TOMORROW is Youm-i-Pakistan. A big military parade will be staged to remind 220 million people that the Pakistani nation is alive, well and always at attention. Over the past few weeks nationalist sentiment has been high, Pakistan versus India once again at the forefront of the news cycle. It is apt that March 23 has coincided with state nationalism in …
Erdogan’s regime refuses entry to two French Communist Party members who planned to observe the local elections on March 31 News Desk Turkish authorities have escalated attacks on political opponents ahead of next week’s crucial local elections, refusing entry to two French Communist Party members and deporting them on Thursday. Sylvie Jan and Michel Laurent arrived to attend the Newroz …
by Haider Nisar Sawati It was 1983 when last student union elections were held in universities and colleges across Pakistan and on the eve of 1984 student union elections, the ruling junta of contemporary times banned them. Ziaul Haq collected the reports that anti-government student unions will sweep elections and fear of losing the rule as Ayub Khan had lost, …
EVEN for a society that views most form of rights-based activism with suspicion, the backlash against Aurat March has been particularly acrimonious. In the days since the protests were staged in several cities across Pakistan, countless women have been subjected to retaliation — from photos of their placards being doctored, to receiving death and rape threats, to having established political and …
Tooba Syed MARCH 8, 2019, will be remembered as a day of hope and unabashed protest, in which thousands of women in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Hyderabad, Quetta, Peshawar, Gilgit-Baltistan and Mardan took to the streets and marched. Aurat March and other women’s marches reflected the collective consciousness of Pakistani women coming together organically and wilfully to march against deeply entrenched social and …
Arley Titzler India and Pakistan were separated at birth, established in 1947 when they gained independence from Britain. Since then, these two countries have been engaged in a violent, 70-year-long dispute over control of Kashmir, waging three wars, countless skirmishes, attacks, and subsequent retaliations. Today, India occupies 45 percent of Kashmir, Pakistan occupies 35 percent, and China occupies the remaining 20 percent. …
Herald Report Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan authorities have signed agreement to ease tension on the borders of the two Central Asian countries after three days’ negotiation at the Chorkuh village of Khoji Alo Jamoat (municipality). The road that connects the Voruh exclave with the city of Isfara was opened today, after a five-day blockade. The road, previously blocked by the Kyrgyz side, was …
Patriarchy is the name given to a dynamic web of ideas, policies, laws, and social practices that bring male domination and privilege into effect. It manifests in constrained opportunities for women, writes Dr Shenila Khoja-Molji. During a recent interview with a Pakistani TV channel, organisers of the ‘Aurat March’ noted that they were marching against ‘patriarchy’. Many of them have …
An obituary written at the time of Tony Benn’s passing on a life well lived By John Rees I have spent a lifetime as a political organiser and for as long as I can recall if I wanted to get something moving the first phone call I would make would be to Tony Benn. If there was a Stop the War …
News Desk Deadly violence has broken out for a second consecutive day along a disputed section of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border after Kyrgyzstan restarted construction work on a controversial road in the area. An official in Tajikistan’s interior ministry told RFE/RL that one villager from Tajikistan’s Vorukh exclave in the Ferghana Valley was shot dead on March 14 and two others …
