry mob reopened his grave and set his corpse on fire.
Part of the problem either lies in history or the way religion was interpreted in the earlier centuries. Unsurprisingly, Sunni jurists from the Shafi and Maliki schools of thought held that the blasphemer should be punished if they do not immediately repent. The Hanbalis went a step further and held that blasphemers should be punished even if they repent. A few Hanafis argued that there was no categorical basis for the execution of blasphemers; they may only be jailed and beaten with sticks. These interpretations were made in mediaeval times, but they continue to shape religious discourse and the cultural imagination of countless Muslims across the globe.
One man who played a significant role in making the question of blasphemy and apostasy more explicit and popular was the prominent Muslim scholar of the 11th century, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He declared several Muslim philosophers, including Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, as apostates, punishable by death. His theorisation was used by subsequent Muslim empires to punish freethinkers who were deemed a threat to the Sunni orthodoxy in any way.
Turkish-American scholar Professor Ahmet Kuru, in his 2019 book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, explains the role of Al-Ghazali. He writes that “Ghazali was not an inventor of the idea of declaring a self-avowed Muslim as apostate but, as a leading scholar, he helped legitimise it.” Kuru also explains that “the main contribution of Al-Ghazali to the ulema–state alliance was his theoretical role in the formation of Sunni orthodoxy.” Through his writings, Al-Ghazali made “orthodox views almost unquestionable.”
Al-Ghazali himself was declared an apostate by his critics for “calling God the ‘true light’”, in his book The Niche of Lights. But he had an opportunity to clarify his position, unlike Mashal Khan and other victims of Ghazali-inspired extremism.
In contemporary Pakistan, Al-Ghazali and Muhammad Iqbal, are two figures revered for their “right” interpretation of religion. The literalism inspired by prominent mediaeval figures has not only caused intellectual and cultural stagnation in the Muslim world, but also led to the rise of extremism and fundamentalism in opposition to modernity. It has made simple-minded individuals permanent prisoners of history. The young men who lynched Kumara exist physically in the 21st century but, ideologically, they are living in the 11th-century Muslim empires.
In the Muslim world, the historical process of executing blasphemers remained effective — with a few exceptions during the Ottoman Empire — until 1924, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk attempted to disrupt it through his top-bottom approach. Reza Shah Pahlavi did the same in Iran. Muhammad Bin Salman is following the same path, but in a different way.
As far as the success of the top-bottom project is concerned, present-day Turkey and Iran are glaring examples of the failure of the modernist project. The Muslim world, including Pakistan, is the victim of ideological battles and the imposition of selective doctrinal understanding of Islam throughout history.
All religious-political parties — be it Abul A’la Al-Maududi’s Jamaat-i-Islami, Mufti Mahmud’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek or Rizvi’s TLP — are the manifestations of Islam’s unique relationship with politics. This is the question we need to address.
There is little the state can do in the long run in Pakistan unless the Muslim world decides how Islam relates to politics and statecraft. Once this is settled, neither the state shall use religion to suppress freethinking, nor will extremists demand the implementation of ‘Sharia’ law.
The writer is a research assistant at San Diego State University, USA.
He tweets @Farah_adeed.
Published in Dawn, EOS, December 19th, 2021
The issue’s complexity needs a historical and broader understanding of violence in the name of religion in the Muslim world. There have always been such cases throughout Muslim history. In the mid-14th century, Ibn al-Khatib, a scholar known as “the man who had two deaths”, disagreed with mainstream scholars who claimed the Black Death was not contagious in nature. He interpreted a Hadith to offer evidence that the illness was contagious. Unfortunately, the chief judge censored Al-Khatib and ordered the burning of all of his books. Later, he was arrested and tortured to death. Although he was buried the next day, an angry mob reopened his grave and set his corpse on fire.
Part of the problem either lies in history or the way religion was interpreted in the earlier centuries. Unsurprisingly, Sunni jurists from the Shafi and Maliki schools of thought held that the blasphemer should be punished if they do not immediately repent. The Hanbalis went a step further and held that blasphemers should be punished even if they repent. A few Hanafis argued that there was no categorical basis for the execution of blasphemers; they may only be jailed and beaten with sticks. These interpretations were made in mediaeval times, but they continue to shape religious discourse and the cultural imagination of countless Muslims across the globe.
One man who played a significant role in making the question of blasphemy and apostasy more explicit and popular was the prominent Muslim scholar of the 11th century, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. He declared several Muslim philosophers, including Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, as apostates, punishable by death. His theorisation was used by subsequent Muslim empires to punish freethinkers who were deemed a threat to the Sunni orthodoxy in any way.
Turkish-American scholar Professor Ahmet Kuru, in his 2019 book Islam, Authoritarianism and Underdevelopment, explains the role of Al-Ghazali. He writes that “Ghazali was not an inventor of the idea of declaring a self-avowed Muslim as apostate but, as a leading scholar, he helped legitimise it.” Kuru also explains that “the main contribution of Al-Ghazali to the ulema–state alliance was his theoretical role in the formation of Sunni orthodoxy.” Through his writings, Al-Ghazali made “orthodox views almost unquestionable.”
Al-Ghazali himself was declared an apostate by his critics for “calling God the ‘true light’”, in his book The Niche of Lights. But he had an opportunity to clarify his position, unlike Mashal Khan and other victims of Ghazali-inspired extremism.
In contemporary Pakistan, Al-Ghazali and Muhammad Iqbal, are two figures revered for their “right” interpretation of religion. The literalism inspired by prominent mediaeval figures has not only caused intellectual and cultural stagnation in the Muslim world, but also led to the rise of extremism and fundamentalism in opposition to modernity. It has made simple-minded individuals permanent prisoners of history. The young men who lynched Kumara exist physically in the 21st century but, ideologically, they are living in the 11th-century Muslim empires.
In the Muslim world, the historical process of executing blasphemers remained effective — with a few exceptions during the Ottoman Empire — until 1924, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk attempted to disrupt it through his top-bottom approach. Reza Shah Pahlavi did the same in Iran. Muhammad Bin Salman is following the same path, but in a different way.
As far as the success of the top-bottom project is concerned, present-day Turkey and Iran are glaring examples of the failure of the modernist project. The Muslim world, including Pakistan, is the victim of ideological battles and the imposition of selective doctrinal understanding of Islam throughout history.
All religious-political parties — be it Abul A’la Al-Maududi’s Jamaat-i-Islami, Mufti Mahmud’s Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek or Rizvi’s TLP — are the manifestations of Islam’s unique relationship with politics. This is the question we need to address.
There is little the state can do in the long run in Pakistan unless the Muslim world decides how Islam relates to politics and statecraft. Once this is settled, neither the state shall use religion to suppress freethinking, nor will extremists demand the implementation of ‘Sharia’ law.
The writer is a research assistant at San Diego State University, USA.
He tweets @Farah_adeed.
Published in Dawn, EOS, December 19th, 2021
PAKISTAN
Wages of our labour
Riaz Riazuddin
OUR average monthly wage has risen from Rs6,612 in 2007-08 to Rs21,326 in 2018-19, according to the Labour Force Survey 2018-19 (LFS). In between these 11 years, the average wage increase was 11.2 per cent per annum, somewhat higher than the average yearly inflation rate of 8.9pc. While the wages have slightly outpaced the inflation indicating that real wages have risen, there is no denying the fact that these are very low. An alarming aspect is that the wages did not exceed Rs5,000 for about 5.7pc of all employees.
Our population in 2018-19 was 214.5 million, with a labour force size of 68.8m of which 4.8m were unemployed and 64m employed. Of all those employed, 27m were paid employees (wage earners) and 37m were non-employees (employers, self-employed or contributing family workers.) About 13.5pc (3.6m) of paid employees earned Rs5,000-Rs10,000; 26pc (7m) earned between Rs10,000 to 15,000; and the remaining 54.8pc (14.8m) earned over Rs15,000 per month. Remember that our minimum wage was set at Rs15,000 per month in 2018. This means that about 45.2pc (12.2m) of all wage earners earned less than the minimum wage.
Not only are the wages low, there also seems to be gender discrimination, with men earning Rs22,172 per month, slightly higher than the national average, and women earning Rs15,461, significantly lower than the national average. The plight of labour has been succinctly captured by Allama Iqbal in his various verses — one translation goes: “Your sharp paymasters have swept the board, they cheat and know no shame/ You, forever unsuspecting, have forever lost the game.”
