Republican billionaire with $33B TikTok stake ‘bullies’ lawmakers to stop bill forcing Chinese ByteDance sale

By Lydia Moynihan
Published March 7, 2024, 4:08 p.m. ET

House committee votes unanimously to pass bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok

A billionaire megadonor is “bullying” members of Congress by threatening to stop funding them if they back a bill to order TikTok’s Chinese parent to sell the app, The Post has learned.

Hedge fund manager Jeff Yass is personally calling Republican members of the House to try to halt legislation which would force ByteDance to divest itself of the app, putting it in US hands instead.

His fund has a $33 billion stake in the Chinese company.

The bill, known as the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, was being marked up Thursday.

TikTok’s fate is once again imperiled as a bill to ban the app gains momentum.

REUTERS

It would force ByteDance to either sell TikTok to an American company in 6 months or be banned entirely.

It was jointly drawn up by Rep. Mike Gallagher, the chair of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and the Democratic ranking member, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.


Bill that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok clears House panel unanimously

Yass is a Republican megadonor who has funneled $130 million since 2020 into PACs and a right-of-center think tank, The Club for Growth, which then funnels money to libertarian and GOP lawmakers such as Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Fla.) and Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.)

A spokesman for Yass denied that he was making calls to Republican members of Congress and said, “Jeff learned about this proposed bill yesterday [Tuesday] and has not spoken with anyone about it. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically false.”

But multiple sources confirmed the calls to The Post.

The bill was drawn up by Republican Mike Gallagher and the Democratic ranking member of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party.AP

“He’s telling them he is pulling funding if they support a TikTok ban,” a source with knowledge of the conversation told The Post. One source described it as “bullying.”

“If he is able to persuade an enclave of libertarian Republicans to fight tooth and nail against this… you’ll scare off votes,” one Hill source said.

While a number of bills looking to “ban” TikTok have been floated over the last few years, Capitol Hill sources said they believe this is the first piece of legislation forcing a divestiture of TikTok from ByteDance that could actually pass.

While ByteDance owns other social media apps and digital games, TikTok is the crown jewel — and a forced sale would kneecap profits and eliminate leverage to charge a hefty price for the popular video app since buyers would know they have to offload it.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by members of Congress earlier this year over criticisms the app exploited children. The bill is seen as the most likely effort so far to succeed in ending Chinese control of TikTok.AFP via Getty Images

It has gotten the White House’s approval and gathered support from Republicans and Democrats.

Yass has already managed to push politicians to do his bidding when it comes to TikTok.

Last year, The Post reported, his donations were enough to push longtime China hawk, Kentucky Republican senator Rand Paul, to defend the app in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

“Speech is protected whether you like it or not,” Rand said, attacking a bill proposed last year. “Have faith that our desire for freedom is strong enough to survive a few dance videos.”

Committee Chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) have proposed the bill.REUTERS

A well-placed source said of the new TikTok legislation, “Yass is largely credited with single handedly slowing down the anti-TikTok momentum.

“I’m not convinced he is going to be successful this around… but if the bill does go sideways on the right it’s because of him.”

House panel approves bill that would ban TikTok

TikTok is mounting a push against the bill, including trying to mobilize its user base.


Kiichiro Sato/Associated Press FILE – A view of the TikTok app logo, in Tokyo, Sept. 28, 2020.Britain’s privacy watchdog has hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty for a slew of data protection breaches including misusing children’s data. The Information Commissioner’s Office said Tuesday, April 4, 2023, that it issued a $15.9 milllion fine to the the short-video sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
                                
By CNN COM WIRE SERVICE
PUBLISHED: March 7, 2024 
By Brian Fung | CNN

A powerful House committee advanced a bill on Thursday that could lead to a nationwide ban against TikTok on all electronic devices, renewing lawmakers’ challenge to one of the world’s most popular social media apps and highlighting unresolved fears that TikTok may pose a Chinese government spying risk.

The measure that sailed unanimously through the House Energy and Commerce Committee would prohibit TikTok from US app stores unless the social media platform — used by roughly 170 million Americans — is quickly spun off from its China-linked parent company, ByteDance.

If enacted, the bill would give ByteDance 165 days, or a little more than five months, to sell TikTok. If not divested by that date, it would be illegal for app store operators such as Apple and Google to make it available for download. The bill also contemplates similar prohibitions for other apps “controlled by foreign adversary companies.”

It’s the most aggressive legislation targeting TikTok to come out of a congressional committee since company CEO Shou Chew testified to lawmakers last year that the app poses no threat to Americans.

“Today, we will take the first step in creating long-overdue laws to protect Americans from the threat posed by apps controlled by our adversaries, and to send a very strong message that the US will always stand up for our values and freedom,” said Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the panel’s chair.

New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, its ranking Democrat, compared the bill to prior efforts to regulate the US airwaves, citing testimony from national security officials from a closed-door hearing earlier Thursday.

“I take the concerns raised by the intelligence community this morning very seriously,” Pallone said. “They have asked Congress to give them more authority to act in these narrowly defined situations, and I believe that this bill will do that.”

The bill was introduced with some bipartisan support earlier this week by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, who chairs a House select committee on China, and the ranking member of that committee, Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi. The legislation also has the support of the White House and House Speaker Mike Johnson, though its prospects in the Senate are unclear.

House lawmakers voted unanimously in the same session Thursday to advance a second bill, one that would limit US companies’ ability to sell Americans’ personal information to foreign adversaries.

US officials have cited the widespread commercial availability of US citizens’ data as another source of national security risk. The US government and other domestic law enforcement agencies are also known to have purchased US citizens’ data from commercial data brokers.

TikTok launches opposition

TikTok is mounting a push against the bill, including trying to mobilize its user base.

The company has served some users with full-screen pop-ups in the app warning that the bill “strips 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression.”

“This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country, and deny artists an audience,” reads the notification, a copy of which was reviewed by CNN.

The call to action concludes with a link prompting users to dial their members of Congress and express their opposition to the bill. Multiple congressional staffers told CNN Thursday that House offices are being flooded with phone calls — in some cases in the hundreds — amid the campaign.

Many of the calls appear to be coming from teenagers and the elderly, some of whom seem to be “confused” about why they are exactly calling or why TikTok might be at risk, one GOP aide told CNN.

Speaking to reporters on the Capitol steps Thursday, Gallagher rejected characterizations of the bill as a TikTok ban.

“It’s not a ban,” he said. “It puts the choice squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party. As long as ByteDance no longer owns the company, TikTok can continue to survive. People can continue to do all the dumb dance videos they want on the platform, or communicate with their friends, and all that stuff. But the basic ownership structure has to change.”

