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Missing activist: Samar Abbas’ family petitions IHC

ISLAMABAD, Feb 12: Over a month after he went missing from the capital, the family of a Karachi-based social activist approached the Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Saturday, urging the court to recover him.

The family has also urged the court to protect the missing activist from harassment and torture.

Samar Abbas, a resident of Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood in Karachi, had reportedly gone missing during a business trip to the capital last month, around the same time four other bloggers and activists went missing from the capital and in different parts of Punjab.

His family said Samar had travelled to Islamabad on January 3 and they last had contact with him on January 7, when he was in Sector G-11.

A few days after his disappearance, Ramna police registered a case of kidnapping against unidentified people on the complaint of Abbas’ brother Syed Ashar Abbas.

On Saturday, Ashar filed a writ petition in the IHC. In the petition, they maintained that police had failed to adequately probe the case and recover his brother.

“The petitioner’s brother is a law abiding citizen of Pakistan and has never committed any irregularity and he is not nominated in any criminal case in Pakistan. That the petitioner’s brother’s safety and security is the primary responsibility of the defendants, but unfortunately the defendants have failed to perform their duties within the parameters of law,” the petition reads.

Ashar listed the inspector general of Islamabad Police, Islamabad SSP, Ramna Police Station SHO, head of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), secretary Ministry of Interior, as well as chiefs of the civil and military intelligence agencies such as the army’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the civil Intelligence Bureau, as respondents in the case.

The petitioner maintained that fundamental rights of his brother, including freedom of movement, of expression and to profess any religion were being violated.

The petitioner urged the court to direct the respondents to recover Samar, provide him protection, and “to refrain from harassing, threatening or torturing” him.

Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani of the IHC is expected to take up the petition on Monday.

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Blogger Goraya breaks silence on abduction but refuses to identify his kidnappers

An activist abducted last month has broken his silence on his weeks-long disappearance, but is refusing to point fingers at who his abductors were.

Ahmad Waqas Goraya was among five activists who vanished in Pakistan in early January.

Human Rights Watch, opposition lawmakers and activists have said their near simultaneous abductions pointed to government involvement in a country with a history of enforced disappearances.

Goraya was freed at the end of January along with at least three others and swiftly fled back to the Netherlands, where he has lived for the last decade.

“I felt I would never come back, I would never see my son and family,” the 34-year-old told AFP during a phone interview in which he frequently became agitated.

Goraya, who like the other activists criticised religious extremism and the military establishment, refused to say anything about his captors or describe what happened during his ordeal.

But he angrily rejected accusations that he was a traitor for daring to be vocal about alleged abuses of power in Pakistan, insisting he was a true patriot.

“Nothing was against Pakistan, nothing was against Islam, I was critical of policies because I want to see a better Pakistan,” he said, adding in a later message:”We want a Pakistan with rule of law.”

Goraya also said he fears a virulent ultra right-wing campaign to paint him as a blasphemer while he was missing has followed him to Europe.

The charge, which engulfed Pakistani social media and was repeated by mainstream television hosts, is an incendiary one that can carry the death penalty. Even unproven allegations have caused mob lynchings and violence.
At least 65 people including lawyers, judges and activists have been murdered by vigilantes over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies

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Court Refuses to Reinstate Travel Ban, Dealing Trump Another Legal Loss

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 — A federal appeals panel on Thursday unanimously rejected President Trump’s bid to reinstate his ban on travel into the United States from seven largely Muslim nations, a sweeping rebuke of the administration’s claim that the courts have no role as a check on the president.

The three-judge panel, suggesting that the ban did not advance national security, said the administration had shown “no evidence” that anyone from the seven nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — had committed terrorist acts in the United States.

The ruling also rejected Mr. Trump’s claim that courts are powerless to review a president’s national security assessments. Judges have a crucial role to play in a constitutional democracy, the court said.

“It is beyond question,” the decision said, “that the federal judiciary retains the authority to adjudicate constitutional challenges to executive action.”

The decision was handed down by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. It upheld a ruling last Friday by a federal district judge, James L. Robart, who blocked key parts of the travel ban, allowing thousands of foreigners to enter the country.

The appeals court acknowledged that Mr. Trump was owed deference on his immigration and national security policies. But it said he was claiming something more — that “national security concerns are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections.”