One wonders why LFS lumped together its highest wage category of Rs15,000 and above in just one group representing more than half of all wage earners. It would have been much more informative if this was further subdivided into a few more wage groups. Wage distribution in terms of quintiles or deciles would have been even better. LFS, however, still provides a lot of useful data for informed readers or researchers. Wage distribution in terms of 21 industry subdivisions and nine occupational groups are present with provincial, urban-rural and gender bifurcation.
Not only are wages low, there also seems to be gender discrimination.
The highest national average monthly wage (Rs49,072) is for the finance and insurance sector, followed by Rs46,807 for the activities of extraterritorial organisations (resident offices of foreign missions and multilateral institutions) followed by electricity, gas and air-conditioning (Rs38,564). The fourth highest wage (Rs38,364) is for information and communication activities, followed by public administration and defence (Rs36,972). Household service activities (maids, cooks, gardeners etc) earn the lowest wage (Rs10,967) followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing (Rs11,228). The first sentence in this paragraph indicates that our financial sector is seemingly more generous in giving wages than multilaterals from whom our government borrows continuously.
Most of the paid employees (23.2pc) are involved in manufacturing activities with an average wage of Rs19,689. Construction activities employ 18.6pc with a wage of Rs17,463. Agriculture, forestry and fishing come third in employing 9.5pc of all wage earners. Educational activities employ 9.3pc (the fourth highest) with a wage of Rs30,238 (the eighth highest). Wholesale and retail trade and repair of vehicles employ 9pc with a wage of Rs15,234. Public administration and defence employ 6.5pc, and transport and storage 6.4pc with a wage of Rs20,366. Health and social work employ 3.1pc with a wage of Rs35,940. Interested readers should consult the survey for wages in all 21 industrial activities in all provinces.
Coming back to wage discrimination between the sexes in terms of occupational groups, the data is grim. Men’s average wages are higher in all nine occupational groups, from about 24pc to 420pc, compared to women’s wages. The highest difference is in the occupational group of ‘skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers’, with women receiving only Rs3,360 per month compared to Rs17,456 for men. The lowest difference is 23.8pc in the occupational category of ‘managers’, with women getting Rs52,953 compared to Rs65,592 for men. Even in the category of ‘elementary occupations’ ie unskilled jobs, the wage difference is 86.1pc, with Rs15,257 for men’s wages compared to Rs8,199 for women. While these summary results require more careful probing, Iqbal’s cry seems to depict the plight of women’s labour much more than men’s as in this translation of one of his verses: “Omnipotent, righteous, Thou; but bitter the hours/ Bitter the labourers chained hours in Thy world!”
The fact that the lowest wage is earned in household service activities makes wage discrimination in this sector much worse because a larger proportion of women (11.4pc) are involved in this service compared to men (1.2pc). A similar situation exists in education and health activities. One may be surprised to note that in six out of 21 industry divisions, the average wages of women are significantly higher than those of men. For example, in transport and storage activities, women’s wage is Rs49,847 compared to men’s at Rs20,253. This, however, does not necessarily indicate reverse discrimination as the proportion of women employees in this sector is only 0.2pc compared to 7.3pc for men. A larger number of men with very high wages for a few males compared to a much larger number of men with low wages may have driven the male average below that of the female average. This and several other points are for researchers to explore. Graduate students of economics can easily pursue their PhD on this or related topics.
Labour economics is a very important but largely neglected area of research in our country. As is well known, David Card, a labour economist, won the economics Nobel Prize in 2021. Among his other works is a pioneering research in empirically establishing that increasing the minimum wage does not reduce labour growth — exactly the opposite of theoretical orthodoxy. His work needs to be replicated in our country setting. Perhaps some young economists will take up this challenge in future and set our labour and wage policies in the right direction.
The writer is a former deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
rriazuddin@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2021
Wages of our labour
Riaz Riazuddin
Published December 17, 2021
The writer is a former deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
1 Indian Rupee = 0.013 US Dollar
3,360 Indian Rupee = 44.65 US Dollar
100 Indian Rupee= 1.33 US DOLLAR
5,000 Indian Rupee = 66.40 US Dollar
6,612 Indian Rupee = 87.81 US Dollar
8,199 Indian Rupee = 108.96 US Dollar
10,000 Indian Rupee = 132.80 US Dollar
15,000 Indian Rupee = 199.20 US Dollar
17,456 Indian Rupee = 231.99 US Dollar
21,326 Indian Rupee = 283.21 US Dollar
52,953 Indian Rupee = 703.22 US Dollar
65,592 Indian Rupee = 871.06 US Dollar
Our population in 2018-19 was 214.5 million, with a labour force size of 68.8m of which 4.8m were unemployed and 64m employed. Of all those employed, 27m were paid employees (wage earners) and 37m were non-employees (employers, self-employed or contributing family workers.) About 13.5pc (3.6m) of paid employees earned Rs5,000-Rs10,000; 26pc (7m) earned between Rs10,000 to 15,000; and the remaining 54.8pc (14.8m) earned over Rs15,000 per month. Remember that our minimum wage was set at Rs15,000 per month in 2018. This means that about 45.2pc (12.2m) of all wage earners earned less than the minimum wage.
Not only are the wages low, there also seems to be gender discrimination, with men earning Rs22,172 per month, slightly higher than the national average, and women earning Rs15,461, significantly lower than the national average. The plight of labour has been succinctly captured by Allama Iqbal in his various verses — one translation goes: “Your sharp paymasters have swept the board, they cheat and know no shame/ You, forever unsuspecting, have forever lost the game.”
One wonders why LFS lumped together its highest wage category of Rs15,000 and above in just one group representing more than half of all wage earners. It would have been much more informative if this was further subdivided into a few more wage groups. Wage distribution in terms of quintiles or deciles would have been even better. LFS, however, still provides a lot of useful data for informed readers or researchers. Wage distribution in terms of 21 industry subdivisions and nine occupational groups are present with provincial, urban-rural and gender bifurcation.
Not only are wages low, there also seems to be gender discrimination.
The highest national average monthly wage (Rs49,072) is for the finance and insurance sector, followed by Rs46,807 for the activities of extraterritorial organisations (resident offices of foreign missions and multilateral institutions) followed by electricity, gas and air-conditioning (Rs38,564). The fourth highest wage (Rs38,364) is for information and communication activities, followed by public administration and defence (Rs36,972). Household service activities (maids, cooks, gardeners etc) earn the lowest wage (Rs10,967) followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing (Rs11,228). The first sentence in this paragraph indicates that our financial sector is seemingly more generous in giving wages than multilaterals from whom our government borrows continuously.
Most of the paid employees (23.2pc) are involved in manufacturing activities with an average wage of Rs19,689. Construction activities employ 18.6pc with a wage of Rs17,463. Agriculture, forestry and fishing come third in employing 9.5pc of all wage earners. Educational activities employ 9.3pc (the fourth highest) with a wage of Rs30,238 (the eighth highest). Wholesale and retail trade and repair of vehicles employ 9pc with a wage of Rs15,234. Public administration and defence employ 6.5pc, and transport and storage 6.4pc with a wage of Rs20,366. Health and social work employ 3.1pc with a wage of Rs35,940. Interested readers should consult the survey for wages in all 21 industrial activities in all provinces.
Coming back to wage discrimination between the sexes in terms of occupational groups, the data is grim. Men’s average wages are higher in all nine occupational groups, from about 24pc to 420pc, compared to women’s wages. The highest difference is in the occupational group of ‘skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers’, with women receiving only Rs3,360 per month compared to Rs17,456 for men. The lowest difference is 23.8pc in the occupational category of ‘managers’, with women getting Rs52,953 compared to Rs65,592 for men. Even in the category of ‘elementary occupations’ ie unskilled jobs, the wage difference is 86.1pc, with Rs15,257 for men’s wages compared to Rs8,199 for women. While these summary results require more careful probing, Iqbal’s cry seems to depict the plight of women’s labour much more than men’s as in this translation of one of his verses: “Omnipotent, righteous, Thou; but bitter the hours/ Bitter the labourers chained hours in Thy world!”