In a post on X, TikTok rejected lawmaker claims about the legislation providing options for TikTok.

“This legislation has a predetermined outcome: a total ban of TikTok in the United States,” the company wrote. “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”

During Thursday’s session, Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw dismissed criticisms that lawmakers didn’t understand the technology they were trying to regulate.

“It’s not because we’re old, and grumpy, and don’t understand TikTok, and how you use it for your business, and how you use it to communicate with your friends,” Crenshaw said. “I was on social media long before any of the Gen Z-ers who are mad about TikTok. I understand.”

In addition to potentially barring app stores from hosting TikTok, the bill could also restrict TikTok traffic or content from being carried by “internet hosting services,” a broad term that encompasses a variety of industries including “file hosting, domain name server hosting, cloud hosting, and virtual private server hosting.”

That language could mean many more parts of the economy will be affected by the bill than just TikTok, Apple and Google.
Fears of spying

For years, US officials have warned that China’s intelligence laws could enable Beijing to snoop on the user information TikTok collects, potentially by forcing ByteDance to hand over the data.

Policymakers fear the Chinese government could use the personal information to identify intelligence targets or to facilitate mass disinformation campaigns that could disrupt elections and sow other chaos.

So far, the US government has not publicly presented any evidence the Chinese government has accessed TikTok user data, and cybersecurity experts say it remains a hypothetical albeit serious concern.

They also say governments can already buy vast troves of personal data from data brokers or use commercial spyware to hack individual phones with ease.

State and federal lawmakers have already banned TikTok from government-owned devices, but have repeatedly run aground in trying to broaden restrictions to Americans’ personal devices.

Last year, Senate lawmakers proposed legislation clamping down on TikTok but triggered concerns that it could give the executive branch too much power.

Efforts to ban TikTok date to the Trump administration, which used a series of executive orders to try to force app stores not to offer TikTok and to compel ByteDance to spin off the company. Those efforts also stalled amid legal challenges, though it led TikTok to engage in negotiations with the US government about how it could secure Americans’ personal data. Those talks are ongoing, even as TikTok has moved to store US user data on US-based servers controlled by the tech giant Oracle.

In Montana, a federal judge last year temporarily blocked a statewide ban on TikTok, calling the legislation overly broad and threatening Montanan users’ First Amendment rights to access information through the app.

A legislative factsheet from the sponsors of the House bill claims the proposal does not censor speech.

“It is focused entirely on foreign adversary control—not the content of speech being shared,” the factsheet says.

But the overall effect of the bill would still implicate Americans’ free speech rights, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

“We’re deeply disappointed that our leaders are once again attempting to trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political points during an election year,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU. “Just because the bill sponsors claim that banning TikTok isn’t about suppressing speech, there’s no denying that it would do just that. We strongly urge legislators to vote no on this unconstitutional bill.”

And the bill would also threaten the free-speech rights of tech powerhouses Apple and Google, said a major trade group representing those companies.

“The government may not tell private parties, including digital service companies, what speech they may publish. The First Amendment forbids it,” said Stephanie Joyce, senior vice president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. “The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would infringe the First Amendment rights of private businesses, including app stores, to curate and display content they believe is appropriate for their communities.”

CNN’s Haley Talbot and Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

The Super Tuesday Shocker That Wasn’t: Biden Pulls Out a Tie in American Samoa

Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur from Maryland, was denied a win over President Biden due to a rounding error. He did secure three of the territory’s six delegates.

Jason Palmer, a largely unknown entrepreneur from Maryland, had campaigned on a promise to improve the Samoan education system.

Credit...Palmer for President

By Alyce McFadden
March 5, 2024

It looked at first like an embarrassing loss for a president struggling to rally his party behind him: For three hours on Tuesday night, President Biden appeared to have lost the Democratic caucus on a faraway Pacific island, American Samoa, to a little-known opponent.

But it turns out that the embarrassment was not Mr. Biden’s. Or at least not his alone.

By 12:25 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, party officials in Pago Pago corrected their own arithmetic. Mr. Biden had not, in fact, lost. He had managed a tie, securing three of the territory’s six delegates — one more than the party had initially reported.

There was no issue with the ballot counting: Jason Palmer, a largely unknown entrepreneur from Maryland who had campaigned on a promise to improve the Samoan education system, received 51 votes to Mr. Biden’s 40.

The problem was a rounding error: Mr. Palmer’s 56 percent share amounted to 3.4 delegates, but was incorrectly rounded up to four. Mr. Biden’s 44 percent share amounted to 2.6 delegates, but was incorrectly rounded down to two. Dean Phillips, the Minnesota congressman, was the only other Democrat who appeared on ballots, but won neither any delegates nor any votes. (The initial results and delegate allocation were confirmed by The Associated Press.)

In a statement with the corrected numbers, Andrew Berquist, a national committeeman, said simply, “We have amended our delegate count, due to a calculation error. Remainder of the results are the same.”

While the error may have cost Mr. Palmer a clean win, his vote tally still did come as a surprise. But Democrats in American Samoa have a history of delivering unexpected results, even when vote counting goes according to plan. In 2016, a majority of caucusgoers cast ballots for uncommitted delegates rather than for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. And in 2020, Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, won there, giving him the only victory in his campaign.

Mr. Palmer may have been the only Democrat to campaign there, hosting virtual town-hall events and employing local staff in the island territory, which is about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. Its residents are not eligible to vote in the general election.

Mr. Palmer campaigned in the territory on three issues: improved access to health care, additional educational resources and aggressive efforts to curb the effects of climate change. He credits his American Samoa campaign team of just three employees for helping him connect with residents.

“I felt like I really was hearing them, understanding them, and building a plan to address their needs,” he said in an interview with The New York Times before the tally was amended.

In his quixotic campaign against Mr. Biden, Mr. Palmer has emphasized his relative youth. At 52, he is the youngest Democrat in the race, and nearly 30 years Mr. Biden’s junior.

“Joe Biden has been a great public servant for 50 years,” he said. “I voted for him four years ago. But we want a younger candidate. We want someone who’s going to be more energetic and active and can beat Donald Trump.”

Mr. Palmer has also sought to distinguish himself from the Mr. Biden on policy: In February, he called for a cease-fire in Gaza in a video posted on X.

But while he acknowledged that Mr. Biden is “very likely” to win the party’s nomination, he said he would campaign next in Arizona and focus on his plan to fix the country’s immigration system, along with other issues he has worked on.

“This is a very serious campaign,” Mr. Palmer said. “My goal is to win enough delegates to the Democratic National Convention to make education a priority issue in this election.”