Within minutes of the ruling, Mr. Trump angrily vowed to fight it, presumably in an appeal to the Supreme Court.
“SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

At the White House, the president told reporters that the ruling was “a political decision” and predicted that his administration would win an appeal “in my opinion, very easily.” He said he had not yet conferred with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on the matter.

The Supreme Court remains short-handed and could deadlock. A 4-to-4 tie there would leave the appeals court’s ruling in place. The administration has moved fast in the case so far, and it is likely to file an emergency application to the Supreme Court in a day or two. The court typically asks for a prompt response from the other side, and it could rule soon after it received one. A decision next week, either to reinstate the ban or to continue to block it, is possible.

The travel ban, one of the first executive orders Mr. Trump issued after taking office, suspended worldwide refugee entry into the United States. It also barred visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations for up to 90 days to give federal security agencies time to impose stricter vetting processes.

Immediately after it was issued, the ban spurred chaos at airports and protests nationwide as foreign travelers found themselves stranded at immigration checkpoints by a policy that critics derided as un-American. The State Department said up to 60,000 foreigners’ visas were canceled in the days immediately after the ban was imposed.

The World Relief Corporation, one of the agencies that resettles refugees in the United States, called the ruling “fabulous news” for 275 newcomers who are scheduled to arrive in the next week, many of whom will be reunited with family.

“We have families that have been separated for years by terror, war and persecution,” said Scott Arbeiter, the president of the organization, which will arrange for housing and jobs for the refugees in cities including Seattle; Spokane, Wash.; and Sacramento.

“Some family members had already been vetted and cleared and were standing with tickets, and were then told they couldn’t travel,” Mr. Arbeiter said. “So the hope of reunification was crushed, and now they will be admitted.”
Several Democrats said they hoped the appeals court ruling would cow Mr. Trump into rescinding the ban.

Representative Karen Bass, Democrat of California, said in a statement that the ban “is rooted in bigotry and, most importantly, it’s illegal.”

“We will not stop,” Ms. Bass said.

But some Republicans cast aspersions on the Ninth Circuit’s decision and predicted that it would not withstand a challenge in the Supreme Court.

“Courts ought not second-guess sensitive national security decisions of the president,” Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said in a statement.

“This misguided ruling is from the Ninth Circuit, the most notoriously left-wing court in America, and the most-reversed court at the Supreme Court,” he said. “I’m confident the administration’s position will ultimately prevail.”

Trial judges nationwide have blocked aspects of Mr. Trump’s executive order, but no other case has yet reached an appeals court. The case in front of Judge Robart, in Seattle, was filed by the states of Washington and Minnesota and is still at an early stage. The appeals court order issued Thursday ruled only on the narrow question of whether to stay a lower court’s temporary restraining order blocking the travel ban.

The appeals court said the government had not justified suspending travel from the seven countries. “The government has pointed to no evidence,” the decision said, “that any alien from any of the countries named in the order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States.”

The three members of the panel were Judge Michelle T. Friedland, appointed by President Barack Obama; Judge William C. Canby Jr., appointed by President Jimmy Carter; and Judge Richard R. Clifton, appointed by President George W. Bush.

They said the states were likely to succeed at the end of the day because Mr. Trump’s order appeared to violate the due process rights of lawful permanent residents, people holding visas and refugees.

The court said the administration’s legal position in the case had been a moving target. It noted that Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, had issued “authoritative guidance” several days after the executive order came out, saying it did not apply to lawful permanent residents. But the court said that “we cannot rely” on that statement.

“The White House counsel is not the president,” the decision said, “and he is not known to be in the chain of command for any of the executive departments.” It also mentioned “the government’s shifting interpretations” of the executive order.

In its briefs and in the arguments before the panel on Tuesday, the Justice Department’s position evolved. As the case progressed, the administration offered a backup plea for at least a partial victory.

At most, a Justice Department brief said, “previously admitted aliens who are temporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return to the United States in the future” should be allowed to enter the country despite the ban.

The appeals court ultimately rejected that request, however, saying that people in the United States without authorization have due process rights, as do citizens with relatives who wish to travel to the United States.
The court discussed, but did not decide, whether the executive order violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion by disfavoring Muslims.

