Faithful idols

Shahzad Sharjeel

Published May 24, 2023 

THESE days some people go about introducing themselves as ‘thought leaders’. This claim is neither determined nor tested by the number of followers they may have; it is completely self-assessed but inflicted upon others.

According to the New York Times, there is a monthly coming together of university professors and TikTokers who were fired and banned because of their ‘views’. They are playfully called the ‘cancelled club’.

Post-May 9, it is dangerous to bring up anything even remotely related to the security establishment, be it something as hard as a tank or as soft as a trouser without raising eyebrows, but let’s ask anyway whether the tank people are facing competition over who wears the pants in the household. Or should the PTI be considered a ‘cancelled club’ henceforth?

Spiritual and religious symbols and relics generally come about organically and their sanctification doesn’t usually require coercive enforcement. Though places of worship, shrines, and mausoleums are not immune to ‘capture’ by profiteers like hereditary spiritual lineages and clergy, their origins are rooted in love, reverence and certain socio-emotional and economic service delivery.

National symbols like anthems and flags; the elevation of personalities to national heroes, and ideologues’ status, and the appropriation of literary/philosophical oeuvres as national ideology require much narrative-building, propagation and enforcement.

Their deification is seldom left to voluntary adherence and disrespect to them is declared a cognisable offence. The state builds these symbols and narratives and erects monuments to direct and control the population’s loyalty, energy and emotions, in keeping with the ruling junta’s worldview and agenda.

A traditional lot of religious-spiritual and cultural symbols and edifices are used as raw material for state-sponsored idol-making and are dragged into the fray of power play where no permanent friend or foe exists.

The state builds narratives in keeping with the ruling junta’s view.

In the jostling for power and ideological space, the contenders attack the soft targets first; blowing up girls’ schools has the same legal consequence, if at all, as causing damage to any public property. Attacking hard targets like national monuments and security installations poses a different level of difficulty and supposedly far dire consequences.


The attackers’ collective identity, their past services as proxies, and future value as cannon fodder determine the punitive actions against them. A Taliban spokesman can ‘escape’ captivity, but Baloch nationalists or PTM experience no such lapses or inefficiency.

Imagine the response had the attack on the corps commander’s house (Jinnah House) been located elsewhere, ie, heaven forbid in Quetta. What if instead of GHQ, the cantonment at Pannu Aqil, Sindh was attacked? Restraint and sangfroid would be the last thing on the platoon’s mind.

The nonchalant reaction of the security establishment and ‘misled brethren’ mantra by religious-political parties in the face of countless attacks on schools and bazaars, plus the nonstop appeasement through a series of peace agreements with militants eventually led to the precedent-setting attack on GHQ in Pindi in 2009 and the 2011 Mehran Base attack in Karachi.

The state-led shrinkage of space for plurality, plus the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ militants approach espoused brazen attacks on Muslim as well as Christian, Hindu and other minorities’ places of worship. Attacks on Rehman Baba’s grave, Data Darbar and the Qalandar’s mazar were the harbingers of what happened on May 9.

The wrangling over the legal system to bring the culprits to book, and any selective justice across the uniformed and the civilian lot will only erode whatever little remains of national institutions. Reprieves under local compulsions or foreign pressure will only confirm the state’s discrimination among citizens; the children of the lesser components of the federation will feel further alienated.

How come May 9 is already referred to as a ‘black day’ but the days when Liaquat Ali and Benazir Bhutto were assassinated, or the APS massacre occurred are not? Many monuments were dismantled throughout the former USSR after communism’s retr­eat was marked by the pulling down of the Berlin Wall.

Whose victory does May 9 herald? Both animate and inanimate idol-making factories are sometimes located abroad. BJP had to turn to a Chinese factory to at least partially bronze cast Sardar Patel’s record-setting statue erected in Gujarat. At home, we may just rely on foreign design and money; the rest can be manufactured at factories in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Akora Khattak, etc.

The cycle of

(carved, worshipped, broken) shall continue.

The writer is a poet. His latest publication is a collection of satire essays titled Rindana.
shahzadsharjeel1@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2023

G20 meet begins in India held Kashmir amid boycott

Tariq Naqash 

DAWN 

Published May 23, 2023 

MUZAFFARABAD: Activists of Pasban-i-Hurriyat, a Kashmiri refugee organisation, stage a protest demonstration against the holding of G20 meeting in India-held Kashmir, on Monday.—AFP

• Pakistan rejects India’s attempt to convince world occupied territory is its undisputed part
• China, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia stay away from event
• Rallies condemn Delhi’s controversial move

MUZAFFARABAD / SRINAGAR: In sheer violation of international laws and United Nations Security Council resolutions, a G20 meeting got under way in India-held Kashmir on Monday with at least three member countries boycotting it while several western states preferring to send their India-based diplomats instead of allowing del­egates from their respe­ctive capitals to the event in the disputed region.

G20 member China, which is locked in a military standoff with India along their mostly un-demarcated border in the Ladakh region, refused to attend the tourism working group meeting, and no government delegations are expected from Turkiye or Saudi Arabia.

Beijing also stayed away from earlier G20 mee­tings in Ladakh and in Arunachal Pradesh, which it says are part of Tibet.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur on minority issues, Fernand de Varennes, said New Delhi was seeking to use the G20 meeting to “portray an international seal of approval” on a situation that “should be decried and condemned”.