UAW's Shawn Fain makes State of the Union guest list in nod to organized labor

The United Auto Workers leadership endorsed President Biden in January

By Breck Dumas 

FOXBusiness


UAW president endorses Biden, claims Trump doesn't care about the American worker

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain endorsed President Biden Wednesday for re-election and claimed former President Trump ‘doesn't care about the American worker.’

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain made the guest list to attend President Biden's State of the Union (SOTU) address Thursday, landing an invitation to sit in first lady Jill Biden's viewing box.

The White House's honor to Fain is a nod to organized labor and to the UAW after the union endorsed President Biden's re-election campaign in January.

Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, speaks at the United Auto Workers conference in Washington, D.C., Jan. 24, 2024. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

In addition to the union boss, other White House invitees to the SOTU include an Alabama woman who is seeking in vitro fertilization (IVF) and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

"Each of these individuals were invited by the White House because they personify issues or themes to be addressed by the President in his speech, or they embody the Biden-Harris Administration’s policies at work for the American people," the White House guest announcement said.



UAW President Shawn Fain rallies members in support of the strike against Ford, GM and Stellantis at the UAW Local 551 hall on the South Side Oct. 7, 2023, in Chicago. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Biden has repeatedly touted himself as the most pro-union president in modern history, and the White House hailed Fain for the UAW's simultaneous strike against Detroit's Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — last fall.

MAJOR US LABOR STRIKES HIT 23-YEAR HIGH IN 2023

The administration also reminded Americans in its memo that Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he spoke to marching UAW workers during their strike in September.




President Biden addresses striking members of the United Auto Workers at a picket line outside a General Motors Service Parts Operations plant in Belleville, Mich., Sept. 26, 2023. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)


Labor unions have seen significant successes over the past year, most notably the UAW's record contracts after its six-week strike, and the Teamsters' record contract with UPS.

FOX News Digital's Jamie Joseph contributed to this report.

Spanish police smash Banksy fakes syndicate


Officers arrested two people in the northeastern city of Zaragoza where the forgeries were allegedly made. — Pexels pic

Thursday, 07 Mar 2024 

BARCELONA, March 7 — Police in Spain said today they had smashed a ring which allegedly falsified works by British street artist Banksy which it sold around the world for up to €1,500 (RM7,677) a piece.

Officers arrested two people in the northeastern city of Zaragoza where the forgeries were allegedly made and two others with “knowledge of the art world” suspected of having put the works on sale, Catalonia’s regional police force said in a statement.

Police suspect the ring sold at least 25 works, which were made with spray paint on cardboard, in specialised shops, Barcelona auction houses and online to customers in Germany, Scotland, Spain and the United States.

The ring forged certificates claiming the works had been created by Banksy as part of his “Dismaland” project, a temporary exhibition that resembled a grim theme park set up in 2015 in Weston-super-Mare, an English seaside town near Banksy’s home city of Bristol.

The exhibition, tagged as “The UK’s most disappointing new visitor attraction”,” featured a decrepit fairytale castle in a moat of murky water and model boats on a pool full of refugees.

Police said they started investigating last year after detecting the sale of several fake Banksy works. They uncovered the workshop in Zaragoza in December where two “young followers of Banksy’s urban art who had economic problems created the works,” the statement said.

The investigation remains open and police have not ruled out further arrests.

Banksy, whose identity has never been revealed, is famous for his ironic murals in unexpected places.

His works, which have been found in locations ranging from London and New York to the West Bank and Gaza, have become highly sought after in the art world he satirises.

 — AFP

Online content primarily concerning gov’t corruption, irregularities blocked in Turkey in February

By Turkish Minute
March 7, 2024

Turkish authorities issued censorship decisions to block access to online content primarily involving allegations of corruption and irregularities implicating public officials as well as people and organizations close to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) last month, the Free Web Turkey platform has announced.

Free Web Turkey, which monitors and fights online censorship, announced on Wednesday that out of the 866 URLs blocked by 29 court decisions, 680 contained news reports, 186 were social media posts and three were domains.

Some of the censored news concerned AKP vice chairperson Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya, İstanbul MP Rabia İlhan Kalender and former lawmaker Ravza Kavakçı Kan, who all went overseas on scholarships valued at nearly TL 78 million ($2.4 million), funded by the İstanbul Municipality when it was run by the AKP.

Ekrem İmamoğlu from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) ended the years-long rule of the AKP in İstanbul by twice defeating the party’s candidate for mayor in the 2019 local elections.

Among the censored social media posts were those criticizing the government and former environment, urbanization and climate change minister Murat Kurum, who is currently running for İstanbul mayor as the candidate of the ruling AKP. The criticism came after a landslide at a gold mine in the eastern Erzincan buried nine workers under toxic debris on February 13.

The mine had previously been declared safe from landslides in environmental impact assessments conducted during Kurum’s tenure as the minister.

Aside from the news articles and social media posts, live streaming platforms Twitch and Kick were also censored due to “illegal gambling and terrorist financing,” in addition to Jiangzaitoon, an LGBT-themed manga website.

Out of the 866 URLs, 781 were blocked on the grounds of “violation of personal rights,” while 82 URLs were blocked for “national security and the preservation of public order.”

Meanwhile, the demand for virtual private networks (VPNs) saw an increase of 99 percent in Turkey in 2023, Free Web Turkey reported on Wednesday, citing a study by Techopedia.

Due to the government control over traditional media outlets, Turks seeking alternative sources of information often turn to social media. These platforms, however, have been obligated to appoint Turkey representatives and comply with court orders for content removal under a recently enacted social media law which threatened them with advertising bans and bandwidth reductions.

In late 2023 the Information and Communications Technologies Authority (BTK) banned access to 16 VPN providers frequently used to circumvent government censorship.

Turkey had a score of 30 out of 100 points and was classified among the “not free” countries in the 2023 Freedom on the Net report published last October by the US-based nonprofit Freedom House.

The country was ranked 165th in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2023 World Press Freedom Index, among 180 countries, not far from North Korea, which occupies the bottom of the list.

The Everlasting Shame Of Mitch McConnell

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on February 16, 2021 shows US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, October 27, 2020 and US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)on Capitol Hill in Washington.

By David Kurtz
March 7, 2024 

 TPM

Tribalism Trumps Conservatism

The cult of Donald Trump has swallowed the old Republican Party and nearly everyone with any significant power in it. Mitch McConnell, a remarkable national figure over the last 16 years, is no different than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or any of the countless others whose personal dignity was sacrificed in service of fealty to Trump. All the way down to the racist and sexist screeds Trump launched against McConnell’s own wife.

McConnell will spend his twilight years trying to ensure that his epitaph will be free of Trump. It would be a travesty if it is. The excuse-making for McConnell will linger, but he’s no conservative, he’s no institutionalist, and he’s no evil genius.