It noted that the states challenging the executive order “have offered evidence of numerous statements by the president about his intent to implement a ‘Muslim ban.’” And it said, rejecting another administration argument, that it was free to consider evidence about the motivation behind laws that draw seemingly neutral distinctions.
But the court said it would defer a decision on the question of religious discrimination.

“The political branches are far better equipped to make appropriate distinctions,” the decision said. “For now, it is enough for us to conclude that the government has failed to establish that it will likely succeed on its due process argument in this appeal.”

The court also acknowledged “the massive attention this case has garnered at even the most preliminary stages.”
“On the one hand, the public has a powerful interest in national security and in the ability of an elected president to enact policies,” the decision said. “And on the other, the public also has an interest in free flow of travel, in avoiding separation of families, and in freedom from discrimination.”

“These competing public interests,” the court said, “do not justify a stay.”

The court ruling did not affect one part of the executive order: the cap of 50,000 refugees to be admitted in the 2017 fiscal year. That is down from the 110,000 ceiling put in place under President Barack Obama. The order also directed the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security to prioritize refugee claims made by persecuted members of religious minorities.

As of Thursday, that means the United States will be allowed to accept only about 16,000 more refugees this fiscal year. Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, 33,929 refugees have been admitted, 5,179 of them Syrians.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting from Washington, Katharine Q. Seelye from Boston, and Liz Robbins and Caitlin Dickerson from New York

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Trump’s Order Blocks Immigrants at Airports, Stoking Fear Around Globe

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 — President Trump’s executive order on immigration quickly reverberated through the United States and across the globe on Saturday, slamming the border shut for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Boston, an Iraqi who had worked for a decade as an interpreter for the United States Army, and a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio, among countless others.

Around the nation, security officers at major international gateways had new rules to follow, though the application of the order appeared uneven. Humanitarian organizations scrambled to cancel long-planned programs, delivering the bad news to families who were about to travel. Refugees who were on flights when the order was signed were detained at airports.

“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”

There were numerous reports of students attending American universities who were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad. One student said in a Twitter post that he would be unable to study at Yale.

Another who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was refused permission to board a plane. A Sudanese student at Stanford University was blocked for hours from returning to California.

Human rights groups reported that legal permanent residents of the United States who hold green cards were being stopped in foreign airports as they sought to return from funerals, vacations or study abroad.

The president’s order, enacted with the stroke of a pen at 4:42 on Friday afternoon, suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely, and blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The Department of Homeland Security said that the executive order also barred green card holders from those countries from re-entering the United States. In a briefing for reporters on Saturday, White House officials said that green card holders from the seven affected countries who are outside the United States would need a case-by-case waiver to return to the United States.

Legal residents who have a green card and are currently in the United States should meet with a consular officer before leaving the country, a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters. Officials did not clarify the criteria that would qualify someone for a waiver from the president’s executive order, which says only that one can be granted when it is “in the national interest.”

But the week-old administration appeared to be implementing the order chaotically, with agencies and officials around the globe interpreting it in different ways.

The Stanford student, a legal permanent resident of the United States with a green card, was held at Kennedy International Airport in New York for about eight hours but was eventually allowed to fly to California, said Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokeswoman. Others who were detained appeared to be still in custody or sent back to their home countries.

White House aides claimed on Saturday that there had been talks with officials at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security over the past several weeks about carrying out the order. “Everyone who needed to know was informed,” one aide said.

But that assertion was denied by multiple officials with knowledge of the interactions, including two officials at the State Department. Two of the officials said leaders of Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services — the two agencies most directly affected by the order — and other agencies were on a telephone briefing on the new policy even as Mr. Trump signed it on Friday.

At least one case prompted a legal challenge as lawyers representing two Iraqi refugees held at Kennedy Airport filed a motion early Saturday seeking to have their clients released. They also filed a motion for class certification, in an effort to represent all refugees and other immigrants who they said were being unlawfully detained at ports of entry.

Shortly after noon on Saturday, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, the interpreter who worked on behalf of the United States government in Iraq, was released. After nearly 19 hours of detention, Mr. Darweesh began to cry as he spoke to reporters, putting his hands behind his back and miming handcuffs.

“What I do for this country? They put the cuffs on,” Mr. Darweesh said. “You know how many soldiers I touch by this hand?”

The other man the lawyers are representing, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, remained in custody as his legal advocates sought his release.

Inside the airport, one of the lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked a border agent, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”

“Call Mr. Trump,” said the agent, who declined to identify himself.