India rejected the rapporteur’s comments and Pakistan denounced Ind­ian “arrogance” for violating international law by holding the huddle in the disputed territory where, according to the UN resolutions, a plebiscite must be held giving the Kashmiri people the right to self-determination.

In Muzaffarabad, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said that holding a G20 meeting in occupied Srinagar was a sheer violation of the UN resolutions on Kashmir.

Addressing a special session of the AJK Legislative Assembly, he said India was deviously trying to convince the world that occupied Jammu and Kashmir was its undisputed part.

“But history remembers that it was India that took the Jammu and Kashmir dispute to the Security Council as a dispute yet to be resolved. There, the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir was internationally recognised, and it was decided that the final disposition of the state shall be made through a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices,” he recalled.

By holding a G20 meeting in the disputed territory under tight security, India wants to show “normalcy and peace” are returning to the region after New Delhi revoked its limited autonomy in 2019 and took direct control, imposing an extended lockdown. Since then Indian authorities have criminalised dissent, curbed media freedoms and limited public protests in a drastic curtailment of civil liberties.

Both China and Pakistan have condemned holding the event in the disputed territory.

Since the lockdown, the decade-old uprising has largely been crushed — although young Kashmiri men continue to take up arms against Indian occupation — and the annual death toll, once in the thousands, has been on a downward trend, with 253 fatalities last year.

Police said last week that security had been beefed up to avoid any chance of attack during the three-day event, and on Monday soldiers and armoured vehicles were deployed at multiple locations in Srinagar, capital of India-held Kashmir.

Hundreds have been detained in police stations and thousands, including shopkeepers, have rece­ived calls from officials warning against any “signs of protest or trouble”, a senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Attempt to hoodwink assailed

Foreign Minister Bhutto-Zardari lambasted India for likening the legitimate struggle for right to self-determination of Kashmiri people with terrorism to hoodwink the international community, but said the diatribe against Kashmiris and Pakistan would never help New Delhi evade the long overdue just solution to the festering issue in accordance with the UNSC resolutions and aspirations of the Kashmiris.

“India is trying to use the terrorism bogeyman to mask the indigenous Kashmiri struggle for the legitimate right to self-determination. It uses the same bogey to blame Pakistan and justify its brutal repression of the Kashmiri people, in what is a complete travesty of justice,” he said, in his address to a special session of the AJK Legislative Assembly.

“There is a clear distinction between terrorism and a people’s genuine quest for freedom. Terrorism cannot be and should not be used as an excuse to deny the Kashmiri people their fundamental rights and their fundamental freedoms,” he added.

Mr Bhutto-Zardari’s address coincided with the G20 meeting in occupied Srinagar.

People in AJK expressed their disapproval of the event by staging rallies and demonstrations and observing symbolic strikes.

The foreign minister emphasised that the Kashmir dispute was the unfinished agenda of the partition of the Sub-continent, when the rights and aspirations of the Kashmiri people were trampled upon by machinations and intrigue.

He regretted that the Kashmiri people had been denied their inalienable right despite the lapse of more than seven decades.

“Today, I ask the world if a country can be allowed to renege on its solemn commitments to the United Nations, break its own promises and blatantly violate international law just because they want to?”

Taking strong exception to India’s August 5, 2019, move, he said it had opened a new chapter of oppression to accomplish Delhi’s nefarious plan to convert Kashmiris into a dispossessed and disempowered minority in their own land.

“Pakistan rejects these unilateral and illegal steps outright. How can the world be a silent bystander when a large country usurps the rights guaranteed by the Security Council, and instead uses brute force to suppress those rights?” he asked. “India is misusing its position as chair of the G20,” he said.

While paying tribute to the valiant Kashmiri people, he reassured them of Pakistan’s unstinted moral, diplomatic and political support till they achieved their legitimate rights.

Men, women attend rallies

Earlier, hundreds of men, women and schoolchildren paraded through the streets in different parts of the liberated territory to condemn the holding of G20 huddle in Srinagar.

A big rally was held in Muzaffarabad under the aegis of an organisation of post-1989 migrants from occupied Kashmir, with its participants carrying black flags and banners inscribed with slogans against the G20 meeting.

One banner was full of praise for China for its categorical boycott of the Srinagar meeting.

Sixty-year-old Malka Jan, who had migrated to AJK in 1992, said she was yearning for a just settlement of Kashmir issue so that she could return to her native area.

“Instead of participating in meetings under the aegis of oppressor India, world powers should take concrete steps to establish peace and justice in our motherland by granting us our right to self-determination,” she said.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2023

India’s G20 tourism meet in held Kashmir begins without China, Saudi Arabia and others

AFP | Dawn.com 

Published May 22, 2023 


Delegates attend the G20 tourism meeting in Srinagar on May 22, 2023. — AFP

A G20 tourism meeting began on Monday under tight security in occupied Kashmir as New Delhi seeks to project an image of normalcy in a region wracked for decades by violence.

Both China and Pakistan have condemned holding the event in the occupied valley.

India wants to show that what officials call “normalcy and peace” are returning to the region after New Dehli revoked its limited autonomy and took direct control in 2019, imposing an extended lockdown.

Since then, Kashmiri fighters have largely been crushed — although young men continue to take up arms — and the annual death toll, once in the thousands, has been on a downward trend, with 253 fatalities last year.

Now India is promoting tourism in the region, with its spectacular mountain scenery and signs at the airport declaring it “paradise on earth”. More than a million Indian citizens visited last year.