The fact that the lowest wage is earned in household service activities makes wage discrimination in this sector much worse because a larger proportion of women (11.4pc) are involved in this service compared to men (1.2pc). A similar situation exists in education and health activities. One may be surprised to note that in six out of 21 industry divisions, the average wages of women are significantly higher than those of men. For example, in transport and storage activities, women’s wage is Rs49,847 compared to men’s at Rs20,253. This, however, does not necessarily indicate reverse discrimination as the proportion of women employees in this sector is only 0.2pc compared to 7.3pc for men. A larger number of men with very high wages for a few males compared to a much larger number of men with low wages may have driven the male average below that of the female average. This and several other points are for researchers to explore. Graduate students of economics can easily pursue their PhD on this or related topics.
Labour economics is a very important but largely neglected area of research in our country. As is well known, David Card, a labour economist, won the economics Nobel Prize in 2021. Among his other works is a pioneering research in empirically establishing that increasing the minimum wage does not reduce labour growth — exactly the opposite of theoretical orthodoxy. His work needs to be replicated in our country setting. Perhaps some young economists will take up this challenge in future and set our labour and wage policies in the right direction.
The writer is a former deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
rriazuddin@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2021
PAKISTAN
CHILD MARRIAGE AND CIVL SOCIETY
Published December 17, 2021
Zubeida Mustafa
OUR society seems to have been obsessed for long with the idea of matrimony. Mercifully, the growing trend towards female education has to an extent weakened this obsession — but not in communities still deprived of the benefits of education and enlightenment.
In these underprivileged classes, which constitute the majority, it is a common practice for mothers to start planning their child’s marriage soon after birth. They informally decide who will be whose life partner. Termed ‘baat pukki karna’, the arrangement is irrevocable. The girl’s mother even starts collecting her daughter’s jahez. Obscurantist parents even consider it a sin if the child is not married before puberty.
These ridiculous beliefs that shape society’s thinking also harm the country as they lead to a higher population growth rate, an increased infant mortality rate and poor reproductive health of women. The WHO has issued numerous edicts that identify the ill effects of early marriages and childbirth on the health of the mother and her child.
Read: Child marriage complexities
No doubt the government in Sindh took heed of these warnings and in 2013 the Sindh provincial assembly adopted the Child Marriage Restraint Act that banned the marriage of girls and boys under 18. But as is the wont in Pakistan, this piece of legislation was ignored and no effort was made to implement it. The other provinces have not even adopted a law restraining child marriage.
It has been left to civil society to prevent underage marriage.
In these circumstances, it was left to civil society to take up the challenge and rescue little children from the grip of social criminals, mainly conservative parents who destroy their own offspring’s lives. It is creditable that the Legal Aid Society (LAS) decided to take the initiative and launched an evidence-based project called the Child Early Forced Marriage Project (CEFMP) in September 2021. It has previously taken up other programmes for the benefit of women and one hopes it will succeed by virtue of its focused strategy and past experience.
Read: View from the courtroom — Child marriages go unchecked as govt delays new legislation
With the UNFPA as a partner, CEFMP aims to create a legal framework for the issue, build capacity among those who are involved in the implementation of the Act, raise awareness in the community and propose evidence-based reforms that are accepted by cross-party consensus.
This entails sensitising the ‘actors’ such as judges/ magistrates, parliamentarians, nikah registrars, police, etc and disseminating information about the harms of childhood marriage and amending the existing laws and procedures accordingly. Some of these should be easy to do, given the resources available. LAS has already undertaken projects such as airing radio programmes conveying the required messages and training various cadres of government functionaries.
The real challenge is to change the mindset of the community and also the individuals representing the government who are crucial in the implementation of the reforms.
LAS itself admits that a large number of the 57 nikahkhwans identified in the three districts selected for the project were unwilling to even attend the training workshops for lack of resources and did not even consider child marriage a social crime as according to them there was nothing wrong with it. As for the conversation circles LAS has been holding with communities, their success would depend on the extent of engagement of the participants, the credibility of the leaders of the circles and their approach and frequency of meetings. Similar efforts to mobilise the people for family planning and women’s rights have generally failed.
LAS recognises that motherhood is a natural process that is much respected and that elevates the status of women in the family. But it insists that marriage and motherhood need to be regulated by law to oblige parents not to marry their children before they cross 18 years, the age of legal majority.
However, LAS faces heavy odds because there are powerful vested interests opposed to any social change. They include religious leaders, nikahkhwans and the police who resist change.
In Pakistan, the problem is of a serious magnitude on account of the additional problem of lack of documentation of data and events in a person’s life. Thus it is said that nearly two-thirds of births and marriages are not registered with any authority and Nadra has no record of them. The biggest impediment is bureaucratic tardiness and resistance from religious elements.
Take the case of the draft of a revised nikahnama lying before the Council of Islamic Ideology since 2019 awaiting clearance. Without a new nikahnama the marriage law cannot be made really effective.
Hence LAS would do well to broaden its goals to include in its strategy a focus on other social issues such as education and family planning as well. This will empower women. It is well known that educated women who do not have many children and hold a job that gives them self-esteem have confidence and bring up their children with the same outlook.
www.zubeidamustafa.com
Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2021
Zubeida Mustafa
OUR society seems to have been obsessed for long with the idea of matrimony. Mercifully, the growing trend towards female education has to an extent weakened this obsession — but not in communities still deprived of the benefits of education and enlightenment.
In these underprivileged classes, which constitute the majority, it is a common practice for mothers to start planning their child’s marriage soon after birth. They informally decide who will be whose life partner. Termed ‘baat pukki karna’, the arrangement is irrevocable. The girl’s mother even starts collecting her daughter’s jahez. Obscurantist parents even consider it a sin if the child is not married before puberty.
These ridiculous beliefs that shape society’s thinking also harm the country as they lead to a higher population growth rate, an increased infant mortality rate and poor reproductive health of women. The WHO has issued numerous edicts that identify the ill effects of early marriages and childbirth on the health of the mother and her child.
Read: Child marriage complexities
No doubt the government in Sindh took heed of these warnings and in 2013 the Sindh provincial assembly adopted the Child Marriage Restraint Act that banned the marriage of girls and boys under 18. But as is the wont in Pakistan, this piece of legislation was ignored and no effort was made to implement it. The other provinces have not even adopted a law restraining child marriage.
It has been left to civil society to prevent underage marriage.
In these circumstances, it was left to civil society to take up the challenge and rescue little children from the grip of social criminals, mainly conservative parents who destroy their own offspring’s lives. It is creditable that the Legal Aid Society (LAS) decided to take the initiative and launched an evidence-based project called the Child Early Forced Marriage Project (CEFMP) in September 2021. It has previously taken up other programmes for the benefit of women and one hopes it will succeed by virtue of its focused strategy and past experience.
Read: View from the courtroom — Child marriages go unchecked as govt delays new legislation
With the UNFPA as a partner, CEFMP aims to create a legal framework for the issue, build capacity among those who are involved in the implementation of the Act, raise awareness in the community and propose evidence-based reforms that are accepted by cross-party consensus.
This entails sensitising the ‘actors’ such as judges/ magistrates, parliamentarians, nikah registrars, police, etc and disseminating information about the harms of childhood marriage and amending the existing laws and procedures accordingly. Some of these should be easy to do, given the resources available. LAS has already undertaken projects such as airing radio programmes conveying the required messages and training various cadres of government functionaries.
The real challenge is to change the mindset of the community and also the individuals representing the government who are crucial in the implementation of the reforms.
LAS itself admits that a large number of the 57 nikahkhwans identified in the three districts selected for the project were unwilling to even attend the training workshops for lack of resources and did not even consider child marriage a social crime as according to them there was nothing wrong with it. As for the conversation circles LAS has been holding with communities, their success would depend on the extent of engagement of the participants, the credibility of the leaders of the circles and their approach and frequency of meetings. Similar efforts to mobilise the people for family planning and women’s rights have generally failed.
LAS recognises that motherhood is a natural process that is much respected and that elevates the status of women in the family. But it insists that marriage and motherhood need to be regulated by law to oblige parents not to marry their children before they cross 18 years, the age of legal majority.
However, LAS faces heavy odds because there are powerful vested interests opposed to any social change. They include religious leaders, nikahkhwans and the police who resist change.