The White House said the restrictions would protect “the United States from foreign nationals entering from countries compromised by terrorism” and ensure “a more rigorous vetting process.” But critics condemned Mr. Trump over the immediate collateral damage imposed on people who, by all accounts, had no sinister intentions in trying to come to the United States.

Peaceful protests began forming Saturday afternoon at Kennedy Airport, where nine travelers had been detained upon arrival at Terminal 7 and two others at Terminal 4, an airport official said.

The official said they were being held in a federal area of the airport, adding that such situations were playing out around the nation.

An official message to all American diplomatic posts around the world provided instructions about how to treat people from the countries affected: “Effective immediately, halt interviewing and cease issuance and printing” of visas to the United States.

Internationally, confusion turned to panic as travelers found themselves unable to board flights bound for the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates and, in at least one case, ejected a family from a flight they had boarded.

Seyed Soheil Saeedi Saravi, a promising young Iranian scientist, had been scheduled to travel in the coming days to Boston, where he had been awarded a fellowship to study cardiovascular medicine at Harvard, according to Thomas Michel, the professor who was to supervise the research fellowship.

But Professor Michel said the visas for the student and his wife had been indefinitely suspended.
“This outstanding young scientist has enormous potential to make contributions that will improve our understanding of heart disease, and he has already been thoroughly vetted,” Professor Michel wrote to The New York Times.

Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, which represents many of the biggest public colleges in the country, said he was “deeply concerned” about the new policy. He said it was “causing significant disruption and hardship” for students, researchers, faculty and staff members.

A Syrian family of six who have been living in a Turkish refugee camp since fleeing their home in 2014 had been scheduled to arrive in Cleveland on Tuesday, according to a report in The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Instead, the family’s trip has been called off.

Danielle Drake, a community relations manager at US Together, a refugee resettlement agency, told the newspaper that Mr. Trump’s ban reminded her of when the United States turned away Jewish refugees during World War II. “All those times that people said, ‘Never again,’ well, we’re doing it again,” she said.

On Twitter, Daniel W. Drezner, a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., posted an angry message for Mr. Trump after the executive order stopped the arrival of a Syrian family his synagogue had sponsored.

In an interview on Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC, he expressed sorrow for the fate of the family and apologized for cursing in his Twitter message.

“I can’t quite describe the degree of anger that I felt as a reaction to this, which then caused me to curse at the president on social media,” he said, adding, “which is probably something I should not do as a general rule.”
It was unclear how many refugees and other immigrants were being held nationwide in relation to the executive order.

A Christian family of six from Syria said in an email to Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, that they were being detained at Philadelphia International Airport on Saturday morning despite having legal paperwork, green cards and visas that had been approved.

In the case of the two Iraqis held at Kennedy Airport, the legal filings by his lawyers say that Mr. Darweesh was granted a special immigrant visa on Jan. 20, the same day Mr. Trump was sworn in as president. Mr. Darweesh worked with the Americans in Iraq in a variety of jobs — as an engineer, a contractor and an interpreter for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division in Baghdad and Mosul starting shortly after the invasion of Iraq on April 1, 2003.
A husband and father of three, he arrived at Kennedy Airport with his family. Mr. Darweesh’s wife and children made it through passport control and customs, but agents of Customs and Border Protection detained him.

In Istanbul, during a stopover on Saturday, passengers reported that security officers had entered a plane after everyone had boarded and ordered a young Iranian woman and her family to leave the aircraft.

Iranian green card holders who live in the United States were blindsided by the decree while on vacation in Iran, finding themselves in a legal limbo and unsure whether they would be able to return to America.

“How do I get back home now?” said Daria Zeynalia, a green card holder who was visiting family in Iran. He had rented a house and leased a car, and would be eligible for citizenship in November. “What about my job? If I can’t go back soon, I’ll lose everything.”

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Three weeks on, five missing Pakistani rights activists return home

ISLAMABAD: January 28, Five bloggers and rights activists missing since first week of January have returned home in the early hours of Saturday as mysteriously as they disappeared. Police confirmed that they reached home. They did not say who kidnapped them or handed them over to the police.

The relatives of the missing had registered cases of their disappearance with police. Police has said it will investigate their disappearance

Families of the bloggers confirmed that all of them are safe. They declined to comment further.