But dissent has been criminalised, media freedoms curbed and public protests limited, in what critics say is a drastic curtailment of civil liberties by New Delhi.

Police said last week that security had been beefed up “to avoid any chance of an attack during the G20” meeting, and on Monday soldiers and armoured vehicles were deployed at multiple locations in Srinagar.

But many checkpoints — wrapped in metal mesh and barbed wire — had been dismantled overnight, and some paramilitary police stood hidden behind G20 advertising panels in what appeared to be an effort to minimise the security forces’ visibility.

The People’s Anti-Fascist Front, a new rebel group that emerged in occupied Kashmir after 2019, issued a statement condemning the event and threatening to “deploy suicide bombers”.

“Today, tomorrow or day after. It will come,” it said.

Bilawal bashes India for ‘show of arrogance’

Meanwhile, in an address to the AJK Legislative Assembly today, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari bashed India for its “display of arrogance”.

“India’s continued denial of the rights of the Kashmiri people is a wrongful and illegal act,” he said, stressing that “no amount of diplomatic duplicity or Indian state-perpetrated terror can change this fact”.

He lamented that occupied Kashmir had become an “open prison” today where Muslims were being forced to breathe fear. “This mayhem continues under draconian laws allowing continuity to the Indian occupying forces.”

Bilawal highlighted that New Delhi’s “wretched, systematic and perpetual barbarism not just violates international law but it makes a mockery of the fundamental human rights”.

“How can the world be a bystander when a large country usurps the rights guaranteed by the security council?” the minister asked.

He reiterated that holding the G20 moot in occupied Kashmir was yet another “show of arrogance” on India’s part. “How can India possibly claim that normalcy has returned to occupied Kashmir?

“I wish to remind the Indian leaders that unilateral steps in held Kashmir will neither accord democracy to their occupation nor suppress the true occupation of the Kashmiri people,” he asserted.

“If India wants to be a superpower, then it needs to act like a superpower,” Bilawal said.

He added that his presence in AJK proved the intergenerational support and commitment to the Kashmir cause. “We want good relations with our neighbours, including India, but good relations cannot be achieved through a disputed resolution.”
‘Terrorist-infested places’

The three-day gathering will take place at a sprawling, well-guarded venue on the shores of Dal Lake in Srinagar.

Two Indian government ministers are attending, but several Western nations are sending only locally-based diplomatic staff.

G20 member China, which has its own territorial disputes with India, has refused to attend, and no delegations are expected from Turkiye or Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, questions have been raised over the choice of location.

“Does the Modi government think that tourism can be promoted in closed conference halls next to a scenic lake being patrolled by marine commandos, with surveillance drones overhead?” columnist Bharat Bhushan wrote in the Deccan Herald newspaper.

To visit occupied Kashmir, foreign journalists require special permission, which is not normally forthcoming, though it has been granted for the event.

The permits are valid only for coverage of the G20 meeting itself and limited to the city of Srinagar. Holders are required not to “propagate anti-India narratives”, nor visit “terrorist-infested places without prior permission”.

India holds the G20 presidency for 2023, and has planned more than 100 meetings across the country.

It is locked in a military standoff with China along their mostly undemarcated border in the Ladakh region.

Beijing also claims the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh in full as part of Tibet, and it considers Kashmir a “disputed territory”.

“China firmly opposes holding any form of G20 meeting in disputed territory and will not attend such meetings,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters last week, after Beijing also stayed away from events in both Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.

Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, said New Delhi was seeking to use the G20 meeting to “portray an international seal of approval” on a situation that “should be decried and condemned”. India rejected the comments.

Residents have chafed under the stepped-up security measures.

Hundreds have been detained in police stations and thousands, including shopkeepers, have received calls from officials warning against any “signs of protest or trouble”, a senior official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Fascism’s backers

Mahir Ali 

Published May 24, 2023

ON the eve of the G7 summit in Japan last week, there was a sudden outburst of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in Australia. Just hours after the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had confirmed that Joe Biden would be visiting the country for the chiefly anti-China Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) summit in Sydney, the US president announced that, sorry, he wouldn’t be able to make it.

Biden said he would be obliged to rush back from Japan to deal with his country’s debt crisis. Several commentators lamented that his absence would play into China’s narrative that the US is insufficiently engaged with the Indo-Pacific to remain the regional hegemon. Others reassured the public that America remains dedicated to its Asia-Pacific role.

Japan’s prime minister followed Biden’s example, but the fourth component of the Quad decided to carry on. Narendra Modi arrived in Australia late on Monday, and last night was scheduled to address a 20,000-strong crowd — mostly of Indian origin — at the Olympic stadium. There has been resistance, including posters in Sydney — mostly torn down — calling for a citizen’s arrest of the ‘Hindu terrorist Modi’.

The terrorist charge largely harks back to the anti-Muslim pogroms in Ahmedabad in 2002 when Modi, who was then the chief minister of Gujarat, decided that the state’s police and firefighters would do nothing to protect the victims. At least 2,000 people were murdered. Modi predictably denied all responsibility for the violence.

Modi’s Western friends turn a blind eye to India’s trajectory.

Back then, the international response was at least superficially more robust than it is today. Modi was effectively banned from travelling to the US or the European Union. However, the West rapidly backtracked as soon as he became prime minister. If anyone had any illusions that he would modify the extremism honed since his youth as a devotee of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), they have steadily been divested of this vain hope.