In Pakistan, the problem is of a serious magnitude on account of the additional problem of lack of documentation of data and events in a person’s life. Thus it is said that nearly two-thirds of births and marriages are not registered with any authority and Nadra has no record of them. The biggest impediment is bureaucratic tardiness and resistance from religious elements.
Take the case of the draft of a revised nikahnama lying before the Council of Islamic Ideology since 2019 awaiting clearance. Without a new nikahnama the marriage law cannot be made really effective.
Hence LAS would do well to broaden its goals to include in its strategy a focus on other social issues such as education and family planning as well. This will empower women. It is well known that educated women who do not have many children and hold a job that gives them self-esteem have confidence and bring up their children with the same outlook.
www.zubeidamustafa.com
Published in Dawn, December 17th, 2021
PAKISTAN
Whither justice?Published December 3, 2021
JUSTICE FOR JANITORS
Zubeida Mustafa
‘JUSTICE and accountability’. These were, among others, the demands of the 150 or so demonstrators who gathered near the seaside in Karachi last Sunday. There is a paucity of both these principles in Pakistan but the worst hit are the poorest of the poor — the janitors. There are hundreds and thousands of them who live below the poverty line all over the country and do not even earn the remunerations fixed by law as the minimum wage. But what good wages alone cannot ensure is respect and dignity which only a culture of civility can bring.
Hence the walk-a-cause last Sunday organised by the citizens’ group calling itself Justice for Janitors must be commended. The fact is that sanitary workers have been thrown at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in Pakistan by society and the state. Not only are their wages low, their working conditions are also appalling. It seems that even their lives are not worth protecting from the hazards they are exposed to. They are treated as cheap commodities that are easily replaceable. But are they? Didn’t Vijjay who died of gas poisoning while cleaning the sewer in Shahdadkot recently have a family with whom he had human bonds?
Read more: Sanitation workers left underpaid, unprotected in pandemic: report
Only a callous and exploitative approach on the part of the employers (all of whom are various government agencies) can explain, but not justify, the horrendous working conditions of the janitors. Hence the demands of the group that demonstrated earlier this week for the immediate attention of the officials concerned.
In a nutshell, the government is being asked to regularise the sanitary workers’ jobs and pay them the minimum wages announced by their province. They should also be provided social security and the EOBI pension as laid down by the law.
It seems that the lives of sanitary workers are not worth protecting.
There is another demand, namely that of making working conditions safe for sanitary workers. This means providing janitors who are required to enter the gutters to clean the clogged ones safety kits (full body suits), safety harness, rescue ropes and breathing devices. As much of the work as possible should be mechanised.
It may not be easy to change public attitudes, especially of those who believe that by virtue of their birth and faith they are the ‘chosen ones’. At least the government can help by encouraging inclusivity. Instead, it is instrumental in inculcating a derogatory and discriminatory mindset vis-à-vis non-Muslims. If this were not so why would official advertisements inviting applications for janitorial posts carry the phrase ‘non-Muslims only’ as a condition for qualification for the candidate?
The driving force behind this and similar groups advocating justice for the downtrodden is Naeem Sadiq who does not fear taking up such causes that many others shun. His strategy is unique and since the group supporting him comprises like-minded members who are conscientious and hard-working, they often succeed.
Having first tried their hand at the right to information, the group learnt that knowledge and information are the strongest weapons to fight the government’s wrongdoings. The group which has gathered round Sadiq gives him strength. Before espousing a cause, the group does a lot of thinking, brainstorming and research to determine the causes of past failures and gather information on the processes and departments involved. Then comes the decision on the demands to be raised and the strategy it would adopt to act as an effective pressure group. Advocacy is multilayered, and Sunday’s protest was designed to enhance the visibility of the issue.
On account of its strategy, Justice for Janitors has made an impact in some ways. The Civil Aviation Authority has already raised its janitors’ wages to Rs25,000 per month. The 40 cantonments in Pakistan have made a promise to increase the wages of their sanitary workers. Last month, Islamabad’s CDA also enhanced its janitors’ wages to Rs20,000. But the various municipalities and solid waste management companies with whom the government has entered into agreements and their third-party contractors have remained where they are. The Sindh chief minister, however, keeps reiterating that the janitors’ wages will be raised. But action is still awaited.
Read more: Society: Sindh's forgotten sanitation workers
There are other issues where the citizens’ group has met with failure. The group could not get the government to regulate the licensing of arms and completely ban the public display of weapons. It could not have a ban imposed on the hunting of houbara bustards by Arab sheikhs. It could not get the government to take action against thousands of illegal and fake official number plates in use in Karachi.
But the group has not given up and seeks to keep these issues alive. One never knows how the dynamics of power work. These committed citizens are hopeful that sooner or later there will be a breakthrough on each of these issues, opening new doors for change and progress in Pakistan.
www.zubeidamustafa.com
Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2021
‘JUSTICE and accountability’. These were, among others, the demands of the 150 or so demonstrators who gathered near the seaside in Karachi last Sunday. There is a paucity of both these principles in Pakistan but the worst hit are the poorest of the poor — the janitors. There are hundreds and thousands of them who live below the poverty line all over the country and do not even earn the remunerations fixed by law as the minimum wage. But what good wages alone cannot ensure is respect and dignity which only a culture of civility can bring.
Hence the walk-a-cause last Sunday organised by the citizens’ group calling itself Justice for Janitors must be commended. The fact is that sanitary workers have been thrown at the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in Pakistan by society and the state. Not only are their wages low, their working conditions are also appalling. It seems that even their lives are not worth protecting from the hazards they are exposed to. They are treated as cheap commodities that are easily replaceable. But are they? Didn’t Vijjay who died of gas poisoning while cleaning the sewer in Shahdadkot recently have a family with whom he had human bonds?
Read more: Sanitation workers left underpaid, unprotected in pandemic: report
Only a callous and exploitative approach on the part of the employers (all of whom are various government agencies) can explain, but not justify, the horrendous working conditions of the janitors. Hence the demands of the group that demonstrated earlier this week for the immediate attention of the officials concerned.
In a nutshell, the government is being asked to regularise the sanitary workers’ jobs and pay them the minimum wages announced by their province. They should also be provided social security and the EOBI pension as laid down by the law.
It seems that the lives of sanitary workers are not worth protecting.
There is another demand, namely that of making working conditions safe for sanitary workers. This means providing janitors who are required to enter the gutters to clean the clogged ones safety kits (full body suits), safety harness, rescue ropes and breathing devices. As much of the work as possible should be mechanised.
It may not be easy to change public attitudes, especially of those who believe that by virtue of their birth and faith they are the ‘chosen ones’. At least the government can help by encouraging inclusivity. Instead, it is instrumental in inculcating a derogatory and discriminatory mindset vis-à-vis non-Muslims. If this were not so why would official advertisements inviting applications for janitorial posts carry the phrase ‘non-Muslims only’ as a condition for qualification for the candidate?
The driving force behind this and similar groups advocating justice for the downtrodden is Naeem Sadiq who does not fear taking up such causes that many others shun. His strategy is unique and since the group supporting him comprises like-minded members who are conscientious and hard-working, they often succeed.
Having first tried their hand at the right to information, the group learnt that knowledge and information are the strongest weapons to fight the government’s wrongdoings. The group which has gathered round Sadiq gives him strength. Before espousing a cause, the group does a lot of thinking, brainstorming and research to determine the causes of past failures and gather information on the processes and departments involved. Then comes the decision on the demands to be raised and the strategy it would adopt to act as an effective pressure group. Advocacy is multilayered, and Sunday’s protest was designed to enhance the visibility of the issue.
On account of its strategy, Justice for Janitors has made an impact in some ways. The Civil Aviation Authority has already raised its janitors’ wages to Rs25,000 per month. The 40 cantonments in Pakistan have made a promise to increase the wages of their sanitary workers. Last month, Islamabad’s CDA also enhanced its janitors’ wages to Rs20,000. But the various municipalities and solid waste management companies with whom the government has entered into agreements and their third-party contractors have remained where they are. The Sindh chief minister, however, keeps reiterating that the janitors’ wages will be raised. But action is still awaited.