No case registered
Bloggers Salman Haider, Waqas Goraya, Ahmed Raza Naseer, Aasim Saeed and Samar Abbas were picked up from capital Islamabad and parts of Punjab province between January 5 and 7.

There had been no word on their arrest by authorities despite protests by their families, friends and rights activists. No case has been registered.

The families are requesting privacy and declining further media queries for the moment to disclose who detained them.
But police sources said that the bloggers were subjected to torture and made to sign undertakings that they will not seek a legal course to file cases against the abductors.

Rights bodies concerned
Human rights bodies have expressed serious concern over a growing sense of insecurity among civil society activists following disappearance of several bloggers over the last fortnight. They had called for their immediate recovery.

Protests have been held across Pakistan by civil rights activists who have claimed that the bloggers have been picked up by intelligence agencies.

Rights activists and members of civil society termed it an attempt to curb freedom of expression guaranteed under Article 19 of Pakistani constitution.

Social media fume at bloggers
Social media and couple of TV channels accused the bloggers of running anti-Islam pages.

A TV anchor Dr Aamir Liaquat Hussain was banned by PEMRA for hate speech against the bloggers and the rights activists who raised voice in their support and raised questions to probe who abducted them.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar had to issue a statement last week that the propaganda against the bloggers was shameful and incorrect. He also made it clear that no case is being registered against the bloggers. He also sympathised with the families of the bloggers, who had to address a press conference in Islamabad to debunk the allegations leveled on social media.

‘Smear campaign against the five’
In a statement, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) stated that the anxiety is fueled not only by the continued disappearance of the five men but also a vicious online smear campaign against them.

“Whoever has disappeared the victims has done Pakistan a great disservice. Not only have their deeds done untold damage to Pakistan’s reputation, but also led to us being firmly counted among nations where expression in the cyberspace makes activists extremely vulnerable,” the HRCP stated in its statement.

Civil rights activists and media have called for making the arrests public. Leading newspapers have written scathing editorials questioning the motive behind the detentions.

HRCP has also said even if the missing bloggers are suspected of any wrongdoing, their apprehension in this manner cannot be justified. If such is indeed the case, law must be followed and courts should have a chance to examine the case against them. “It is in everyone’s interest that the missing bloggers are recovered without delay. It must be understood that national interest is in following the rule of law and due process without any exception. HRCP also urges the competent people in the government to reassure the bloggers and activists that it retains the will and the ability to prevent violation of their rights and provide them a safe environment to air their views and engage in activism.”

International condemnation
The detentions have also attracted widespread international condemnation. U.S. State Department had expressed serious concern over the missing bloggers.. “We’re very concerned by reports that several Pakistani bloggers and activists have been reported missing and we’re going to continue to monitor the situation,” its spokesman Mark C Toner said on January 13.

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Pakistan activist Salman Haider found, returned home

Salman Haider, a rights activist and university lecturer who went missing earlier this month, was returned back to his family late Friday night.

Senior authorities and relatives confirmed to local and international media that Haider had returned to his home on the outskirts of the capital, Islamabad. He was said to be safe and well.
 
“Police sources have confirmed that he has been returned and also that his physical condition is okay,” local news channel Geo News reported on Saturday. “Police say he was returned to Islamabad last night.”

Authorities have not given further details on how Haider was found and the activist has not yet given a statement to police on his disappearance

Mass disappearences
Haider, along with fellow liberal activists Waqas Goraya, Aasim Saeed and Ahmad Raza Naseer, went missing from various cities in Pakistan between January 4 and 7.

All men had been vocal campaigners for human rights and religious freedoms. The men had also published blogs criticizing the military’s political influence and speaking up for the rights of religious minorities.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that the other men have also returned home. However, the source spoke to news agency AP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Police involvement?
No group as claimed responsibility for the five men’s disappearances. However, rights group Human Right Watch said their near simultaneous disappearance suggested that state or military forces may have been complicit.

Pakistan has routinely ranked among the world’s most dangerous countries for reporters, who find themselves caught between the powerful military forces and the militant groups such as the Taliban.

Criticism directed at Pakistan’s powerful military, which dictates the country’s security policies, has often seen journalists detained, beaten and even killed.

Protests and counter-protests
The five bloggers’ disappearance had sparked fierce demonstrations among liberal groups in major cities across Pakistan.