And if anyone were to wonder why a neofascist pundit might be hailed as the leader of the world’s largest democracy, just look at the new Cold War — which, much like the old one, primarily targets Russia and China. Whatever its motivations may be, the latter appears to be the only power that is keen to end the appalling war in Ukraine. The West is bent upon fuelling the flames. India has refused to disengage from Russia, a source of cut-price oil and gas, but can hardly be categorised any longer as non-aligned. Far more alarming is the West’s consequent insouciance — or cultivated ignorance — about the Modi regime’s proto-fascistic tendencies.

It is not shy of demonstrating them. A report published earlier this year by the North America-based Justice for All organisation, titled The Nazification of India, compares what has been happening with the circumstances in Germany in the 1930s, and many of the parallels are striking — not least that Adolf Hitler struck influential people in Western democracies as an attractive proposition. Until it was too late.

India’s course towards what would have been anathema to Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi was set two decades ago when the then chief minister of Gujarat state facilitated a pogrom that claimed at least 2,000 lives in the aftermath of the Godhra tragedy. A recent documentary about the events of 2002 inspired a backlash against the BBC that still carries on. Sadly, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s point of view in the documentary consists of idiotic interventions by Swapan Dasgupta, an old Oxford acquaintance who drifted seamlessly from the left to the far right — a depressing but hardly uncommon phenomenon.

Much more worrying is the Hin­d­u­tva jihad against the domestic media, supplemented by ef­­forts to rewrite history — as well as other subjects — by trying to erase, in­­ter alia, the Mughal past and Darwinian evolutionary theory. There are numerous other instances of the absurdities being drummed into innocent minds at the behest of the RSS — founded almost a century ago, with its still evident Nazi tendencies honed in the 1930s — and its various offshoots.

With all its hypocritical gibberish about ‘values’, the West sees nothing wrong with India’s trajectory, and its blinkered leaders will trot along to hug Modi when the G20 beckons in September. If India’s drift towards fascism is to be halted, the resistance will have to come from within. The Indian trend is similar to what has been seen elsewhere — not least Pakistan, but also the US, Brazil, Hungary and Israel — of political leaders acquiring a cult following among populations disillusioned by the centrist business-as-usual. That’s understandable but the consequences can be atrocious. One can only hope that the majority of Indians will see the light before it’s too late. The election result in Karnataka was somewhat encouraging, but there’s a long way to go.

mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2023

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/05/kashmir-is-indias-gaza-g20-delegates.html

PAKISTAN

Bombing schools

Editorial 

DAWN

Published May 24, 2023\

IN an ominous throwback to one of the most dispiriting aspects of militancy in Pakistan, the war on girls’ education has started once again. Late Sunday night, two government middle schools, where nearly 500 female students were enrolled, were blown up in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. One may be sure that such a large number of students cannot be accommodated in other institutions, and their education will suffer a significant setback, perhaps on a permanent basis. There is a particular poignancy to this likely outcome, because in Pakistan the dropout rate for girls after primary school is particularly alarming, and one of the reasons for it is the inadequate number of girls’ middle schools in most parts of the country. The only silver lining to Sunday’s attack is that no loss of life was reported. That was not the case last week when a policeman posted outside a private school in Swat’s Sangota area opened fire on a school van, killing a seven-year-old girl and injuring five other female students and a teacher.

The violent campaign against girls’ education has never really been completely eradicated after the TTP began to threaten parents in Swat if they sent their daughters to school; that, and the subsequent murderous attack on her, formed the genesis of Malala Yousafzai’s evolution into a global icon for girls’ education. In 2018, no less than 14 girls’ schools were torched by reported ‘militants’ over a period of two days in GB’s ultra-conservative Diamer district. Now with the Afghan Taliban in power next door, and their banning of girls from most avenues of education, new life has been breathed into this regressive mindset on this side of the porous border as well. Pakistan is on the cusp of losing the gains it has made against militancy over the last few years. After the APS attack, state and society had evolved some semblance of a narrative against violent extremism. But the obdurate refusal to unequivocally reject extremism in all its forms has come to haunt the state. Its opaque negotiations with the TTP, encouraged by the Afghan Taliban but vociferously denounced by residents of areas that bore the brunt of militancy, has allowed agents of mayhem to find a foothold in the country. It will take more blood and sacrifice to root out this menace yet again.

PAKISTAN

Harassing journalists

DAWN
Editorial 

Published May 24, 2023

THE state has cast a wide dragnet to haul up all those allegedly involved in the May 9 rioting, while also using the opportunity to weaken the PTI. However, there can be no excuse for the hundreds of journalists that have been hounded by police just for carrying out their professional duties on the day of the mayhem.

Sadly, the methods are straight out of the colonial playbook; the state has used these tactics for decades to teach all those who have come in its way a lesson. According to the Lahore Press Club president, around 250 journalists and other media workers have complained of police harassment post-May 9.

It is likely that the media personnel were identified through geo-fencing when they were in the field covering the protests in key areas of Lahore after Imran Khan’s arrest. Particularly disturbing is the fact that family members of some media workers have also been picked up. The Lahore High Court has been petitioned to stop this flagrant abuse of authority, while the caretaker Punjab administration has also formed a committee to look into the matter.

While the wholesale crackdown on all PTI sympathisers cannot be condoned, the targeting of journalists who were simply doing their jobs has no justification whatsoever. The federal energy minister has described the ongoing actions as the “process of filtering the criminals from the onlookers”.