Read more: Society: Sindh's forgotten sanitation workers
There are other issues where the citizens’ group has met with failure. The group could not get the government to regulate the licensing of arms and completely ban the public display of weapons. It could not have a ban imposed on the hunting of houbara bustards by Arab sheikhs. It could not get the government to take action against thousands of illegal and fake official number plates in use in Karachi.
But the group has not given up and seeks to keep these issues alive. One never knows how the dynamics of power work. These committed citizens are hopeful that sooner or later there will be a breakthrough on each of these issues, opening new doors for change and progress in Pakistan.
www.zubeidamustafa.com
Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2021
Dealing with the Afghan crisis
Zahid Hussain
For the OIC to deal with the crisis, Pakistan has proposed a six-point framework. It includes the creation of a financial vehicle for channelling aid, increasing investment in the people of Afghanistan, facilitating Afghanistan’s access to legitimate banking services and easing the liquidity challenge there, improving food security, building the capacity of Afghan institutions to counter terrorism and combat illicit trade in narcotics, and engaging with the Taliban with regard to global expectations of an inclusive Afghan set-up.
Indisputably, the proposal contains all the measurers that are needed to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and ensure liquidity, enabling the relief agencies to respond and save lives. But for that it is essential that frozen Afghan assets of more than $9 billion be released by the US to an appropriate UN agency. More importantly, multilateral financial institutions must be allowed to resume aid to the country to avert an economic meltdown.
But the main question is whether the Joe Biden administration is willing to soften its position on the sanctions issue. Or will it choose to punish the Taliban administration? There seems a clear division between the White House and the State Department over dealing with the Afghan crisis. Although Washington maintains that humanitarian support is separate from politics and has pledged more than $400 million in humanitarian assistance to the Afghans, the financial sanctions have made the delivery of aid extremely problematic.
There is no indication yet that the American restrictions will be lifted — at least not in the immediate future. A major point of contention is that the lifting of sanctions could benefit the Taliban regime, which is unacceptable to the US administration. Then there is also the US law blocking any move to remove or even ease sanctions.
US officials, however, contend that assistance to the Afghan people can still be delivered via some mechanism without violating the sanctions regime. But such an instrument is quite cumbersome. Using this mechanism, the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund has approved the transfer of $280m by the end of December to Unicef and the World Food Programme. However, it remains to be seen whether this system can be used for the large-scale delivery of assistance. It leaves the question of liquidity problems unanswered. The economic free fall could be equally catastrophic.
A major issue obstructing any move by the international community to legitimise the conservative regime is the Taliban’s own inflexibility in moderating their position on human and women’s rights. The regime’s ambiguous position on some terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil has been a cause of serious concern even among countries that favour a more positive approach towards the Taliban regime.
There is an emerging consensus in the international community on maintaining an active engagement with the Afghan regime. The OIC foreign ministers’ conference also emphasised the need for working closely with the de facto rulers of Kabul. But the Taliban’s resistance to women’s right to work and access education has been a major roadblock to the regime getting international legitimacy.
Editorial: OIC summit on Afghanistan is a good beginning to push for greater international engagement
The world will not accept their excuses on such grave violations of basic human rights. There is also growing international concern over the revenge killings of members of the former government, despite the announcement of amnesty. There have also been questions over the regime continuing to protect terrorist groups like the TTP operating from Afghan soil.
There is an expectation that the OIC could play a role in getting the Taliban regime to soften its hard-line position on social and human rights issues. The forum also provides Taliban officials an opportunity to explain their position. Surely such interactions are very important to convey the nature of international expectations to the Taliban.
Pakistan’s role in organising the extraordinary session of the OIC and highlighting the unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan has been extremely important. But the prime minister’s remarks on Pakhtun resistance to female education was shocking. He sounded like an apologist for the retrogressive worldview espoused by the Taliban. Such regressive viewpoints are also considered an insult to Pakhtuns living in Pakistan. The prime minister’s remarks at an international conference can only encourage the Afghan Taliban to stick to their hard-line positions. The Afghan Taliban regime will be equally responsible for Afghanistan’s tragedy.
The writer is the author of No-Win War — The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
Twitter: @hidhussain
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2021
Zahid Hussain
Published December 22, 2021
AFGHANISTAN needs more than just emergency humanitarian assistance. The war-ravaged state is on the brink of collapse that could push its entire population into poverty and starvation. The international community may have woken up to the unfolding tragedy yet it has failed so far to act decisively. Financial sanctions have not only made it extremely difficult for aid to reach the people, they could also hasten the looming destruction of the entire system in Afghanistan with catastrophic consequences for the region and beyond.
While Sunday’s extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) highlighted the dire prospects of not acting in a timely fashion, the issue of the American financial sanctions has remained unresolved. The foreign ministers’ meeting had been convened to discuss and prepare a strategy for dealing with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. The conference saw over 50 members of the Muslim bloc agreeing to play a leading role in the delivery of humanitarian and development aid to the people of Afghanistan.
It also decided to set up a trust fund which is to be managed by the Islamic Development Bank and be made operational by March next year. It would function in collaboration with other international actors. But the pledge of funds alone cannot prevent the economic collapse of Taliban-administered Afghanistan. In the absence of a clear mechanism, the transfer of funds would remain a stumbling block for the delivery of aid.
The trickling in of international assistance is not enough to prevent the “free fall” — as described by the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs — of the economy. A major challenge for the international agencies is how to support basic services such as health, education, electricity and livelihoods. With no access to foreign funding, there is also a problem of paying salaries to state-sector employees.
While Sunday’s extraordinary meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) highlighted the dire prospects of not acting in a timely fashion, the issue of the American financial sanctions has remained unresolved. The foreign ministers’ meeting had been convened to discuss and prepare a strategy for dealing with the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. The conference saw over 50 members of the Muslim bloc agreeing to play a leading role in the delivery of humanitarian and development aid to the people of Afghanistan.
It also decided to set up a trust fund which is to be managed by the Islamic Development Bank and be made operational by March next year. It would function in collaboration with other international actors. But the pledge of funds alone cannot prevent the economic collapse of Taliban-administered Afghanistan. In the absence of a clear mechanism, the transfer of funds would remain a stumbling block for the delivery of aid.
The trickling in of international assistance is not enough to prevent the “free fall” — as described by the UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs — of the economy. A major challenge for the international agencies is how to support basic services such as health, education, electricity and livelihoods. With no access to foreign funding, there is also a problem of paying salaries to state-sector employees.
The Taliban’s own inflexibility is obstructing progress on international legitimacy for the regime.
For the OIC to deal with the crisis, Pakistan has proposed a six-point framework. It includes the creation of a financial vehicle for channelling aid, increasing investment in the people of Afghanistan, facilitating Afghanistan’s access to legitimate banking services and easing the liquidity challenge there, improving food security, building the capacity of Afghan institutions to counter terrorism and combat illicit trade in narcotics, and engaging with the Taliban with regard to global expectations of an inclusive Afghan set-up.
Indisputably, the proposal contains all the measurers that are needed to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan and ensure liquidity, enabling the relief agencies to respond and save lives. But for that it is essential that frozen Afghan assets of more than $9 billion be released by the US to an appropriate UN agency. More importantly, multilateral financial institutions must be allowed to resume aid to the country to avert an economic meltdown.
But the main question is whether the Joe Biden administration is willing to soften its position on the sanctions issue. Or will it choose to punish the Taliban administration? There seems a clear division between the White House and the State Department over dealing with the Afghan crisis. Although Washington maintains that humanitarian support is separate from politics and has pledged more than $400 million in humanitarian assistance to the Afghans, the financial sanctions have made the delivery of aid extremely problematic.
There is no indication yet that the American restrictions will be lifted — at least not in the immediate future. A major point of contention is that the lifting of sanctions could benefit the Taliban regime, which is unacceptable to the US administration. Then there is also the US law blocking any move to remove or even ease sanctions.
US officials, however, contend that assistance to the Afghan people can still be delivered via some mechanism without violating the sanctions regime. But such an instrument is quite cumbersome. Using this mechanism, the World Bank’s Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund has approved the transfer of $280m by the end of December to Unicef and the World Food Programme. However, it remains to be seen whether this system can be used for the large-scale delivery of assistance. It leaves the question of liquidity problems unanswered. The economic free fall could be equally catastrophic.