However, the men’s liberal secularlist views have often proven divisive, and those demonstrations were met by a counter-protests and a virulent social media campaign painting them as blasphemers.

Blasphemy charges can carry a mandatory death penalty, while even unproven allegations have stirred murders and even mob lynchings.

Friends, family and supporters of all five men deny the allegations and denounced the campaign as a threat on their lives.

dm/rc (AP, AFP, Reuters)

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Pakistan bans religious TV host Aamir Liaquat Hussain over blasphemy allegations

Pakistan’s television regulator has banned a well-known talkshow host for hate speech, after he hosted shows accusing liberal activists and others of blasphemy, an inflammatory allegation that could put their lives at risk.
Blasphemy is a criminal offence in Muslim-majority Pakistan that can result in the death penalty. Even being accused of blasphemy can provoke targeted acts of violence by religious rightwing vigilantes.

Aamir Liaquat Hussain, who describes his programme aired on Bol TV as the country’s leading television show, had been at the forefront of a campaign to discredit liberal activists who went missing this month, as well as those defending them.

In a document sent to Bol TV and seen by Reuters, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority said Liaquat’s show “wilfully and repeatedly made statements and allegations which (are) tantamount to hate speech, derogatory remarks, incitement to violence against citizens and casting accusations of being anti-state and anti-Islam.”

Liaquat did not answer calls to his mobile telephone on Thursday and representatives of Bol TV were not immediately available for comment.

He had blamed several prominent Pakistanis for an anti-state agenda and being either sympathetic to, or directly involved in, blasphemy against Islam’s founder, the prophet Muhammad.

In 2011, the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by one of his bodyguards after he called for reform of the country’s blasphemy laws.

Many in Pakistan felt that the governor’s critique of blasphemy laws made his death, if not justifiable, understandable – and others went even further.

Taseer’s killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was executed but not before becoming a hero in the eyes of the religious right.
At least 65 others have been murdered over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to figures from the Center for Research and Security Studies thinktank and media.

Liaquat, famous for combining religion and gameshows, has often courted controversy. He once gave away abandoned babies during a broadcast and caused uproar by airing vitriolic hate speech against the Ahmadi minority.

One of the targets of Liaquat’s show was activist lawyer Jibran Nasir, who filed a police complaint under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law on Thursday charging him with “running a defamatory and life-threatening campaign”.
Classical dancer Sheema Kirmani received death threats after Liaquat targeted her on his 19 January broadcast.
Classical dance was banned and associated with obscenity under the regime of military dictator Zia ul Haq, who pushed for greater “Islamisation” of Pakistan in the 1980s.

The situation is potentially worse now than during the Zia era, Kirmani said. “Previously the government could close the auditorium, or arrest you, but now anyone sitting in the audience can decide ‘I am not going to allow this.’

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Bring Pakistan’s Missing Bloggers Home

Since Jan. 4, at least five bloggers and activists have disappeared in Pakistan. Perhaps the best known is Salman Haider, a poet and academic who has been a vocal opponent of religious extremism and the Pakistani authorities’ abuse of opposition activists. The others who have vanished had the courage to critique organized religion, the influence of clerics in Pakistan and the country’s powerful military on social media.

Throughout Pakistan’s history, dissent and free speech have been muzzled by a state that inherited a repressive legal framework from the British colonizers who ruled the Indian subcontinent until 1947. Journalists, poets, intellectuals and many politicians who questioned the state were labeled traitors, sometimes jailed or exiled, and on occasion killed. Almost every Pakistani government — military or civilian — has tried to control and manipulate the news media.

That kind of control has become more difficult as print and electronic media have expanded in the past decade and a half. Since the deregulation of electronic media in 2002, Pakistan has gone from three to 89 television channels. The state’s monopoly of the airwaves is over. Noisy talk shows regularly challenge the elected governments and their policies. But when it comes to the military, journalists and commentators are cautious, often indulging in self-censorship. Laws governing freedom of speech and the news media are vague, and their enforcement is arbitrary; critics are often accused of endangering national security.

The rise of social media and blogs has further expanded the space for dissent. Pakistanis can say on Facebook things they still could not get away with on television or in print. The missing activists, for example, were allegedly affiliated with satirical Facebook pages that ridiculed the hypocrisy of religious clerics and the flawed state policies of using jihad to further foreign policy goals.