Monuments in Kentucky will bear his name, Democrats and journalists will murmur niceties over his ability to wield power, and time as it does will soften the judgments of him. Hold firm against the erosion of memory. McConnell deserves the enmity of a generation.

Here are McConnell’s own words after the Jan. 6 attack:




The man who mustered indignation after his own personal safety was threatened in the coup attempt nonetheless voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial, so we knew the mettle of the man already. Yesterday’s endorsement of Trump confirmed it, but with the added twist that McConnell is now, unlike in 2021, a lame duck. He won’t be the Senate GOP leader next year, and he won’t run for re-election in 2026. But even the lack of real political risk wasn’t enough for McConnell to break from his tribe. He owns it now and for evermore. Let us not forget.

The Much Vaunted Guardrails Are Failing

Thomas Zimmer:


The guardrails are failing. They are failing not only to hold Trump accountable directly, but also, absent any serious legal and political consequences, to at least tell the people how exceptionally dangerous Trump and those who are fueling, enabling, and supporting him are. If someone assumes that this is still a country with functioning institutions, then it’s only logical for them to conclude that Trump walking free means his transgressions can’t be that bad. At some point, it becomes really hard to expect people to break through their routines and actively defend democracy, as is necessary in a situation of crisis, if the institutions we ask them to trust shy away from doing their part – if they instead continue to signal “normalcy,” that politics as usual is still an option or, at the very least, that exceptional, unprecedented measures would be “too extreme.”

Berlin’s blind spot

Germany is the second largest supplier of arms to Israel.

Mahir Ali 

March 6, 2024 

ABOUT 10 days ago, a joint Palestinian-Israeli creative endeavour titled No Other Land, chronicling the struggle for survival in Masafer Yatta — comprising a bunch of Palestinian hamlets in the West Bank — won the best documentary award as well as an audience award at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale.

Two of the co-directors, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, made brief speeches. Adra noted there was little cause for celebration while his compatriots in Gaza were being “slaughtered and massacred”, and urged Germany to “stop sending weapons to Israel”. Abraham pointed out that while the two of them stood as equals on the Berlinale stage, in a couple of days they would be back in a land where his Palestinian colleague faced institutionalised discrimination. He called for an end to “this apartheid, this inequality”.

Both speeches were applauded by the audience, which included Germany’s culture minister, Claudia Roth. Following a backlash, mainly from fellow politicians, her office ‘clarified’ that she had meant to applaud only the speech of the Israeli half of the duo, and Roth posted on social media that the “shockingly one-sided speeches” were “characterised by a deep hatred of Israel”.

On his way home, Abraham received more than 100 death threats, which prompted him to delay his journey to Jerusalem. In a post on X, he decried the Germans’ “appalling misuse” of a term that “empties the word antisemitism of meaning and thus endangers Jews all over the world”, while acknowledging that his Palestinian colleague in Masafer Yatta was “in far greater danger than I am”.

Germany is the second largest supplier of arms to Israel.

There were other Berlinale controversies, but they mostly revolved around the same theme. US filmmaker Ben Russell, who won an award for a documentary on an unrelated topic, wore a keffiyeh as he accepted his award, and used his remarks to slam the genocide and declare that he stood “for a ceasefire in solidarity with all our comrades”. Other award recipients sported ‘Ceasefire NOW’ messages on their backs.

Why should any of this even be an issue in a purported European liberal democracy? The continent is broadly united in its support for Israel, but there are significant exceptions to an unquestioning embrace of Zionist brutality — notably Ireland, given its own experience of colonial occupation, but also Spain, and to a small extent even Belgium and France. Germany, on the other hand, is the second most prolific supplier of weaponry after the US, and was one of the first states to criminalise almost every form of solidarity with the Palestinian quest for self-determination.

It goes back to German guilt over World War II in general and the Holocaust in particular. There were limits to West Germany’s de-Nazification, but it sought to cover that up by fulsomely backing the Jewish state that emerged in 1948, partly as a direct consequence of the unspeakably horrific Nazi Judeocide. The trend established by West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer has lately evolved into a stance across the political establishment, cultural organisations and the media whereby even the mildest criticism of Israel qualifies as antisemitism.

The targets include prominent anti-Zionist Jews, although Muslims in Germany bear the brunt of accusations — even though some 90 per cent of antisemitic crimes are attributed to the far right. The Alternative for Germany has faced calls for a ban after it was associated with a gathering that drew up a plan for a mass deportation of immigrants, but even Chancellor Olaf Scholz is not entirely averse to a similar idea.

There are concerns that Germany, on its present trajectory, could find itself with the same tendencies of nearly a century ago, but it seems that the fatherland’s elite is more focused on serving as a protector for the deformed entity spawned by its dehumanisation of Jews — the apogee of European antisemitism across the preceding decades that sparked the Zionist impulse in the first place.

Exceptionally percipient Jewish intellectuals in Europe and America, including Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, recognised the moral deficiencies of the Israeli state early on. Their warnings went unheeded. That partly explains the rarely wavering Western devotion to its Middle Eastern colonial outpost, which can get away with mass murder while eliciting barely a murmur from its sponsors, benefactors and collaborators. As younger Jews in the US and Europe wake up to the horrors being perpetrated in their name, the dominant fascist elements of Zionism may be doomed in the longer term — as Joe Biden will probably find out in November.

That doesn’t help the Gazans sentenced to death or starvation by the descendants of the victims of Nazism. Nor will German complicity in yet another genocide be readily forgotten or easily forgiven.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2024

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Norway urges companies to avoid trade, business with Israeli settlements

Norwegian companies ‘risk contributing to violations of international humanitarian law or human rights,’ says Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide

Leila Nezirevic |07.03.2024 -


LONDON

The government urged companies in Norway on Thursday to avoid trade and business activities that contribute to maintaining illegal Israeli settlements.

“For years, Norway has been clear that the settlement policy in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is in violation of international law, including humanitarian law and human rights,” Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement.

Barth Eide said businesses should be aware that through “economic or financial activity in the Israeli settlements in violation of international law, they risk contributing to violations of international humanitarian law or human rights.”

Last year “was also the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the UN began recording. I repeat that the injustice to which the Palestinians are subjected must stop,” he said.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its current brutal war on the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which said most of the deaths are women and children while over 70,000 are injured and tens of thousands missing or uncounted.

The Nordic country’s warning comes following announcements by other countries of measures against Israeli settlers committing attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank are “inconsistent with international law.”

Blinken pointed out that the US was disappointed after Tel Aviv announced plans to build new buildings in the occupied West Bank.

“They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion, and in our judgment, this only weakens, doesn’t strengthen Israel’s security,” Blinken said at a news conference in Argentina.