This cannot be used as an excuse to harass journalists and media workers. As it is, the media fraternity faces a difficult working environment in Pakistan, and journalists often put their lives on the line in the course of discharging their duties.

Using the anti-PTI crackdown as a cover to threaten journalists is not to be tolerated, and the Punjab government must stop this campaign of fear. The administration must also reveal the whereabouts of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for the last two weeks.

RSF, Amnesty ask Pakistan to find pro-Khan anchor Imran Riaz

The prominent journalist and supporter of ex-PM Imran Khan was detained by the Pakistani police, but the authorities then failed to present him in court.

Haroon Janjua in Islamabad | Darko Janjevic
DW

May 23, 2023

Imran Riaz, a well-known TV anchor and YouTuber, was among thousands of Imran Khan supporters who were detained following the former premier's arrest and violent protests in Pakistan earlier this month. The journalist was reportedly taken into custody from the airport at the eastern city of Sialkot on May 11 on suspicion of inciting violence. He was due to appear before court in Lahore this Monday.

But then, the story took an an usual turn — authorities failed to present Riaz during the hearing, and Punjab police chief Usman Anwar told the court he was "clueless" about his whereabouts.

The chief justice of the Lahore High Court warned the authorities that "no one will be spared if anything happened" to the 47-year-old reporter.

Riaz's wife Arbab Imran told DW she is worried for her husband's safety.

"The arrest of my husband is deeply troubling. He raised voices for the vulnerable people and for the truth. My four children are concerned about him and we don't know the whereabouts of him. He was taken off air many times and I demand from authorities for his immediate release," she said.

Imran Khan granted bail and protection in Pakistan  02:01

 

RSF points to Pakistan's military intelligence

Pakistan is going through a deep political crisis marked by a power struggle between Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and the current government led by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, with the military and the judiciary also being affected. Khan has recently stepped up his attacks on the military, accusing it of working against him. Riaz is a wellknown media figure among Khan's supporters.

On Tuesday, Reporters Without Border (RSF) representative Daniel Bastard said it was "clearly Pakistan's military intelligence agencies that abducted Imran Riaz," after the Punjabi inspector spoke of unspecified "agencies" during the court hearing.

"According to confidential diplomatic sources consulted by RSF, the government's silence about the TV anchor's fate suggests that he may have fared badly since his abduction and may even have died in detention," the watchdog organization said.

Separately, Amnesty International called for Riaz's immediate recovery.

"On 22 May, the police told the Lahore High Court that there is no trace of him in any police department in the province."

The organization said the events amount to "an enforced disappearance" under international law.

"Punishing dissenting voices using enforced disappearance has been a worrying trend in Pakistan for many years and must be ended," Amnesty said.
Riaz missing, Sharif killed in exile

Riaz's lawyer Azhar Siddique says that the arrest is a "blatant violation of freedom of expression."

Riaz has decried Imran Khan's ouster from power in April last year, linking it to "regime change" and amplifying Khan's claims that the military was involved in ending his government. The anchor was already arrested twice, in July 2022 and in February 2023. The latter saw Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency suspect him of hate speech and criticism of the military.

Exclusive: Imran Khan speaks to DW from his besieged home

07:46

The disappearance of Riaz prompted some in Pakistan to draw parallels with the killing of veteran reporter Arshad Sharif last October. Sharif was well-known for criticizing the Pakistani military and was forced to flee Pakistan in August 2022 to avoid arrest. He was killed in Kenya in what a team of Pakistani investigators described to be a "targeted assassination." The background of the murder remains unclear.
Bad optics for freedom of speech?

With the country on edge, a disappearance of a prominent journalist is sure to chill other reporters in the country. Journalist Javeria Siddique, the widow of late Sharif, told DW that Riaz's arrest was "really alarming and a bad optic for freedom of speech in Pakistan."

"The government is arresting journalists over their stories and being vocal," she said, pointing to her husband's killing in Kenya. "Then we have seen the same pattern for Imran Riaz," she added.

"I am requesting from the authorities that they should immediately and unconditionally release the journalist Imran Riaz Khan. Criticizing the ruling elite of Pakistan is not something which falls in hate speech," Siddique added.

Legal expert Osama Malik notes that the freedom of information and the freedom of expression are guaranteed by the Pakistani constitution.

"Imran Riaz's brand of journalism may not be palatable to everyone, but that is certainly not a reason for the state to spirit him away," he told DW. "It is highly condemnable that despite the province's highest court asking about his whereabouts, the law enforcement agencies are unable or unwilling to present Imran Riaz in court or divulge his location."

Edited by: Shamil Shams

‘Orwellian doublespeak’: Journalists, rights activists call out Marriyum Aurangzeb for remarks on Imran Riaz’s disappearance

Following backlash, the minister claims she did not justify enforced disappearances and had categorically condemned the issue of missing persons.

Dawn.com 

Published May 23, 2023 

Journalists and human rights activists have strongly criticised Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb’s comments regarding the case of anchorperson Imran Riaz Khan, who has been missing for more than a week after his arrest.

Riaz was among those apprehended in the wake of the protests that erupted following the arrest of PTI Chairman Imran Khan. Later, his lawyer had told Dawn.com that a writ petition was filed on May 12 over the anchorperson’s arrest and the Lahore High Court had directed the attorney general to present the anchor before the court the same day. But, after its orders were not followed, Sialkot police were given a 48-hour deadline to recover Riaz.

A day ago, Punjab Inspector General Dr Usman Anwar revealed there was no trace of the journalist at any police department across the country.