A major issue obstructing any move by the international community to legitimise the conservative regime is the Taliban’s own inflexibility in moderating their position on human and women’s rights. The regime’s ambiguous position on some terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil has been a cause of serious concern even among countries that favour a more positive approach towards the Taliban regime.
There is an emerging consensus in the international community on maintaining an active engagement with the Afghan regime. The OIC foreign ministers’ conference also emphasised the need for working closely with the de facto rulers of Kabul. But the Taliban’s resistance to women’s right to work and access education has been a major roadblock to the regime getting international legitimacy.
Editorial: OIC summit on Afghanistan is a good beginning to push for greater international engagement
The world will not accept their excuses on such grave violations of basic human rights. There is also growing international concern over the revenge killings of members of the former government, despite the announcement of amnesty. There have also been questions over the regime continuing to protect terrorist groups like the TTP operating from Afghan soil.
There is an expectation that the OIC could play a role in getting the Taliban regime to soften its hard-line position on social and human rights issues. The forum also provides Taliban officials an opportunity to explain their position. Surely such interactions are very important to convey the nature of international expectations to the Taliban.
Pakistan’s role in organising the extraordinary session of the OIC and highlighting the unfolding tragedy in Afghanistan has been extremely important. But the prime minister’s remarks on Pakhtun resistance to female education was shocking. He sounded like an apologist for the retrogressive worldview espoused by the Taliban. Such regressive viewpoints are also considered an insult to Pakhtuns living in Pakistan. The prime minister’s remarks at an international conference can only encourage the Afghan Taliban to stick to their hard-line positions. The Afghan Taliban regime will be equally responsible for Afghanistan’s tragedy.
The writer is the author of No-Win War — The Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
Twitter: @hidhussain
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2021
PAKISTAN
Cheap and clean energy
Ali Tauqeer Sheikh
Cheap and clean energy
Ali Tauqeer Sheikh
Published December 23, 2021
The writer is an expert on climate change and development.
GLOBAL climate targets will not change if Pakistan commits to net zero emissions. But Pakistan’s economic growth may get a boost that present misplaced policies cannot deliver. Unless Pakistan redirects its energy investments, the energy crisis, circular debt and urban pollution will keep worsening. Renewable energy (RE) can bring down the cost of development remarkably, reduce pressure on foreign exchange, strengthen outreach to underserved communities, and reduce emissions for cleaner air in the cities.
Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends. Pakistan abandoned its earlier targets of 1,235 megawatts of wind and 430MW of solar, determined in the 2006 policy for development of RE for power generation. The Alternative & Renewable Energy (ARE) policy adopted by this government in 2019 reset the target for energy from renewable sources by 2030 to 30 per cent excluding hydropower. This target was reduced further to 12pc by the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan approved in 2021. IGCEP committed to the ‘least-cost option’; yet it has revisited the definition and included seasonally flowing hydropower in the RE category, that ARE had not. This change of heart has effectively elbowed solar and wind energy out of the equation and paved the way for foreign investments in hydropower instead of solar that can be commissioned at one-fourth the cost and time, mostly with domestic financing. It has also accentuated differences between the provinces who have more nuanced perspectives.
All this was happening at a time when solar power had become the cheapest electricity in history — cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. The cost of electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels has decreased by 90pc since 2009, according to the annual World Energy Outlook 2020, by the International Energy Agency. Instead of following the economic logic, Pakistan looked the other way. Our neighbours, India and China, followed the economic imperatives.
During this period, India attained the fourth global position in wind power and fifth in solar installed capacity. Their renewable power generation capacity has recorded an annual growth rate of over 17pc. The Indian government had an initial target of 20 gigawatt capacity for 2022 and that was achieved four years ahead of schedule. This quick success was enabled by importing PV panels from China while the 1,000MW Quaid-i-Azam solar park floundered and languished. In China, likewise, the RE capacity reached an estimated 40pc of the total installed capacity, and about 26pc of total power generation. India and China are now both leading Asia on green energy and have achieved an accelerated economic growth rate by reducing the cost of development.
Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends.
The market for RE is created by the high costs and pollution levels of coal as a source of energy. Its global pipeline has collapsed by 76pc since the Paris Agreement. Forty-five countries have already committed to no new coal power plants. Pakistan announced it would shelve two coal plants producing only 2,600MW whereas, at the same time, Bangladesh declared the cancellation of 10 such planned plants of 8,711MW. Pakistan’s announcements lacked both courage and homework.
No wonder the country has backtracked from the commitment made by Prime Minister Imran Khan at the Climate Action Summit in December 2020, where he had declared: “We will not have any more power based on coal.” It has since been changed to no more ‘imported’ coal. He had also committed to liquification and gasification of indigenous coal. No plans for nine operating and another five almost completed projects have so far been announced. As it is a new romance that just started a few years ago, Pakistan has not yet consigned coal to history.
It is against this background that coal imports have been growing at an annual rate of 19.26pc. While the coal power plants were justified on the basis of low-grade Thar coal, in reality, the energy wheel is run by importing high-grade South African coal. In addition to the use for energy, coal is also imported for our fast-expanding cement industry, now propelled to fuel the housing construction to turn around the economic growth rate.
Once the cheapest source of energy, hydropower has now been superseded by solar and wind despite their intrinsic limitations of time of the day and wind velocity, particularly because of the breakthroughs in long-term energy storage batteries. Except for the Tarbela and Mangla dams, all other public-sector hydropower projects have witnessed delays and cost overruns. The average per unit cost at the 969MW Neelum Jhelum Hydroelectric Project, for example, has escalated to 16-18¢ kilowatt per hour, compared to 4-5¢/kWh from solar power plants. In the absence of any financial closing before starting construction, the envisioned large dams (Diamer-Bhasha, Mohmand) and ‘run-of-the-river’ ones (Dasu, Kohala, Suki Kinari, Karot, Azad Pattan) will face similar cost overruns. Their pricing structure will be multiple times more expensive. Clearly, water storage needs must be separated from energy needs. Solar plants can be installed within months and the State Bank can help further reduce their prices by cutting financing costs through simply extending the longer tenure of loans to say 20 years, instead of the present seven to 10 years.
While we have excess electricity production, the government does not always acknowledge that 61 million people still have no access to electricity or suffer from poor quality of access. Almost 46pc of our rural population is living without electricity. It is estimated that $20 billion is required to upgrade the transmission network by 2040. Off-grid solutions can help reach the underserved areas rather than waiting decades for the upgradation of transmission lines.
Electricity can be provisioned through solar mini or micro-grids to bring light to their lives. In addition to getting urban population off-grid through solar home systems, solar energy can also be supplied to schools, health facilities, SMEs, etc. through microfinance facilities and models of rural energy entrepreneurship. The National Electric Vehicles Policy will become more meaningful if the charging infrastructure for the emerging EV market is supported by hybrid solar systems. It is imperative that Pakistan adopts pro-poor approaches to energy production and supply to reduce the cost of economic development. After all, reliable, cheap and clean energy is a right of all citizens.
The writer is an expert on climate change and development.
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021
GLOBAL climate targets will not change if Pakistan commits to net zero emissions. But Pakistan’s economic growth may get a boost that present misplaced policies cannot deliver. Unless Pakistan redirects its energy investments, the energy crisis, circular debt and urban pollution will keep worsening. Renewable energy (RE) can bring down the cost of development remarkably, reduce pressure on foreign exchange, strengthen outreach to underserved communities, and reduce emissions for cleaner air in the cities.
Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends. Pakistan abandoned its earlier targets of 1,235 megawatts of wind and 430MW of solar, determined in the 2006 policy for development of RE for power generation. The Alternative & Renewable Energy (ARE) policy adopted by this government in 2019 reset the target for energy from renewable sources by 2030 to 30 per cent excluding hydropower. This target was reduced further to 12pc by the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan approved in 2021. IGCEP committed to the ‘least-cost option’; yet it has revisited the definition and included seasonally flowing hydropower in the RE category, that ARE had not. This change of heart has effectively elbowed solar and wind energy out of the equation and paved the way for foreign investments in hydropower instead of solar that can be commissioned at one-fourth the cost and time, mostly with domestic financing. It has also accentuated differences between the provinces who have more nuanced perspectives.