YOU LIKE ME YOU REALLY LIKE ME

EU’s von der Leyen wins conservatives’ backing to lead bloc for five more years


Speaking at the party caucus in Bucharest, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen listed the war in Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza destabilising the Middle East, and the raise of China as key challenges ahead for the 27-nation EU. 

— Inquam Photos via Reuters

Thursday, 07 Mar 2024

BUCHAREST, March 7 — European Union’s leading political group, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), voted today to endorse European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as their candidate to run the bloc’s powerful executive.

EPP delegates voted 400 for and 89 against in rubberstamping von der Leyen as their candidate for another five years in one of the EU’s top jobs, that will be decided following a bloc-wide parliamentary election in June.

Speaking at the party caucus in Bucharest, von der Leyen listed the war in Ukraine, the crisis in Gaza destabilising the Middle East, and the raise of China as key challenges ahead for the 27-nation EU, a wealthy bloc of some 450 million people. — Reuters

Strikes cripple air and rail travel across Germany

Airport workers and train drivers take action to demand more pay to offset soaring inflation in the country.
A man stands on a platform next to empty railway tracks at Cologne Deutz train station [Jana Rodenbusch/Reuters]

Published On 7 Mar 2024

Massive industrial action has paralysed air and rail travel across Germany as striking workers walked off the job to demand better pay to cope with the rising cost of living.

Thursday’s walkouts by the train drivers coincided with a strike by ground staff at national airline Lufthansa that led to mass flight cancellations at Germany’s busiest airports, including main hub Frankfurt.

The rail strike is due to last until Friday, Germany’s train union head Claus Weselsky said. “With this, we begin a so-called strike wave,” he told reporters.

Reporting from an empty Berlin Central Station, Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane said there were no subregional trains moving at all, with only a few cross-country ones still active.

“It’s a similar picture right around the country,” Kane said.

Overall, about 80 percent of all long-distance trains, as well as regional and commuter trains in the country, were cancelled, leading to traffic jams in the streets and employees struggling to arrive on time for work.

The simultaneous action is the latest in a recent series of strikes hitting Germany’s travel sector in the past year, a result of high inflation and worker shortages.

It comes as the economic institute DIW Berlin warned that the German economy was not picking up as quickly as expected, forecasting a recession at the start of the year.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to contract by 0.1 percent in the first quarter, according to DIW, after the economy shrank by 0.3 percent in the final three months of 2023. A technical recession is commonly defined as back-to-back quarters of contracting GDP.

The German train drivers’ union (GDL) demands that national train operator Deutsche Bahn reduce workers’ weekly hours from 38 to 35 hours at full pay to help offset lofty inflation and staff shortages.

The action comes after weeks-long talks between the two parties broke down last week. An earlier strike in late January, one of the longest in the state-owned company’s 30-year history, ended prematurely as an economic slowdown led to pressure on GDL to return to the negotiating table.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa is also locked in disputes with worker’s union Verdi over pay. The union is demanding a 12.5 percent increase in pay over a year for the airline’s staff, as well as a one-off 3,000 euros ($3,268) bonus.

Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest, was forced to cancel scheduled departures due to the strike, which will last until Saturday morning.

“Fraport is asking all passengers starting their journey in Frankfurt not to come to the airport on March 7 and to contact their airline,” the airport’s operator said in a statement on Wednesday.

The ADV airport association warned that strikes in the aviation sector, which also took place in Hamburg and Duesseldorf, were damaging Germany’s reputation as a centre for business and tourism.

Passengers wait at Dusseldorf Airport amid the strike

 [Jana Rodenbusch/Reuters]

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Humanitarian women

If there is one feminist quality that is worth celebrating this International Women’s Day it is resilience.

Rafia Zakaria

DAWN

March 6, 2024 

ON March 8, 2024, the world will commemorate International Women’s Day as it does every year. This year, perhaps much more than other years, the day falls in the midst of a global crisis. The war in Gaza has had an inordinately harsh impact on women, who together with the children make up two-thirds of the population and thus two-thirds of the casualties. It is very possible that the famine conditions and disease outbreak are killing many more women than they are men.

Even in all this, there is hopeful change. One of the more heartening facts that has come to the fore in this world full of crisis is that women are increasingly making up more and more of the population of humanitarian workers. Even though they are underrepresented in the leadership ranks of most humanitarian organisations, they now make up 40 per cent of the humanitarian workforce.

The ability of these women to take humanitarian action means that communities themselves (to which the women often belong) are able to participate in crisis response and action. This also means that more women can be reached by humanitarian organisations, because in some countries male humanitarian workers do not have access to crisis-affected women at all.

Most of these humanitarian women are part of local or grassroots organisations, and thus are able to provide rapid crisis assessment by evaluating needs and communicating them to supply and distribution points. It is the success of humanitarian women from grassroots organisations that led leaders in the development industry to realise that the key to women’s empowerment lies in promoting these grassroots and community-level organisations.

If there is one feminist quality that is worth celebrating this International Women’s Day it is resilience.

In 2016, at the World Humanitarian Summit, a statement called the ‘Grand Bargain’ was released, which indicated that NGOs providing aid must now develop programmes and frameworks that involved NGOs and even smaller community-led organisations if they were to be effective. This has been particularly emphasised in the case of preventing gender-based violence and other forms of aggression against women which respond best to gender-responsive programming.

These ideas make sense even within the Pakistani context. Among the attempts that have been made to reduce violence against women, the laws, the hotlines, etc, it is those closest to the situation on the ground that have the best chance. If crimes like karo-kari are to be reduced, it is the buy-in of the communities themselves that is required. Ultimately, an end to the sort of practice that treats women like toys and property can only be reduced if women, including mothers and grandmothers, can band together and protect the younger women.

Similarly, when crises such as the catastrophic floods of a couple of years ago occur, it is these informal groups of women that can serve as a bulwark against early marriages and the trafficking in women that occurs during periods of economic and social hardship.

The grit and resilience of women and their humanitarian organisations can even be seen in Gaza where the genocide has reduced the population to the most meagre kind of survival. An organisation that is one of the few operating in Gaza has started an initiative called ‘From Woman to Woman’ where they are mobilising young women to work in the displacement camps and make attempts to try and provide women with their hygiene and sanitary needs.

One female worker explained just how terrible the situation was when a pregnant woman stopped drinking water because the toilets in the camps were so unhygienic; she became sick and had to be rushed to hospital. Everyone has heard how women in the maternity wards are undergoing C-sections without anaesthesia. Women like the aforementioned worker are the ones who are trying to make conditions better even with the meagre resources they are given.