Separately, journalist Secunder Kermani, a Channel4 News foreign correspondent, had shared a video of an exchange with the information minister about the missing anchorperson.




He questioned Aurangzeb about journalists going missing and being detained, adding that these were the same issues that the PML-N had raised as matters of concern when in opposition during the previous PTI government.

In response, Aurangzeb asked Kermani to name even a single journalist who was missing. When Kermani mentioned Riaz, the minister responded, “Imran Riaz is a political party spokesperson now. You really have to draw [a] distinction.”

She further said, “You have to differentiate between journalists and the journalists who have joined political parties. Once they have joined political parties, they are inciting violence, they are spokespersons of that political parties.”

In a brief back and forth between the two, Aurangzeb mentioned former prime minister Imran being termed a “media predator” during his tenure and asserted that press freedom in Pakistan had improved by “seven points” during the past year.

When asked again about the issue of a person being missing despite his political leanings, she said she condemned anyone being missing, whether it was herself or Riaz.

Aurangzeb’s response elicited severe criticism from several journalists and rights activists, who reminded the minister that a person’s disappearance was an issue of basic human rights irrespective of what political party they favoured.

Lawyer and social activist Jibran Nasir said that Aurangzeb believed Riaz “should be seen as a supporter of PTI and hence considered a sub-human who deserves the treatment being meted out to them.

“Now just imagine the plight of ordinary citizens suffering military trials,” he added.







Pakistan Initiative at Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre Director Uzair Younus said Riaz’s status as a journalist or not should not matter.

He said that Riaz had fundamental constitutional rights granted to him on account of his Pakistani citizenship.

“Stop violating his rights and those of countless others. These disappearances are heinous!” he tweeted.







Senior anchorperson Maria Memon pointed out the lack of an “honest answer”.







Journalist Roohan Ahmed tweeted: “It doesn’t matter if Imran Riaz Khan is a journalist or a ‘propagandist’, as Information Minister Aurangzeb calls him. What matters is that a Pakistani citizen is missing and being denied the right to defend himself in the court of law.”







Journalist Mehreen Zahra Malik called the information minister’s response “Orwellian doublespeak”, adding that it was “unacceptable” and that the government must answer for the missing anchor’s whereabouts.







Senior journalist Raza Ahmad Rumi commented that Riaz’s status as a journalist or party activist did not matter and that his being denied due process was a violation of the law.







Researcher Abdul Basit analysed much the same, saying that “under no circumstances you can arrest a person extrajudicially and refuse to produce him before a court of law. This is an affront against democracy and the rule of law.”







Journalist Murtaza Solangi, while expressing his differences with Riaz, also said: “A human being, a Pakistani citizen is missing and that is and should be a cause of concern. Regardless of the circumstances of his disappearance, it is the job of the state to find him and tell the people about the circumstances of his disappearance. Period.”





Meanwhile, journalist Matiullah Jan — who was himself abducted in Islamabad in July 2020 — said it was a “disappointing response” from a politician and spokesperson of the government, adding that it was “shameful to justify a possible enforced disappearance on the basis of someone not being a journalist.”

His harsh rebuke prompted a reply from the information minister who said she had not justified enforced disappearances and had condemned them.

“I have categorically stated that if a person is missing, any person, whether that person is me or Imran Riaz, I condemn that,” she said.

Live Updates: Live Pakistan - DAWN.COM

How COVID-19 halted labor migration



Faisal Ahmed | Michel Penke

DW
May 23, 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic brought international migration to a standstill — and migrant workers have borne the greatest cost. But Bangladeshi workers are doing surprisingly well.

Abul Basar has been in Saudi Arabia for 14 years now. After failing to find a suitable job in Bangladesh, he tried his luck as a migrant worker in the oil-rich desert state in order to support his family in Bangladesh, first in Riyadh, later in Jeddah. Most recently, he worked as a plumber at a water treatment plant in Al Qasim province. Then the coronavirus hit.

 

Abul Basar has a job in Al Qasim province, Saudi Arabia

Image: privat

As of today, Basar is one of approximately 260 million migrants worldwide whose labor contributes to a major redistribution of capital to lower-income regions of the world. Ninety percent of what he earns — 2,000 Saudi riyals ($533, €498) a month — he sends home to support his family of four people.

More than half of all migrant workers are from South, East and Southeast Asia. They make up around 20% of the workforce in Western, Northern and Southern Europe — and the US. In the Gulf states, it's around 41%.

Europe, the US, and the Gulf States are particularly important destinations for migrant workers and the source of most remittances (dark blue on the map).

Remittances: The economic stabilizer

With their remittances, migrant workers don't just provide for their families. They also stabilize entire national economies. In Zimbabwe, Georgia, Nicaragua and Senegal, remittances account for more than 10% of the national economy. In El Salvador, Gambia, Jamaica and Nepal, it's more than 20% and in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan it's around 30%.

North and sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Central America benefit particularly from remittances.


With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, this model appeared to be in jeopardy. Lockdowns and job losses threatened to choke off the steady flow of capital transfers. In April 2020, World Bank experts estimated that migrants would send $129 billion less back home in the first year of the pandemic — a 20% drop.

In reality, payments recovered quickly after a brief, sharp drop. Currencies of key emerging economies such as Brazil, South Africa and Turkey depreciated sharply at the onset of the pandemic while remittances from dollar and euro economies grew in value. A large number of migrant workers also likely drew on savings in order to support their families back home, despite losing their jobs.