All this was happening at a time when solar power had become the cheapest electricity in history — cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. The cost of electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels has decreased by 90pc since 2009, according to the annual World Energy Outlook 2020, by the International Energy Agency. Instead of following the economic logic, Pakistan looked the other way. Our neighbours, India and China, followed the economic imperatives.
During this period, India attained the fourth global position in wind power and fifth in solar installed capacity. Their renewable power generation capacity has recorded an annual growth rate of over 17pc. The Indian government had an initial target of 20 gigawatt capacity for 2022 and that was achieved four years ahead of schedule. This quick success was enabled by importing PV panels from China while the 1,000MW Quaid-i-Azam solar park floundered and languished. In China, likewise, the RE capacity reached an estimated 40pc of the total installed capacity, and about 26pc of total power generation. India and China are now both leading Asia on green energy and have achieved an accelerated economic growth rate by reducing the cost of development.
Pakistan’s energy policy has gone in the opposite direction of global trends.
The market for RE is created by the high costs and pollution levels of coal as a source of energy. Its global pipeline has collapsed by 76pc since the Paris Agreement. Forty-five countries have already committed to no new coal power plants. Pakistan announced it would shelve two coal plants producing only 2,600MW whereas, at the same time, Bangladesh declared the cancellation of 10 such planned plants of 8,711MW. Pakistan’s announcements lacked both courage and homework.
No wonder the country has backtracked from the commitment made by Prime Minister Imran Khan at the Climate Action Summit in December 2020, where he had declared: “We will not have any more power based on coal.” It has since been changed to no more ‘imported’ coal. He had also committed to liquification and gasification of indigenous coal. No plans for nine operating and another five almost completed projects have so far been announced. As it is a new romance that just started a few years ago, Pakistan has not yet consigned coal to history.
It is against this background that coal imports have been growing at an annual rate of 19.26pc. While the coal power plants were justified on the basis of low-grade Thar coal, in reality, the energy wheel is run by importing high-grade South African coal. In addition to the use for energy, coal is also imported for our fast-expanding cement industry, now propelled to fuel the housing construction to turn around the economic growth rate.
Once the cheapest source of energy, hydropower has now been superseded by solar and wind despite their intrinsic limitations of time of the day and wind velocity, particularly because of the breakthroughs in long-term energy storage batteries. Except for the Tarbela and Mangla dams, all other public-sector hydropower projects have witnessed delays and cost overruns. The average per unit cost at the 969MW Neelum Jhelum Hydroelectric Project, for example, has escalated to 16-18¢ kilowatt per hour, compared to 4-5¢/kWh from solar power plants. In the absence of any financial closing before starting construction, the envisioned large dams (Diamer-Bhasha, Mohmand) and ‘run-of-the-river’ ones (Dasu, Kohala, Suki Kinari, Karot, Azad Pattan) will face similar cost overruns. Their pricing structure will be multiple times more expensive. Clearly, water storage needs must be separated from energy needs. Solar plants can be installed within months and the State Bank can help further reduce their prices by cutting financing costs through simply extending the longer tenure of loans to say 20 years, instead of the present seven to 10 years.
While we have excess electricity production, the government does not always acknowledge that 61 million people still have no access to electricity or suffer from poor quality of access. Almost 46pc of our rural population is living without electricity. It is estimated that $20 billion is required to upgrade the transmission network by 2040. Off-grid solutions can help reach the underserved areas rather than waiting decades for the upgradation of transmission lines.
Electricity can be provisioned through solar mini or micro-grids to bring light to their lives. In addition to getting urban population off-grid through solar home systems, solar energy can also be supplied to schools, health facilities, SMEs, etc. through microfinance facilities and models of rural energy entrepreneurship. The National Electric Vehicles Policy will become more meaningful if the charging infrastructure for the emerging EV market is supported by hybrid solar systems. It is imperative that Pakistan adopts pro-poor approaches to energy production and supply to reduce the cost of economic development. After all, reliable, cheap and clean energy is a right of all citizens.
The writer is an expert on climate change and development.
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021
A new paradigm: U.S. should follow the trend to drop zero-sum thinking
Keith Lamb
Editor's note: This is the third article of the "2021 Year in Review" series on "New Crises, New Orders and New Paradigms." Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSc degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The world is transitioning from unipolarity, dominated by the U.S., to a multipolar order characterized by the relative diffusion of power to other countries, like Russia and China. These countries are adapting to this new situation faster than others, as expressed in the virtual meeting between their Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, where they both reaffirmed joint cooperation.
In contrast, the U.S., as demonstrated by its determination to insert its will into every region of the world from China's Taiwan to Ukraine, doesn't seem to recognize when to leave, or at least share, the stage gracefully.
Certain sections of Western propaganda boil the complexities of international relations down into a simplistic quasi-religious battle between "good" and "evil," where, coincidently, non-liberal states and those who vote the wrong way always play the role of "evil." Under this order you might just assume good relations between China and Russia to be pre-ordained. As ridiculous as this assumption is, nothing could be further from the truth.
For example, there were predictions that the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) would clash in Central Asia. However, with all members of BRI and EAEU possessing a shared vision of integration, potential rivalry has been turned into a source for mutual cooperation.
Furthermore, the USSR and China, despite shared Marxist-Leninist ideology, opposed each other during the Cold War and China cooperated with the U.S. However, today socialist China and capitalist Russia seek win-win solutions.
In essence, if China and Russia can cooperate now, and China and the U.S. cooperated in the past, then there is no overwhelming ideological reason why the U.S. can't also find common ground today. The key is not imposing its own will on the world but rather finding what commonalities can serve as the basis to bring all parties together.
This sentiment was recently reaffirmed by Wang Yi, China's State Councillor and Foreign Minister, in his keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 when he said "the most distinct banner is building a community with a shared future for mankind." Clearly, for China and the rest of the world, a common shared value is the advancement of peaceful development.
China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 in Beijing, China, December 20, 2021. /Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.
To achieve a real consensus and real peaceful development, no country can stand above another. There needs to be real multilateralism through the UN rather than applying some vague notion of a "rules-based order" where the rules of the mighty rule over the weak and legitimate state actors are only those determined as "democracies" by the whims of the powerful.
Real international democracy considers the developmental needs of the Global South and does not pressure them to cut themselves off from one of the clearest examples of development and poverty alleviation – China. Yet, judging by the "debt-trap diplomacy" propaganda arising from the West and the U.S.'s attitude of "you're either with us or against us", this is precisely what the Global South is expected to do.
Take a recent BBC interview with the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, who was criticized for having a good relationship with China, which is investing in Barbados. She was asked if she was "swapping one colonial power for another." Mottley responded adroitly, saying "we are capable of being friends of all and satellites of none" … the fact that you are asking this question shows that… "we are seen as pawns rather than equals with the capacity to determine our own destiny."
The Global South doesn't need lecturing from Britain or the U.S., and it doesn't need to be gaslighted about what colonialism is, when they have suffered it first-hand. Simply put, Western propaganda doesn't tally with the historical record or current material reality, and the current U.S. cold-war mentality, along with its associated propaganda, is merely a desperate attempt to maintain a fictitious world that will justify any violent action needed to maintain unipolarity. This in fact goes against the democratic will of the world, which is to achieve peaceful development.
This unipolar zero-sum mindset will only have a detrimental effect on the U.S. and its allies because in believing their own flawed narrative they will make serious strategic errors. Secondly, as other global actors see the Western-led U.S. order as either disingenuous or, by losing touch with reality, psychotic, they will increasingly move away from the irrationality emanating from the U.S.
Just like China and Russia, whose trade in the first three quarters of 2021 has risen to over $100 billion, the rest of the Global South is under no illusion that multi-polarity is the only way forward as unipolarity will only bring more of the same – poverty.
This is because the U.S., only possessing 4 percent of the global population, must repress total global development to maintain primacy. I suggest this zero-sum thinking represents the real "evil" in international relations.
The U.S. needs to do some soul searching and transform its zero-sum winner takes all mindset into a win-win mindset. The growth of China proves that as the rest of the world develops there will be bountiful markets and more opportunities for the U.S.
Thus, the faster the U.S. can drop its zero-sum thinking, the faster it will be able to reposition itself advantageously towards a flourishing global future for all.