Muslim countries share similar conservative cultural values. People in these states are often wary of formal institutions such as courts to resolve disputes or address sexual violence. Efforts to eliminate gender-based violence here have met with obstacles as top-down laws and programmes do not include communities as stakeholders and thus end up producing only temporary change at best. Grassroots organisations, in this context, especially those with women workers, can make a difference

Ironically, the Covid-19 pandemic provided women working in community-based organisations the ability to build networks and provide leadership in a crisis. When the pandemic crisis began, the leaders and international staff of many NGOs left. Money for women’s projects was slashed and diverted to Covid projects. However, women still needed healthcare, food and medicine.

Once again it was women workers who came to the assistance of other women by organising informal networks through WhatsApp groups. They also continued awareness and information exchange sessions on Zoom so that women would not become isolated and would still have the ability to connect with other women in times of extreme stress.

If there is one feminist quality that is worth celebrating this International Women’s Day it is resilience. The women of Gaza, the women in Pakistan have all endured hardship in one form or another. We are the keepers of each other’s secrets, the suppliers of each other’s strength and sisterhood. We come from centuries of women who have displayed enormous stores of strength, borne hardships so that their daughters and granddaughters can have better lives. I am the product of many women’s sacrifices as are all the women who will read this article.

International Women’s Day this year should be a year of gratitude for the sacrifices made by all the women who have nurtured and supported us, from mothers and sisters to friends and teachers. Things are not well with the world, but at least half of the world’s population realises that the solutions lie not in more violence, more death, more mayhem, and more male egos. It is women who are our strength, salve, and solace in these terrible times.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2024

Aurat March 2024 — where to go and what are the manifestos

The march is held on International Women's Day (March 8) across Pakistan and demands rights for all.

CULTURE

DAWN
Images Staff
05 Mar, 2024


Every year the Aurat March is held on March 8 — International Women’s Day. This year is no different, as people across Pakistan gear up to demand rights for women and other marginalised communities.

We’ve compiled a list of where the Aurat March will be held in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore and what their respective manifestos are.

Karachi


Karachi is holding an Aurat Ehtajaji Mela Aur March [women’s protest festival and march] at Frere Hall which kicks off at 2:30pm. They haven’t announced a theme this year.

The Karachi division of the Aurat March listed six demands in their manifesto.

1 - They are calling for the rights of home-based workers, and demanded that the “Sindh government implement the Sindh Home Based Workers Act 2018 immediately and set up social security, health and EOBI benefits for the home-based workers”.


2 - They also demand an end to forced conversions, sexual grooming, and underage marriages. The organisation called for an end to “the heinous gendered violence that girls and women of religious minority communities have to go through, thanks to state-backed forced conversion rings”.

3 - The organisation’s third demand pertains to the “restoration of democracy”.

4 - They demand the establishment of safe houses and hostels by the government “for women (cis and trans), trans men, khawaja siras and non-binary people — so they can escape the patriarchal violence they are often subjected to at home — and safe hostels for students and salaried professionals”.

5 - They demand a stop to the “hate campaign against the khawaja sira community”. They called for the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018 to be upheld “in its original form”. Aurat March Karachi also asked the “government to take action against the escalating hate campaign online, and the extreme violence…used to intimidate and murder members of this marginalised community”.

6 - The last demand calls for an “end to Baloch genocide and enforced disappearances” as well as an end to “the censorship, surveillance, abductions and murders of all activists, journalists and political workers countrywide”.

The demands, which are also available in Urdu, can be read in detail on Aurat March Karachi’s Instagram page.

Lahore

The Aurat March in Lahore will be held at Lahore Press Club and will begin at 2pm. This year’s theme is Siyasat, Muzahamat aur Azadi [politics, resistance, and freedom].



The organisers also requested that people attending the march wear black and red symbolising that “hope and grief can coexist”.

“We wear red to signal our unwavering conviction and fortitude. We wear black to mourn the sheer cruelty towards Palestinians being starved and killed, to witness the pain of Baloch and Pashtun families being forcibly disappeared, tortured and targeted, and to acknowledge the violence those at the margins face regularly. There is hope in making space for all griefs,” they announced.

Their charter demands “concrete and systemic changes in the political, electoral and governance systems of Pakistan through politics of resistance to achieve feminist liberation”.

1 - They called for the state to ensure transparency in announcing the final results of the 2024 General Election to restore trust in the electoral process. “Nothing short of a public-led truth and reconciliation process is acceptable”.

2 - They demanded the enforcement of the minimum requirement of 5 per cent [of] women’s nomination on general seats for all political parties — until this requirement is raised to 30pc or above — and introduce quotas for transgender persons. “Increase representation of marginalised communities at every level of governance through equitable systems that guarantee autonomy, dignity and inclusivity for all genders, classes, abilities, castes and faiths”.

3 - The organisers asked for the strengthening of campaign finance laws to ensure transparency, reasonable spending caps and true democracy within political parties to make electoral politics class representative.

4 - They demanded equitable resource distribution and representation for all federative units, as well as Gilgit-Baltistan. “Local government institutions should be prioritised and strengthened for grassroots political empowerment”.

5 - Aurat March Lahore called for the rejection of all proposed bills violating the dignity and privacy of the transgender and khwaja sira community, and allocate resources to eliminate institutional misgendering and discrimination across all systems and institutions.

6 - They asked for the “decriminalisation of defamation, sedition and anti-dissent laws, including section 144, which infringe on the right to assembly and speech”.

7 - The seventh demand was to restore student unions on campuses that ensure meaningful representation, particularly of women and gender minorities, to exercise their right to organise.

8 - They called for an end to all enforced disappearances, return of all forcibly disappeared persons to their families, and accountability through independent and transparent investigations that provide justice to those illegally disappeared. “We endorse the demands of the Baloch March Against Genocide and other movements representing families of the disappeared”.

9 - The organisers asked that the state “defund surveillance systems that perpetuate a paternalistic vision of women’s safety, such as the “safe city” projects. Instead, funding be redirected to support those impacted by patriarchal violence”.

10 - They asked for an end to IMF-mandated, austerity-based policies and to restore funding to essential public services and welfare institutions.

11 - The organisers demanded universal protection and regularisation of work which guarantees living wage and decent work conditions in formal and informal sectors. They also called for the recognition and value of unpaid labour, including care work, as an integral part of the economy.

12 - Lastly, they asked for the provision of climate adaptation support through proactive disaster resilience measures to vulnerable communities and rehabilitate those affected and internally displaced by climate catastrophes. “[The] Government must translate its rhetoric at international forums into meaningful support for disproportionately impacted communities, particularly those engaged in farming and fishing”.

The demands are also available in Urdu.

Islamabad

Aurat March Islamabad will be held at the capital’s press club at 2pm and their theme is resistance and hope.