"Usually I send around 500,000 BDT ($5,775; €5,450) a year to my family," Abul Basar said.

But this has changed during the pandemic. Over the last two years, he tried to send more money to his family.

"In 2021, my father was infected with COVID-19 and his treatment cost over 100,000 BDT. Compromising my savings that year, I sent more than 600,000 BDT to my family for bearing their extra cost."
The 'employment gap' with the local population

So the pandemic led to a greater financial burden and to severe cuts for migrant workers. Seasonal and migrant workers in particular, who had little legal protection, quickly lost their jobs. The unemployment rate also rose among the local population in many countries. But migrant workers were more affected by layoffs. In some countries with many seasonal workers, such as Hungary, Spain and Italy, a migrant worker was 50% more likely to be unemployed compared to a local worker.


According to the International Labor Organization, a UN institution, the reason for migrant workers being more likely unemployed than the local population is that they often work in the precarious, low-wage sectors. These include industries hit particularly hard by the pandemic, such as catering, tourism, culture, retail and construction.

The true unemployment figures are likely even higher when you consider migrants who left the country due to job losses and therefore aren't counted in the statistics.

India alone counted 6.1 million stranded workers who had to be flown home on charter flights when the pandemic hit. Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Sri Lanka also saw hundreds of thousands leave the country, in many cases due to layoffs. The ILO says the situation in South America and Africa was similar. Migrant workers in the Arab Gulf states were affected even more.

It's unknown whether these people will be able to return to the countries where they were working anytime soon. While at the beginning of the pandemic, virtually all countries in the world closed borders to prevent travel, migration policies have varied since then: Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa quickly lifted regulations, while other European ones such as Spain and Italy tightened travel restrictions after COVID numbers increased.

 


Vaccination rules have also made entry more difficult. The US, EU, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and especially Saudi Arabia not only require proven vaccination against COVID-19. At least for some time, they rejected certain vaccines produced in China, deeming them insufficient. But these were frequently used in South and Southeast Asia.
The 'Saudization' of Saudi Arabia

The restrictive policy in the gulf in particular could be due to the so-called Saudization of the economy. Underway since 2018, the government initiative requires companies to "increase the proportion of Saudi nationals in their workforce," with penalties for "firms with low percentages of Saudi workers and 'redundant' foreign workers," a study of human rights organization FairSquare Project described. The Saudi health sector, for example, has to achieve an employment quota for locals between 30% and 60%.

"Firms above the quota are granted benefits, while those below face restrictions for expat hiring," a study by Harvard University's Center for International Development indicates.

Throughout the pandemic, discrimination against foreign workers was made even worse by demonization in the media. Many reports alleged that migrant workers were driving up infection rates.

Labor migration out of Bangladesh, however, only took a short term hit from restrictions such as those in Saudi Arabia. The number of workers going abroad decreased by more than two-thirds from 2019 to 2020, the Bangladeshi Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training documented. But since 2021, the number has risen again sharply.

 

Recent figures show that about 75% of Bangladeshi migrant workers have left for Saudi Arabia

For three years running, Bangladesh has broken the record for highest remittance inflows ever seen in its history. According to official estimates, the workers sent back over $22 billion in 2021.

According to Dr. Zahid Hussain, formerly lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka office, there are two special factors behind the recent record remittance inflow in Bangladesh. First, migrant workers likely sent more remittances through unofficial channels than the legal ones.

"Because of the complete disruption of unofficial channels during the pandemic time, they have been forced to choose the latter one," Hussain said.

Many also transferred their savings to Bangladesh amid fear of losing their jobs.

"Some may have returned to the country with all their savings because they did not have a job," he said. "This may help boost the remittance inflow of the last two years."

Edited by: Kristie Pladson

Deportations: Africa's role in EU migration management

Martina Schwikowski

DW
05/11/2023

Algeria has been deporting African migrants to neighboring Niger for years. Authorities force thousands to cross the border through the desert to Assamaka, where the humanitarian situation reportedly is catastrophic.

There's a sense of excitement at the airport in Lagos, Nigeria. In the arrivals hall, migrants are seen returning from Libya, where conditions for migrants are widely known to be atrocious.

One of them is Felicity; her enthusiasm is almost palpable:

"There is nothing better than home," the 20-year-old Nigerian national says upon arrival. "Now we are back and safe. No one can look down on us anymore. We are happy."

Felicity had embarked on her dangerous journey through the Saharan desert in September 2020 already, hoping to reach Europe at any cost. But like thousands of other people, she eventually got stuck in Libya, which for much of the past decade has become the main country of departure for migrants undertaking the expensive - and perilous -crossing to Europe.

Many, however, don't even get anywhere near there. In Libya, migrants are known to be brutally abused by criminal gangs, struggling to survive. The actual number of those who die under inhumane conditions of captivity, servitude or violence is unknown.

Felicity managed to get by with odd jobs for more than two years. But in the end, she says she just wanted to get away.
Shattered dreams and broken promises

In the past three years, according to the United Nations, a total of 13,000 Nigerians have voluntarily returned to their home country with the help of Nigerian government authorities and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Their dream of a better life in Europe has turned into a nightmare, forced to experience violence, abuse and racism in Libya.

Hundreds die in the Mediterranean Sea each year, never reaching European shores

Ärzte ohne Grenzen/dpa/picture alliance

"The biggest challenge is the mental health of the migrants," says Victor Lutenco, IOM staff member at the transit center, where returnees are registered upon arrival. "In addition to material support, psychosocial assistance is our priority."