Keith Lamb
Editor's note: This is the third article of the "2021 Year in Review" series on "New Crises, New Orders and New Paradigms." Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSc degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. His primary research interests are China's international relations and "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
The world is transitioning from unipolarity, dominated by the U.S., to a multipolar order characterized by the relative diffusion of power to other countries, like Russia and China. These countries are adapting to this new situation faster than others, as expressed in the virtual meeting between their Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, where they both reaffirmed joint cooperation.
In contrast, the U.S., as demonstrated by its determination to insert its will into every region of the world from China's Taiwan to Ukraine, doesn't seem to recognize when to leave, or at least share, the stage gracefully.
Certain sections of Western propaganda boil the complexities of international relations down into a simplistic quasi-religious battle between "good" and "evil," where, coincidently, non-liberal states and those who vote the wrong way always play the role of "evil." Under this order you might just assume good relations between China and Russia to be pre-ordained. As ridiculous as this assumption is, nothing could be further from the truth.
For example, there were predictions that the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) would clash in Central Asia. However, with all members of BRI and EAEU possessing a shared vision of integration, potential rivalry has been turned into a source for mutual cooperation.
Furthermore, the USSR and China, despite shared Marxist-Leninist ideology, opposed each other during the Cold War and China cooperated with the U.S. However, today socialist China and capitalist Russia seek win-win solutions.
In essence, if China and Russia can cooperate now, and China and the U.S. cooperated in the past, then there is no overwhelming ideological reason why the U.S. can't also find common ground today. The key is not imposing its own will on the world but rather finding what commonalities can serve as the basis to bring all parties together.
This sentiment was recently reaffirmed by Wang Yi, China's State Councillor and Foreign Minister, in his keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 when he said "the most distinct banner is building a community with a shared future for mankind." Clearly, for China and the rest of the world, a common shared value is the advancement of peaceful development.
China's State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses the opening ceremony of the Symposium on the International Situation and China's Foreign Relations in 2021 in Beijing, China, December 20, 2021. /Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.
To achieve a real consensus and real peaceful development, no country can stand above another. There needs to be real multilateralism through the UN rather than applying some vague notion of a "rules-based order" where the rules of the mighty rule over the weak and legitimate state actors are only those determined as "democracies" by the whims of the powerful.
Real international democracy considers the developmental needs of the Global South and does not pressure them to cut themselves off from one of the clearest examples of development and poverty alleviation – China. Yet, judging by the "debt-trap diplomacy" propaganda arising from the West and the U.S.'s attitude of "you're either with us or against us", this is precisely what the Global South is expected to do.
Take a recent BBC interview with the Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley, who was criticized for having a good relationship with China, which is investing in Barbados. She was asked if she was "swapping one colonial power for another." Mottley responded adroitly, saying "we are capable of being friends of all and satellites of none" … the fact that you are asking this question shows that… "we are seen as pawns rather than equals with the capacity to determine our own destiny."
The Global South doesn't need lecturing from Britain or the U.S., and it doesn't need to be gaslighted about what colonialism is, when they have suffered it first-hand. Simply put, Western propaganda doesn't tally with the historical record or current material reality, and the current U.S. cold-war mentality, along with its associated propaganda, is merely a desperate attempt to maintain a fictitious world that will justify any violent action needed to maintain unipolarity. This in fact goes against the democratic will of the world, which is to achieve peaceful development.
This unipolar zero-sum mindset will only have a detrimental effect on the U.S. and its allies because in believing their own flawed narrative they will make serious strategic errors. Secondly, as other global actors see the Western-led U.S. order as either disingenuous or, by losing touch with reality, psychotic, they will increasingly move away from the irrationality emanating from the U.S.
Just like China and Russia, whose trade in the first three quarters of 2021 has risen to over $100 billion, the rest of the Global South is under no illusion that multi-polarity is the only way forward as unipolarity will only bring more of the same – poverty.
This is because the U.S., only possessing 4 percent of the global population, must repress total global development to maintain primacy. I suggest this zero-sum thinking represents the real "evil" in international relations.
The U.S. needs to do some soul searching and transform its zero-sum winner takes all mindset into a win-win mindset. The growth of China proves that as the rest of the world develops there will be bountiful markets and more opportunities for the U.S.
Thus, the faster the U.S. can drop its zero-sum thinking, the faster it will be able to reposition itself advantageously towards a flourishing global future for all.
#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA
UN experts call for release of Kashmiri rights activistPublished December 23, 2021 -
A file photo of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society Programme
Coordinator Khurram Parvez. — Photo via Twitter
WASHINGTON: Authorities in India must stop targeting prominent Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez, a group of independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday, while calling for his immediate release from detention.
Mr Parvez has documented serious human rights violations in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, including enforced disappearances and unlawful killings and has faced reprisals reportedly for sharing information with the UN. The Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him in November on charges related to conspiracy and terrorism.
The rights experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, issued the statement after reviewing available information about the case.
A UN news report also quoted the experts as urging Indian authorities to repeal the laws that target Kashmiri civilians and human rights activists.
“We are concerned that one month after Mr Parvez’s arrest, he is still deprived of liberty in what appears to be a new incident of retaliation for his legitimate activities as a human rights defender and because he has spoken out about violations,” the rights experts said.
“In view of this context of previous reprisals, we call on the Indian authorities to immediately release him and ensure his rights to liberty and security.”
The UN agency reported that Mr Parvez was detained at the Rohini Jail Complex in Delhi, which the experts described as among “the most overcrowded and unsanitary prisons in the country, posing immediate risk to his health and safety, in particular from Covid-19.
Mr Parvez was arrested on Nov 22 under Indian counter-terrorism legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Introduced in July 2019, the Act allows the authorities to designate any individual as a terrorist without the requirement of establishing membership or association with banned groups. The rights experts said the UAPA has resulted in a “worrisome rise” in the number of arrests in India, and especially in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the UN news agency reported.
“We regret that the government continues to use the UAPA as a means of coercion to restrict civil society, the media and human rights defenders (and their) fundamental freedoms,” the experts said.
“We therefore once again urge the government to bring this legislation in line with India’s international legal obligations under human rights law.”
Indian authorities produced Mr Parvez in a court in Delhi on Nov 30 and Dec 4 when it was decided to transfer him from NIA to judicial custody. The NIA Special Court is meeting on Thursday to decide on another extension of his detention for a further 90 days. If convicted, he could face up to 14 years in prison, or even the death penalty.
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021
WASHINGTON: Authorities in India must stop targeting prominent Kashmiri activist Khurram Parvez, a group of independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday, while calling for his immediate release from detention.
Mr Parvez has documented serious human rights violations in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, including enforced disappearances and unlawful killings and has faced reprisals reportedly for sharing information with the UN. The Indian National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him in November on charges related to conspiracy and terrorism.
The rights experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, issued the statement after reviewing available information about the case.
A UN news report also quoted the experts as urging Indian authorities to repeal the laws that target Kashmiri civilians and human rights activists.
“We are concerned that one month after Mr Parvez’s arrest, he is still deprived of liberty in what appears to be a new incident of retaliation for his legitimate activities as a human rights defender and because he has spoken out about violations,” the rights experts said.
“In view of this context of previous reprisals, we call on the Indian authorities to immediately release him and ensure his rights to liberty and security.”
The UN agency reported that Mr Parvez was detained at the Rohini Jail Complex in Delhi, which the experts described as among “the most overcrowded and unsanitary prisons in the country, posing immediate risk to his health and safety, in particular from Covid-19.
Mr Parvez was arrested on Nov 22 under Indian counter-terrorism legislation, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Introduced in July 2019, the Act allows the authorities to designate any individual as a terrorist without the requirement of establishing membership or association with banned groups. The rights experts said the UAPA has resulted in a “worrisome rise” in the number of arrests in India, and especially in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the UN news agency reported.
“We regret that the government continues to use the UAPA as a means of coercion to restrict civil society, the media and human rights defenders (and their) fundamental freedoms,” the experts said.
“We therefore once again urge the government to bring this legislation in line with India’s international legal obligations under human rights law.”
Indian authorities produced Mr Parvez in a court in Delhi on Nov 30 and Dec 4 when it was decided to transfer him from NIA to judicial custody. The NIA Special Court is meeting on Thursday to decide on another extension of his detention for a further 90 days. If convicted, he could face up to 14 years in prison, or even the death penalty.
Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)