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Posts published in “Pak Media comment”

Pakistan and the question of locating bin Laden: Outrageous silliness

by Umber Khairi in TNS, Nov 25, 2018 If you are a fan of black humour there’s no dearth of it these days: we are surrounded by scenarios and personalities and statements that are hilarious and ridiculous, albeit also deeply depressing once you have laughed at the absurdity. The US president provides material for many such scenarios — his statements are often juvenile and brattish and undiplomatic (or refreshingly honest, whichever way you choose to…

Minorities need actual safeguards in Pakistan: op-ed by Yasser Latif Hamdani in Daily Times, November 19th 2018.

The writer is a practising lawyer and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School in Cambridge MA, USA. Just before partition of India, the founding father of this country Mr Jinnah attempted to woo the Sikhs to the new state by offering them 40 percent guaranteed representation in Pakistan’s Armed Forces, Judiciary and civil services. He also offered them an autonomous region Patiala — within the Pakistani federation. If that was enough Jinnah also promised…

Fact-check: Is this a photo of FM Qureshi receiving a standing ovation at the UN?

AFP report in The News, Nov 16, 2018 A photo posted to Facebook purports to show Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi receiving a standing ovation at the United Nations General Assembly. The photo is manipulated from an original image of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This Facebook post dated October 1, 2018 says “When leaders are honest then the world will respect itself. Look at the respect for Foreign Minister in America because behind…

Pak-Saudi-China ties-CPEC: Six editorials, Oct 2-3, 2018

1.On with the handbrake ; edit in The Express Tribune, October 3rd, 2018 The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC) is not having a good week. Austerity is the watchword de jour and it goes far beyond the sell-off of a few buffaloes. The upgrading of the national railway system is a core component of CPEC and it has been announced that CPEC investment in railway projects has been slashed to $6.2 billion and there is…

Pakistan: Women, minorities have minor share of govt postings

by Ramsha Jahangir in Dawn, September 23rd, 2018 KARACHI: Of the total 649,176 sanctioned posts in the federal government, only 5.48pc are currently occupied by women and 2.82pc by non-Muslims As per the Establishment Division’s statistical bulletin about the employees of the federal government and its autonomous bodies for 2016-17, the total number of sanctioned posts are 649,176, but 78,623 of them are lying vacant, leaving the departments to function with 570,553 employees only. Interestingly,…

Getting petty with the Pak press: by Umber Khairi in TNS, September 23, 2018

The author is a former BBC broadcaster and producer, and one of the founding editors of Newsline. We probably all remember some episode from our childhood whereby we might have rescinded an invitation out of pique or anger. You know — the sort of episode in which you perhaps ‘uninvited’ a classmate to your birthday party because of a playground squabble or else maybe insisted on snubbing somebody thus because you’d had a hurtful falling…

Pakistan – Is another military takeover around the corner?: op-ed by Muhammad Omar Iftikhar in Daily Times, Sept 14, 2018

The writer is a columnist and author of You Rise Today Pakistan’s democratic setup has had a rocky relationship with the military for many decades. It is more like a musical chairs program, where both the political leaders and military heads have been eyeing their chance to take the seat or change the person sitting on it. The most recent military rule of Pervez Musharraf that ended in August 2008, was the fourth under a…

Rise in ‘honour’ crimes in Pakistan: edit in Dawn, September 13th, 2018

THE number of women — and men — being killed in the name of ‘honour’ keeps rising at a disturbing rate in this country (Pakistan). Only last week, three brutal cases of ‘honour’ crime were reported. A father confessed to killing his daughter, her children and husband in Hafizabad in Punjab because she had married a man of her own choice four years ago. A woman and her teenage neighbour were strangled by the woman’s…

Pakistan and Ahmadis: by Ishtiaq Ahmed in Daily Times, September 13th 2018

(The writer is Prof Emeritus of Pol Science, Stockholm University & Hon Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore) In the light of the clumsy and awkward decision of the Imran Khan Government first to include Dr Atif Mian in the Economic Advisory Council and then exclude him the next day under pressure from the Ulema and others has been the subject of unprecedented attention from the world press and social…

Freedom of press on the decline in Pakistan, warns CPJ

Report in Dawn, September 13th, 2018 KARACHI/ISLAMABAD: The climate for press freedom in Pakistan has been deteriorating, even as overall violence against and murder of journalists decline, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Wednesday. In a special report compiled after recording testimonies of journalists in various cities of the country, the CPJ said that journalists, including freelancers, had “painted a picture of a media under siege”. The contents of the report appear to…

Pakistan’s Water Patriotism : edit in the Nation, Sept 13, 2018

What do the Pakistani flag, the Shalwar Kameez and the Diamer-Bhasha dam project have in common? All three of them have become conflated with patriotism. Those who oppose either one earn scorn for being against the interests of the country. The Sindh Chief Minister, Murad Ali Shah, held a conference yesterday where he voiced some technical concerns he had over the Diamer-Bhasha dam project, stating that since the proposed site was in a seismic zone,…