This year, they are demanding:

1- End to forced disappearances — “The state must recognise and fulfil all demands raised by Mahrang Baloch and other Baloch women who marched towards Islamabad and immediately release all innocent prisoners detained illegally”.

2 - Promoting hope and world peace — “We demand that the government of Pakistan play an active role in ending the genocidal war in Gaza and advocating for the liberation of Palestine on all international and diplomatic forums”.

3 - End of gender-based patriarchal violence — “We demand the end of the culture of impunity in patriarchal crimes. The judiciary must dispense justice in the shortest possible time (six months) in such cases”.

4 - Action against cyber harassment — “We demand effective legislation to combat cybercrime targeting women, minorities, and children with round-the-clock services for prompt response to complaints”.

5 - End to period poverty — “We demand that period products be accessible to all women, including trans individuals regardless of their socio-economic and geographical location”.

6 - Economic justice — “Aurat March demands that the state recognises and incorporates the economic contribution of women’s reproductive labour into the country’s Gross Domestic Product”.

7 - Improved access to universal education and healthcare — “We demand universal education and health services for all women, persons with disabilities, transgender community and those from rural and low-income strata of society”.

8 - Political rights of women — “The Election Commission of Pakistan must act against political parties failing to allocate 5pc of general election tickets to female candidates in 2024”.

9 - Rights of religious minorities — “We demand the state to ensure the protection of rights for religious minorities, granting them equal opportunities in employment, education and healthcare for a dignified life”.

The detailed list of demands is available in English and Urdu on their Instagram page.

Header image by Samya Arif for Aurat March Karachi.

CINEMASCOPE: DEMONS WITHIN

Mohammad Kamran Jawaid 

DAWN

Published March 3, 2024


The Pakistan-wide theatrical release of Demon Slayer: To the Hashira Training, the third film in the line-up, is both perplexing and wonderful.

On the one hand, the sensation of watching Demon Slayer on the big-screen is exhilarating — hardly any anime films make it to Pakistan, and Demon Slayer, the series, has been a worldwide phenomenon. On the other hand, the film is strictly for fans who are already familiar with the intricacies of the 55-episode long story arcs of the series.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Blade of Destruction or Demon Killing Blade) — that’s the full title of the manga written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotouge — is set in the Taish era (between 1912 and 1926), when Japan was slowly adapting to the Western way of life.

In a faraway village, secluded from most innovations, a family is slaughtered by a demon. The two surviving members of the family are Nezuko, who has been turned into a demon, and her brother Tanjiro, who had been away from the house.

The series centered on Tanjiro and Nezuko, is a perfect example of the popular Kishtenketsu narrative-structure from China, Japan and Korea — ie it starts big, takes a long time to develop characters and introduces minor story elements, before adding big twists that carry forward to the climax.

Demon Slayer has been a worldwide phenomenon but the film will appeal only to those already familiar with the intricacies of the series

Storytelling-wise, every arc in Demon Slayer is designed like this: a brief and quick rundown of the scenes that cover the Mugen Train and the Swordsmith Village arc are shown at the beginning of To The Hashira Training, leading directly to the entirety of the last episode of the series, followed immediately by the first episode of the upcoming season.

A big action sequence with a wallop of an ending, leads to the death of a key character, the assembly of the Hashira (high ranking demon slayers with special abilities) and the training of the young cadets. It is assumed that, with their leader dead and Nezuko transformed to a state that makes her impervious to sunlight (demons, like vampires, die when exposed to sunlight), she will likely be the prime target for Muzan Kibutsuji, the uber-powerful lord of demons.

Compilation movies are frequently released in Japan, with fandom making most releases grand successes. Unlike the Mugen Train arc, which was released during Covid-19, and became the biggest release of all time in Japan — it is still the highest-grossing film (not just anime film) in the country to date, beating Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away — To the Hashira Training, with its compilation of the last season’s episodes, feels like a minor offering.

The killing of the last season’s big demon (a particularly nasty villain who splits himself into powerful avatars that wreak havoc) and Nezuko’s big reveal, were already shown in the last season’s final episode, so their inclusion makes little difference storytelling-wise. The new episode, like all first episodes in anime, takes a while to ramp up, and when it does, the end credits start rolling.

Although I haven’t seen it, the last Demon Slayer movie, set in the swordsmith village, might have done something similar. In contrast, one understands why Mugen Train was such a phenomenon: the film was two hours long and covered the entirety of the arc, which was then adapted and expanded to television format.

To The Hashira Training, released globally in 140 countries as a “cinema event”, may not be as exhilarating as Mugen Train, or the following Red Light District arcs (these two are really the high points of the series so far). However for fans — and let me stress: strictly for the fans — the theatrical release, even in compiled form, is still an experience.

The rest of the world, who don’t know about Demon Slayer, can watch this thoroughly recommended series on Netflix.

Released by Sony and HKC, Demon Slayer: To the Hashira Training is rated U and is suitable for all audiences, despite featuring a scene of decapitation

Published in Dawn, ICON, March 3rd, 2024

Why are Balochistan’s political parties up in arms?

The controversial election results and the manner in which they have come about have sparked widespread protests across the province.

Kiyya Baloch 

February 29, 2024

Balochistan — Pakistan’s largest province by land area as well the most mineral-rich — has nearly been at a standstill for around three weeks as thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, intermittently blocking main highways, cities, and roads since the February 8 general elections.

Almost every major city and town in the province — from the Makran coast near the Iranian border to Chaman next to Afghanistan — has witnessed demonstrations and political rallies as Baloch and Pashtun ethno-nationalist parties, along with minority Hazaras, have taken to the streets, decrying what they term as “stealing the public mandate”.

But this is probably news to you. For even as the fire rages across the province, there has been little mention of it in the mainstream media, whose entire focus has been the election of the Punjab chief minister, the fate of the independents backed by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), and the wheelings and dealings of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) as they join hands to form a coalition government in the Centre yet again.

This is hardly surprising, though, considering Balochistan — the site of a violent separatist insurgency, the gateway to the much-touted China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and home to Reko Diq, one of the largest copper and gold reserves in the world — rarely ever features in the mainstream narrative, unless there is a violent episode.
Surprising results

To be fair, there were plenty of incidents of violence in the run-up to the elections, which did receive some airtime on TV channels and a few news stories here and there on digital and print publications. Yet, what has happened since February 8 belies a different kind of violence — candidates declared victorious suddenly found themselves on the losing side within a few hours or even the following day, prominent leaders discovered they had been relegated to lower positions in their strongholds, while upstarts saw remarkable success and worst of all, there were no answers forthcoming on how these results had changed overnight.