Last year, the Parliament passed a draconian cybercrimes law curtailing digital freedoms. This law grants the government overarching powers to control and block information that state officials find offensive, examine and retain users’ data, and impose harsh penalties for a variety of offenses. The law builds on the narrow definition of freedom of speech that the Constitution guarantees in principle but with a number of exceptions that include “glory of Islam,” “the integrity, security or defense of Pakistan” and “public order, decency or morality,” among others. Such ambiguous terms are easily invoked to suppress dissent.

After the enactment of the cybercrime law, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies reportedly asked for legal cover to take pre-emptive “action” against people they believed were breaching national security. This demand was accepted. It is unclear whether the five bloggers and social media activists have disappeared under this arrangement. In fact, there is no information from any official source. But there is good reason to be worried.
In recent years, hundreds of suspected insurgents from the southwestern province of Baluchistan and religious militants from other parts of the country have allegedly been picked up by security agencies, never to be heard from again. A government commission is handling at least 1,129 cases of “missing” persons.

Even if the five activists reappear, they will face the wrath of zealots who want instant justice for blasphemers. In recent days, right-wing social media users and pundits have been smearing the missing men as blasphemers. In addition, they have been accused in absentia by conservative sections of the Pakistani media and right-wing trolls as pawns of foreign powers (read India, the eternal enemy) who are waging an information war against Pakistan.

The exact relationship between these right-wing loudmouths and the security services remains, as ever in Pakistan, murky. But these activists’ lives are most likely in danger. In 2011, a police guard killed Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, because he had publicly defended a Christian woman sentenced to death under the blasphemy law, a law he said needed to be reformed.

By cracking down on people opining on social media, Pakistan joins Turkey, Bangladesh, China and other countries where journalists and activists are hounded by the state and by extremists. Pakistan’s elites, both civilian and military, frequently complain that their country has an image problem. Such disappearances certainly don’t help. Moreover, in an interconnected world, such moves are counterproductive. The elected government of Pakistan must be held accountable for such brazen curtailment of rights. The Parliament needs to review the scope of internet freedoms as well as reconsider the nebulous guarantee of free speech provided by the Constitution.

The international community should help, too. It can remind the Pakistani government of its obligations under the United Nations Convention against Torture and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to put an end to enforced disappearances. In its 2015 compliance report on the civil rights covenant, the government stated that it was “firmly committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It is time to move beyond lip service. Upholding freedom of speech will only bolster Pakistan’s fragile democracy.
But most of all, these missing men should be returned home safely as soon as possible.

Raza Rumi, who teaches at Ithaca College and the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, is a consulting editor for The Friday Times, a weekly in Pakistan, and the author of “The Fractious Path: Pakistan’s Democratic Transition.”

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Donald Trump protests attract millions across US and world (Jan 21, 2017)

Millions of protesters have taken to the streets of cities in the US and around the globe to rally against the new US President Donald Trump.

Larger numbers of demonstrators than expected turned out for more than 600 rallies worldwide.
The aim was principally to highlight women’s rights, which activists believe to be under threat from the new administration.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump used his first full day in office to visit the CIA’s HQ.

He said he was “1,000%” behind the spy agency’s employees and also accused the media of being dishonest in its reporting of the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

Mr Trump did not refer to Saturday’s protests.

‘We are the majority’
The biggest US rally was in the capital Washington, which city officials estimated to be more than 500,000-strong.
This far exceeded the 200,000 that had originally been expected by organisers of the Women’s March on Washington.
By most estimates, it also surpassed the crowd at Friday’s presidential inauguration.

The protesters in the nation’s capital heard speeches from Scarlett Johansson, Ugly Betty star America Ferrera, Ashley Judd, Gloria Steinem and Michael Moore among others.

A planned march to the White House proved impossible as the entire route was filled with demonstrators.
Interim DC Police Chief Peter Newsham told Associated Press: “The crowd stretches so far that there’s no room left to march.”

During his speech, Michael Moore ripped up a copy of the Washington Post, saying: “The headline was ‘Trump takes power’. I don’t think so. Here’s the power. Here’s the majority of America right here. We are the majority.”

The singer Madonna also made an appearance, swearing several times in a speech carried live by major US TV networks.

“Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House,” she said.

America Ferrera told the crowd: “We march today for the moral core of this nation, against which our new president is waging a war.”