But these are the images that many people don't see or know when they engage in discussions about migration. The emphasis in such public debates is usually placed firmly on people on small rubber dinghies suffering shipwreck while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

However in truth, the majority of migration narratives featuring Africans actually take place on their own continent: according to the IOM, around 21 million Africans lived in another African country in 2020.

In comparison, the number of Africans living in other regions of the world stood at over 19.5 million the same year.

Reluctant return the desert

More than 70% of migratory movements within Africa take place within West Africa alone, according to the IOM. Many people search for better work opportunities. However, in recent years, irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe as well as between West and Central Africa has also increased significantly.

However, as migration patterns increase, so do deportations in many regions. Transit countries are increasingly overwhelmed with the influx of migrants. One of the leading countries carrying out mass deportations is Algeria.

Between January and the end of March 2023, the North African nation has sent more than 10,000 migrants back to the desert region along its border with Niger, reports the activist network Alarme Phone Sahara (APS), which advocates for migrants and refugees in the Sahel.

According to Moctar Dan Yaye, one of the founding members and Head of Communications and PR at APS, deportation activities to this no-man's land can be divided into two categories: official and unofficial ones.

In the so-called "official" deportations, the main nationals affected are Nigeriens; on the basis of an agreement between Niger and Algeria, Nigeriens are taken directly to the small border town of Assamaka, from where they are then transported to Arlit or Agadez by Nigerien authorities.

In contrast, "unofficial" transports involve people from West and Central Africa as well as from Middle Eastern or Asian countries.

"In Algeria, these people are usually arrested during raids," Yaye told DW. He added that they normally are driven across the desert in trucks and then dropped off, often by the hundreds, at a place known as "Point Zero" in the no-man's land region on the Algerian-Nigerian border.

Death in the Nigerien desert

"After all the trauma they have suffered, they still have to walk to reach a village where they can get first aid," Yaye explained. Usually, he says, these are young people between the ages of 20 and 30, but there typically are a number of pregnant women, children or elderly also among them.

Not everyone makes it through the ordeal; some die and are left behind in the desert.

Migrants from Niger and other countries cross the desert to reach Libya - but only few ever make it further

Jerome Delay/dpa/picture alliance

Human rights organization Medico International, a partner organization of Alarme Phone Sahara, says these deportation practices are "deplorable."

"People have to walk through the desert in scorching heat, without food and without enough drinking water," Kerem Schamberger, migration officer in public relations at Medico International, told DW.

Last year, he says, more than 24,000 people were deported across the Algerian border in what he refers to as "cloak and dagger operations." Among the deportees, he says, where many individuals who had been injured.

Meanwhile in the small border village of Assamaka, these mass deportations appear increasingly to be leading to a humanitarian crisis, which only is exacerbated by the fact that the local IOM reception center there has not been in a position to accept any new deportees for almost six months.

Human rights organization Doctors Without Border (MSF) described the situation in the town as "unprecedented," calling on the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS) to step in and immediately offer protection to those who are finding themselves stranded there

Right-wing elements to blame

Activist Dan Yaye blames the "rise of the far-right in the world" for the current trend: "There have been hateful racist speeches against migration all over Europe for some time now, be it in Italy, Spain, France or Germany," he told DW.

That right-wing wave, however, seems also to have reached Africa by now. According to Yaye, there are many young migrants from sub-Saharan Africa currently in Tunisia, who find themselves "trapped there because they are often harassed by the population and the authorities."

APS has appealed to the African Union to intervene and follow its own protocols to provide protection for migrants, but the calls didn't have an impact.

Migrants say they do not feel safe in Tunisia, with racism notably on the rise

Hasan Mrad/Zumapress/dpa/IMAGESLIVE /picture alliance

In fact in recent months, racially motivated attacks on people from sub-Saharan Africa have been increasing in the North African country following a series of incendiary remarks about immigrants by Tunisian President Kais Saied.
EU policies echoing in the Sahel

Schamberger from Medico International says, however, that such deportations amount to an extension of the EU policy commonly described as "Fortress Europe" - the attempt of the European Union to shield itself from mass migration by keeping irregular migrants outside its external borders.

He highlights that there a law was passed in Niger in 2015 "under pressure from Europe" essentially criminalizing any migration to the north, automatically turning anyone aiding or abetting any given migrant into a supporter of irregular migration.

According to the wording of the law, anyone helping a migrant in exchange for money can be considered a smuggler.

"In concrete terms, this has also led to an increase in the death toll in the Sahara," Schamberger told DW, adding that such laws do not stop migration but rather result in people taking even more dangerous routes through the desert in a bid to avoid security checks.

According to Schamberger, the IOM is just as complicit as the EU in making sure migrants never make to their intended destinations at almost any cost: He regards the UN institution as merely a "border regime" that pretends to help migrants. In his view, voluntary return programs are a last resort dressed up as an alternative.

Schamberger thinks that between all these political actors, life is made so difficult for migrants that they see no other way out. But despite all the dangers and pitfalls of migration, people continue to seek a better future in Europe and beyond.

Nigerian returnee Felicity meanwhile has had to recalibrate her intentions and plans for the future. Following the trauma she suffered in Libya, she has decided to take matters into her own hands and empower herself by focusing on her education.

Felicity says she wants to go back to school - and stay in Nigeria.

Collaboration: Olisa Chukwumah (Lagos)

Edited by: Sertan Sanderson