Take the Hazara Democratic Party, for example, whose candidates — both prominent leaders, its chairman Abdul Khaliq Hazara and Qadir Ali Nayal — had initially been declared victorious, but ultimately ended up losing their seats in the community’s traditional stronghold to little-known outsiders. Then there is Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, who was initially winning the NA-259 seat with some margin, before finding out that he had lost once the final results were revealed. There was also Akhtar Jan Mengal, whose results from NA-261 Kalat were revised repeatedly, but ultimately resulted in his victory.






As results crawled in on the day following the polls, candidates previously declared winners fell to second and third positions. The continued revisions in results led to a wave of protests across the province, with nearly all major nationalist political parties voicing concerns over the counting process and impartiality of the elections.

In the aftermath of the elections, Balochistan’s beleaguered nationalist parties, which have braved over two dozen bombings and violent attacks by separatist groups and religious militants in the run-up to the polls, formed a four-party alliance to protest the alleged rigging and post-poll manipulations. This alliance comprises the Balochistan National Party — Mengal (BNP-Mengal), Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP), the National Party (NP), and the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP).
The protests

The results have been all the more surprising for nationalist parties, who had hoped that following five years of bad governance, political instability, and a dramatic surge in violence between 2018 and 2023, they would clinch a sweeping victory this time around. In stark contrast, Baloch and Pashtun nationalist parties only managed to secure three seats in the National Assembly and seven seats in the provincial assembly. On the other hand, mainstream political parties such as PML-N and PPP have clinched 10 and 11 provincial assembly seats, respectively.

Since 1972, Balochistan has largely been under the rule of ethno-nationalist groups, often with the chief minister either being a nationalist or a tribal chieftain, regardless of their political affiliation — though the PPP has successfully installed a number of chief ministers over the years. The latter still enjoyed support from nationalist parties.

In recent years, however, there has been a marked shift in the province’s political landscape, with non-nationalist groups or political figures, considered close to the establishment, forming their own government without the support of nationalists. This trend was witnessed in 2018 when the newly emerged Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) formed the provincial government, in coalition with the PTI, and elected Jam Kamal as its chief minister without the backing of nationalist parties.

Although nationalists had secured 15 provincial assembly seats in 2018, the 2024 polls have seen this number decrease by around 60 per cent. This appears all the more startling, given the number stood at 20 in 2013, when the PkMAP and NP had formed their government with the support of the PML-N. But the political environment has dramatically changed since 2018. This begs the question — are nationalists indeed losing ground in the province, or are they are being sidelined as they claim?
How did we get here?

Law and order has a direct impact on the electoral process. In Balochistan’s case, a bleak security situation and low turnout seem to have paved the way for federalist parties — those more closely aligned to Islamabad or the establishment — to make their way to the legislative assembly.

For example, when Abdul Qudoos Bizenjo — who served as chief minister from 2021 to 2023 — became CM for the first time for a few months in 2018, it was viewed as hardly a democratic exercise. Bizenjo had won the Awaran provincial seat with a total of 544 votes.

In the more recent past, this phenomenon was witnessed in 2008, following the boycott of the elections by Baloch and Pashtun nationalists, leading to the PPP forming a government in the province. This electoral boycott, however, had its own side effects on Balochistan’s socio-political and security environment — in subsequent years, a nationalist rebellion, once confined to the tribal districts of Kohlu and Dera Bugti, spread all over Balochistan as a result of bad governance and mismanagement, ultimately impacting Makran, Awaran, and other Baloch-dominated areas in the south.

But can non-nationalists or newly emerged political faces really bring change to Balochistan?

History tell us no.

When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto dismissed the National Awami Party’s (NAP) government in February 1973, an insurgency broke out in the province. Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, in his autobiography, ‘In Search of Solutions’, writes that Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, the provincial president of NAP, and the then Chief Minister Sardar Attaullah Mengal, following the dismissal of the NAP government, came to the conclusion that the Baloch had no future in Pakistan and suggested fighting for the liberation of Balochistan. After that experience, Khair Bakhsh Marri completely distanced himself from Pakistani politics.

In an interview with BBC Urdu, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch of the NP shared similar views after the February 8 elections, saying the “Baloch youth were distant from the federation earlier. Now, our political workers are also considering whether we should participate in the polls”. Akhtar Mengal of the BNP and Mahmood Khan Achakzai of the PkMAP share similar views.

The 2008 electoral boycott by Baloch nationalists and the dismissal of the NAP government in 1973 clearly demonstrate that sidelining ethno-nationalists can present greater challenges for the province. This will aggravate the existing challenges and force figures like Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch, and Mahmood Khan Achakzai and their political workers to part ways from parliamentary politics.
Politics of disenfranchisement

Despite facing enormous challenges and resistance from youth and separatist groups within the beleaguered province, they have been striving to bridge a connection between the province and Islamabad.

Despite all these odds and challenges, the people of Balochistan came out to vote on February 8 amid strict security measures in the face of bomb threats from separatist and religious militant groups. Even so, the province witnessed an overall turnout of hardly 41pc, as the trust in parliamentary nationalist parties has drastically eroded among the Baloch youth, who often choose to distance themselves from elections.

And yet, those who did come out to exercise their right to franchise, have largely been disappointed with the results. The BNP chief, Akhtar Mengal, lost to the PPP’s Jamal Raisani on NA-264, who registered as a voter in December 2023 — the cutoff date to register to vote was October 25. A tribunal had earlier rejected the younger Raisani’s nomination papers on January 8, after he stepped down as caretaker minister. The Balochistan High Court later overruled the tribunal’s verdict and Raisani still defeated Akhtar Mengal from the BNP’s traditional stronghold, Sariab, in Quetta.

Meanwhile, Dr Abdul Malik Baloch of the NP lost to Malik Shah Gorgaij on NA-259 [Kech/ Gwadar]. The latter is known for his strong connections with the establishment and is not even a resident of Kech or Gwadar. His son, Ubaid Gorgaij, won the seat from PB-44 Quetta-7, and his son-in-law, Samad Khan of the PPP, clinched PB-40, Hazara Town, and its adjoining areas. Samad Khan is not from the constituency he now represents and the residents of Hazara Town have hardly heard of him.

It is these very controversial results and the manner in which they have come about that has sparked widespread protests across the province.

But whether their protests and strikes can yield any fruitful results remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the resentment will increase, more youth will become disenfranchised, and the gap between Islamabad and Balochistan will only widen further.

Header image: Supporters of Hazara Democratic Party protest against alleged rigging in the general elections on Feb 8, in Quetta on February 11, 2024. — AFP/ File

Kiyya Baloch is a freelance Pakistani journalist currently based in Norway. He can be found on Twitter @KiyyaBaloch