The coalition of social media tech giants and legal experts have alarmed that the new regulation will curb political dissent, harm privacy, and online business   High Asia Herald Report   Islamabad:  Human rights and media watchdogs as well as lawyers, citizens and a global technology coalition have hit out at government’s new measures to regulate social media platforms and …

The audience at the first Asma Jehangir memorial lecture organised by the HRCP at Islamabad Hotel on Tuesday. Credit: Asif Khan/hrcp HRCP announces Asma Jahangir Award for human rights defenders; resumes Nisar Osmani Award for courage in journalism, and I.A Rehman research grant in human rights   By Amir Khan  Islamabad: A veteran human rights defender has called for a …

Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, and her party supporters attend a protest march against the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and a new citizenship law, in Kolkata, India, December 16, 2019. Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri Fiction in time of fake news. Below is the text of the 2020 Clark Lecture in English Literature instituted by Trinity College, Cambridge. We …

High Asia Herald Report   Islamabad: A Senate panel on Monday observed that the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has no jurisdiction to regulate web TV and over the top (OTT) content services. The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights called the PEMRA Chairman for a briefing about the authority’s recent proposal to regulate Web TV and OTT services. “(PEMRA) …

High Asia Herald Report   Islamabad: Civil society and women rights activists have condemned a resolution passed by the lower house of the parliament supporting capital punishment for those involved in sexual abuse. “We at Women Democratic Front condemn National Assembly’s resolution on #HangRapistsPublicly,” the socialist feminist movement said in a statement posted on its official Facebook page. Sexual barbarism is undoubtedly widespread, but …

Herald Report   The US invasion of Iraq was aimed at setting up permanent military bases there and to benefit energy corporations and weapons industry, comments Professor Noam Chomsky, an internationally acclaimed American linguist in a conversation with Hassan Mirza, published in The Express Tribune Blogs section. The conversation is based on correspondence between the two over a period of …

Speakers at HRCP seminar decry regression of democratic values, violations of fundamental rights, propose a broad-based coalition based on minimum people's agenda 

Herald Report As celebrities and TV anchors took to remembering General Pervez Musharraf as a military dictator whose progressive policies ultimately led to his own undoing, academics, and activists, including sociologists and historians, present their case against this caricature of Musharraf, says a report in The Nation newspaper. Ammar Ali Jan, an academic and activist who teaches at the Forman …

  Parliamentarians green-light bill that will legalise 20,000 stateless residents from former Soviet republics DUSHANBE: Tajik lawmakers have approved a bill on the mass legalization of stateless residents of the Central Asian nation from other former Soviet republics. According to the bill approved on December 11, some 20,000 illegal residents, many of whom settled in Tajikistan shortly before and after …

  The Maulana has dared to challenge an authoritarian system, but the fate of democracy will remain in doldrums until all democratic forces mobilise the downtrodden people of Pakistan, writes senior journalist and political commentator Imtiaz Alam in an opinion article published in The Wire, an online news portal. This column written by him has been censored in Pakistan where news portals …