South Asia in motion

Raw Video: Blast at Pakistan Luxury Hotel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38w9B811ALo

Police in a fix over child marriage law

Police broke up a child marriage but did not register a case on Friday saying there was no provision in the relevant law to book the people who had arranged the ceremony.

The Daily Dawn reports that a police raid foiled the marriage of a seven-year-old boy with a four-year-old girl on Thursday night in Nazimabad area of the Karachi city in Pakistan.

Unaware of what was happening around them, the boy and the little girl were in tears during the raid.

Police detained the boy’s father, Mohammad Ismail, and Maulana Gul Hussain Kamal, the Qazi who had been brought to solemnise the Nikah. The girl’s father, Nasir, escaped.

Liaquatabad SP Amir Farouqi told Dawn that an FIR could not be registered, but police had prepared a report which would be submitted to a first class magistrate.

The magistrate will decide the case under the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929, Mr Farouqi said.

“We spent the entire day looking for sections to book the families for the offence but there was no section in the Pakistan Penal Code which dealt with child marriage,” the Nazimabad SHO said.

According to police, Mohammad Ismail said his sister had been divorced 30 years ago and an ensuing dispute was being settled with the marriage between the children.

 Police raided the place when Nazakat Ali, an office-bearer of the PPP district central and a relative of the family, informed them about the marriage.

The SHO quoted the Qazi as saying that the girl’s father had come to him saying that his services were required for the marriage of his 20-year-old daughter.

The Qazi, who is around 70 years old, told the media that he had refused to perform Nikah when he saw that the groom was a small boy wearing garlands and a little girl was in bridal dress.

Ismail told reporters that since he had been living in Dubai for years he was unaware of the local law about marriage.

He said that Nikah was mere a formality and Rukhsati would have taken place when the children attained puberty.

Ismail alleged that his relative Nazakat Ali was trying to settle personal score with him.

Second blast in Pakistan

Click the link below to see a  video from Pakistan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jp6V20i9ec

Men’s Rights Bill

My best attempt at a translation of the ‘writing on the rickshaw’ is:
Addressed to Honorable General Musharraf Sahib. Accept my congratulations on the passage of the women’s rights bill. Now please, also give us a bill on Men’s rights. We will be grateful. It is very difficult to drink (alcohal) these days.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes

There is an ancient saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. A Case of Exploding Mangoes is the story of one such plane. Why did a Hercules C130, the world’s sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of:

1.Mechanical failure
2.Human error
3.The CIA’s impatience
4.A blind woman’s curse
5.Generals not happy with their pension plans
6.The mango season
Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri?

Here are the facts:

A military dictator reads the Quran every morning as if it was his daily horoscope.
Under Officer Ali Shigri carries a deadly message on the tip of his sword.
His friend Obaid answers all life’s questions with a splash of eau de cologne and a quote from Rilke.
A crow has crossed the Pakistani border illegally.

As young Shigri moves from a mosque hall to his military barracks before ending up in a Mughal dungeon, there are questions that haunt him: What does it mean to betray someone and still love them? How many names does Allah really have? Who killed his father, Colonel Shigri? Who will kill his killers? And where the hell has Obaid disappeared to?

Teasing, provocative, and very funny, Mohammed Hanif’s debut novel takes one of the subcontinent’s enduring mysteries and out if it spins a tale as rich and colourful as a beggar’s dream.

Sikh loses helmet fight

Let's see what happened next:

The case of Baljinder Badesha, a Canadian Sikh who was fighting a court battle to overturn a law barring Sikhs from driving motorcycles without a helmet, is fast gathering momentum across Canada and the globe.

A judge has ruled Ontario's helmet law does not discriminate against a turban-wearing Sikh motorcyclist.

Baljinder Badesha's fight against a $110 fine for not wearing a helmet took on the character of a constitutional challenge, with the Ontario Human Rights Commission intervening on his behalf.

The commission argued the provincial helmet law discriminates against Badesha because it violates his constitutional rights.

Ontario Court Justice James Blacklock ruled against that argument today.

Blacklock says allowing Badesha and other Sikh motorcyclists to ride without helmets would put "undue hardship" on the province because of safety concerns.

Similar challenges have seen exemptions made for Sikh motorcyclists in British Columbia and Manitoba. The United Kingdom, Hong Kong and India also allow devout Sikhs to forego the helmet.

I remember a Stoney Creek reader suggesting in a letter to editor of a Toronto newspaper that Badesha can get a helmet made.

What you think about this issue?

Please send us your comments.

 

Musharraf, State TV and Heavy bias

With just four days to go to the 18 February parliamentary elections, Reporters Without Borders confirms that the state television station PTV's coverage continues to be heavily biased in favour of President Pervez Musharraf and his allies. The press freedom organisation has been monitoring the election campaign coverage of Pakistan's only terrestrial TV broadcaster since 28 January.