Huge crowds were reported at other US protests.
So many turned out in Chicago – some 150,000 – that a planned march had to be called off and the event declared a rally. Streets were also overflowing in Los Angeles.

Huge crowds were also reported in New York, Seattle, Boston and Miami, some of the venues for about 300 nationwide protests.

Many women wore knitted pink “pussy hats” – a reference to a recording that emerged during the election campaign in which Mr Trump talked about groping women.

Organisers of a London rally said between 80,000 and 100,000 people had taken part there. Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol were among the other UK cities holding protests.

Anti-Trump marches took place earlier in Australia, New Zealand and in several Asian cities.

Women’s March Sydney co-founder Mindy Freiband told the crowd: “Hatred, hate speech, bigotry, discrimination, prejudicial policies – these are not American problems, these are global problems.”

Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Geneva, Budapest, Prague and Berlin were among the European cities that took part.
In Paris, protester Francoise Seme Wallon said Mr Trump was “a nasty guy and he’s dangerous for the whole world”.

Mr Trump’s first full day in office began with an inter-faith service at Washington National Cathedral.
He then visited the CIA’s HQ in Langley, Virginia.

In a speech there, he told about 400 employees: “There is nobody who feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than me.”

During the election campaign, Mr Trump had sharply criticised the intelligence agencies over their stance on alleged Russian involvement.

Mr Trump also talked up his yet-to-be-confirmed nominee for CIA chief, Mike Pompeo.
“You will be getting a total gem,” he told the employees.

In one of his first steps, Mr Trump ordered government agencies to ease the “economic burden” of the health law known as Obamacare.

His team also quickly overhauled the White House website. The revamp replaces Barack Obama’s policies with Mr Trump’s new agenda.

The new administration lists only six issues on the website – energy, foreign policy, jobs and growth, military, law enforcement and trade deals.

Critics complained that it made no mention of civil rights, healthcare, climate change or LGBT rights.

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We Will Set Rules, Not You: US Media Tells Donald Trump In Open Letter

The American Press Corps, White House journalists, in an open letter to President-elect Donald Trump has said that it is the reporters and not him who will set the rules and decide what to serve the readers.

“It is, after all, our airtime and column inches that you are seeking to influence. We, not you, decide how best to serve our readers, listeners, and viewers. So think of what follows as a backgrounder on what to expect from us over the next four years,” said US journalists in the letter published in Columbia Journalism Review, an American magazine for professional journalists published by the Columbia University.

Acknowledging that the American Press Corps and the US President-elect don’t get along well, the letter said: “It will come as no surprise to you that we see the relationship as strained.”

Observing that Trump may not allow journalists access to cover his administration, the letter further states: “We are very good at finding alternative ways to get information… Some of the best reporting during the campaign came from news organisations that were banned from your rallies. Telling reporters that they won’t get access to something isn’t what we’d prefer, but it’s a challenge we relish.”

“You’ve banned news organisations from covering you. You’ve taken to Twitter to taunt and threaten individual reporters and encouraged your supporters to do the same. You’ve advocated for looser libel laws and threatened numerous lawsuits of your own, none of which has materialized,” the letter read.

“But while you have every right to decide your ground rules for engaging with the press, we have some, too.”

The Corps, in the letter, also warned Trump over tweeting something that is “demonstrably wrong” and said: “When you or your surrogates say or tweet something that is demonstrably wrong, we will say so, repeatedly. Facts are what we do, and we have no obligation to repeat false assertions.”

The letter further stated that US journalists will set higher standards for themselves than ever before.

“We credit you with highlighting serious and widespread distrust in the media across the political spectrum. Your campaign tapped into that, and it was a bracing wake-up call for us. We have to regain that trust. And we’ll do it through accurate, fearless reporting.”

Accusing the President-elect of trying to divide and use reporters’ deep competitive streaks to cause fights, the letter stated that “those days are ending. We now recognize that the challenge of covering you requires that we cooperate and help one another whenever possible”.

The Corps also reminded Trump that journalists have been around since the founding of the republic, and their role in the “great democracy” has been ratified and reinforced again and again and again.

“We’re playing the long game. Best-case scenario, you’re going to be in this job for eight years. You have forced us to rethink the most fundamental questions about who we are and what we are here for. For that we are most grateful.”