Here are some cartoons I have received over the past few months :

    

 

A child dies every three seconds in India

(Children of workers sit near a smoldering fire to keep warm, at a construction site in Gurgaon, India, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008. In 2006, nearly 9.7 million children died worldwide before reaching the age of 5, mostly from preventable causes such as diarrhea, malaria or malnutrition, UNICEF said in its annual report, released Tuesday. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

It's hard to believe but every three seconds a child dies in India. That's a startling revelation in the latest UNICEF report.

India has the distinction of being the country where 50 percent of the world's malnutrition deaths are reported.

Each year around the world, around four million children die within the first 28 days of life, and India accounts for a quarter of all the world's neonatal deaths

It's shocking that in India 2.1 million children die annually before they are five and more than 50 percent of them do not even survive for a month. That means about 5,700 infants die daily. All over the world 9.7 million children die annually.

Pakistan deports U.S reporter

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Nicholas Schmidle, a freelance reporter whose latest piece, "Next-Gen Taliban," appeared in January 6 issue of The New York Times Magazine, has been deported from Pakistan.

From the CPJ press release, which quotes NYT Mag editor Scott Malcolmson:

Security services members visited Schmidle on Monday, and the local police gave him a deportation order on Tuesday, according to Malcomson. While the deportation order was dated December 29, 2007, editors at the magazine say they believe it was back-dated, and that officials issued it after the magazine’s article ran. The reporter, who is also a fellow at the Washington-based Institute of Current World Affairs, regularly freelances for The New Republic and Slate. He had been in the country 16 months, Malcomson said.

“I have yet to hear the Pakistani side in this, but if this is a sign that journalists will be subject to reprisals for reporting honestly on conditions in Pakistan, that is a cause for serious concern,” Gerald Marzorati, editor of the New York Times Magazine, told CPJ.

Visit Nicholas Schmidle's website.

Meeting with Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto has been part of my life since I was a 16-year-old student.

I first saw her in 1988 when a march she was leading passed by my father's shop in the east-Pakistani city of Sialkot. It was nine years after the execution of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, by acting President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

It took until years later when I was working as a reporter in Pakistan for me to understand that Bhutto had something in mind for Pakistan. That's why she chose the dangerous path of politics even after it claimed the lives of her father and two brothers.

Even though I was not a Bhutto supporter, I was always amazed that she gave up a luxurious Western lifestyle to return to a country like Pakistan.

Her party slogan is Roti, Kapra Aur Makan. The Urdu words mean food, cloth and shelter, and they made her popular among the poor and her party workers. Bhutto lived much of her life outside Pakistan.

She spent a long stretch in the United States and was educated at Harvard and Oxford universities.

Bhutto's father was executed in 1979 after a military coup. She fled the country soon after, returning in 1988. She wasn't able to fluently speak Urdu, the national language. That was an issue in the media until she mastered it.

She gave up her western lifestyle to take the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples' Party. She believed in its motto -- Democracy in Pakistan.

As a reporter, I first met her in 1994 when I was working for Pakistan's national Urdu language newspaper. I found her well educated and a great admirer of the democracy that she always struggled to bring to her country.

She became prime minister at 35 -- the youngest person, and the first woman in the Islamic world.

Bhutto always had a great smile on her face, which I think was also a gift given to her by God while she lived in western countries.

One thing that sticks in my mind was the pink scarf she often wore. We were at a wedding together and I asked her why she wore it so often. Bhutto gave me a big smile and pointed toward many men wearing pink shirts. She explained to me that it was a colour associated with women in the West. It was a personal learning for me.

In government or in exile, Bhutto was always outspoken. It was one of the reasons for her popularity. And it made her a target for enemies.

She knew her life was in danger from the moment she returned to Pakistan to contest the Jan. 8 elections. But the two-time prime minister didn't dwell on it.

"I don't think about my death," she said recently.

Bhutto was a very strong believer of Sufism, and was a frequent visitor at religious shrines. Being a Shia Muslim, she was very popular among the Shia minority in the country.

She was also important to the poor. In my travels to remote areas and villages, I often found her picture in their homes.

It was if she were a saviour.

I can imagine those muddy homes flying her party flags after she arrived in 1988. The majority of those who live in poverty loved her to the extreme.

Many politicians say they embrace the idea of democracy in Pakistan. But they don't hesitate to switch parties or loyalties when it suits them.

Bhutto never did.

Recently, she was opposed by the same people who were her allies in the past. They turned on her, using bad language about her during their election rallies. I can only say that she was a fragrant island in the middle of a putrid sea of politicians.

Being the first woman leader in the Muslim world was a great deal for the women of that country. They felt proud of her.

Even her opponents were always proud of her being an educated woman from that troubled country.

How Canadians took the news of her death was a great surprise for me; and I am glad to see how people here are concerned over issues of human rights in other countries.

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