Day: August 3, 2011

By: Salman Siddiqui

KARACHI: Until someone comes forward to identify the 20-something woman whose body was found in the bushes in DHA Phase VIII, the police are unlikely to be able to crack the case.

She bore torture marks, revealed a sub-inspector, who is also the inquiry officer in the case. “Although the medico-legal officer will give his official report from Jinnah hospital, you could clearly see that acid was thrown on the body; the shoulders and neck were badly burnt,” he said, adding that her dupatta was missing.

He said that the woman must have been in her late 20s and the doctor who conducted the post mortem said that she was also raped. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the media without the permission of his superiors.

Jinnah’s MLO Dilip Khatri told The Express Tribune that the chemical examination report will take a few more days.

This is the second such case in just a week. On July 30, the week-old decomposed body of an O-Level student, Ahmed Macdi, was found from the same area. He was allegedly murdered by one of his classmates.

Darakhshan SHO Nasrullah said that even though he has posted a mobile unit in the area, Defence Phase VIII is so vast that this is not enough. He said he was helpless when it came to this woman’s mysterious murder as she remains unidentified. “You tell me how can I move ahead with the case if I don’t know who the woman was,” he said.

When DIG South Commander Shaukat was asked why the police’s record has been so dismal in cracking such cases, he admitted that investigations remain under par. But he insisted that this is not necessarily due to incompetence. “When one recovers a body from the sea or from a plot in an empty area, the murderer hardly leaves any clues behind,” he said. Also, usually in such cases the murders take place in another part of the city and the body is dumped in another. This helps the murderer buy some time since they exploit the inherent weaknesses in the police system in coordinating cases with other police stations.

He said it was true that by default some investigators describe such victims as ‘call girls’ without even making the effort to find out who exactly the victim was. But he denied that such cases are not taken seriously. “Inquiry teams are formed and we will even form one in this case,” he said.

Usually the bodies that are dumped in the city are males, but last year there were more than 25 women who met the same fate, said the Edhi Foundation’s Anwar Kazmi. Already this year there have been more than a dozen such cases. “The victims are mostly young girls,” he said, adding that the foundation picked up two bodies from Sohrab Goth and Surjani Town recently, which the police claimed were honour killing cases.

Source: The Express Tribune

Date:8/3/2011

PESHAWAR: The workingwomen in Pakistan are passing through a tough routine because of their official and domestic chores that lie double responsibilities on their shoulders.

They also face a static behaviour of their family, especially of their male family members, as they have become a vulnerable unit of the society. But on the other side, the women are facing a conservative social behaviour within a patriotic set-up. It is making their lives a challenging one. There are a lot of examples of the women having inflexible routine in their daily lives.

There is a workingwoman named Shabnam married. She is married and has two kids. She is doing job to financially support the family along with her husband. She said that she is always facing problems in her day-to-day life and remains depressed due to the long working hours both at home and office.

She said during her stay at office she has never been able to give that much attention to her children which they deserve, nor at home the kids are getting too much care of her because of the busy schedule of domestic chores. Besides, she is also not able to concentrate on her personal growth as well.

Shabnam said that her life is not more different from that of a machine, which runs with the minutes of a clock and does not look behind to analyse any consequences. She added that her life would have not been too much tough if her husband would be cooperative and supportive towards her and share some of the domestic responsibilities with her on the one hand while on the other hand if the organisation where she works could be relaxed in timings with mothers at their work places.

The miseries are not limited to the lives of the women doing a long hours duty but it applies at all level of jobs including even teaching. The teaching is considered as compare a relaxed one job but the female teacher’s lives are not much more different than that of the female working in NGOs or in other public and private sectors within same social set up.

A female teacher, 35, teaching in a high school having four children said that she has been teaching for the last about 17 years in district Swat.

Her husband is doing no job and since her marriage, he has neither done any earning nor provided her with any support to bring up their children and in domestic work, despite the fact that he is spending much more time at home.

She said that after coming back from school she is fulfilling all domestic responsibilities and that the continuously following the strict routine and non-cooperative attitude of her husband has made her weak and patient of depression and anxiety.

The teacher is a beautiful lady but the rough attitude of her husband has made her life colourless and has gifted her depressions in rewards of her life long efforts.

For brining balance in the lives of working women development of positive and a gender balanced environment is must. In our society male is considered superior and are exempted from the responsibilities of children brining up and domestic chores, and if women works then in most of the cases their income is considered the assets of male as well.

Keeping in view this attitude the civil society group, public sector and government itself have to design and introduce the project for brining a positive change at this level and make them realize that women are working for their support for making their family strong so they should also have to take some of the domestic responsibilities from their shoulders and make them realize that how much they are valuable to them. Until and unless a positive attitude is developed towards working women, their real empowerment will remain a dream.

There have launched several programs for the empowerment of the women and brining gender balance.

It is a positive step that there is group that is not only thinking but also struggling for the rights of this vulnerable class of the society. But the problem arises when the strategies is followed for change without sincere assessment of the needs of our own women within our own set up.

The most important aspect of society that plays important role in development of the attitudes is the role of parents, so the parents, especially mother has to bring up her children with a positive a gender balanced attitude which could remove all the social imbalances existing in the society.

Source: The Nation

Date:8/3/2011

RAWALPINDI: Rawalpindi Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (RBISE) on Tuesday announced the result of secondary school certificate (SSC) examination and the pass percentage stood at 59.57.

In all, 110,026 candidates appeared under new course and the girls fared better than boys on the whole in the division registering a pass percentage of 65.66 percent, whereas boys secured 54.44 per cent result.

Besides, 1,313 boys and 444 girls were caught cheating in the examination.

According to positions announced by RBISE, the overall first position won by Fahd Farooq Ashraf (1,016 marks) from Divisional Public School Shamsabad, 2nd position went to Basma Tariq (1,015 marks) Munir Public High School Chakwal and 3rd position got by Sonia Basharat (1,008 marks) of Asif Public Girsl High School, Rawalpindi.

In Science Group (boys), Fahd Farooq Ashraf (1,016 marks) secured first position, the 2nd position was secured by Ahsan Ali Tariq (1,004 marks) with and the 3rd position went to Mohammad Fasih (1,003 marks).

In the Science Group (girls), first position was clinched by Basma Tariq (1,015 marks), 2nd position went to Sonia Basharat (1,008 marks) and third position went to Zainab Khalil (1,003 marks).

In General Group (boys) first position was clinched by Mohammad Awais (917 marks) of Madressah Darul Uloom Rehmania Rizvia at Grand Trunk Road, Sohawa, second position was secured by Umar Saeed (866 marks) and third position went to Rasheed Ahmed (848 marks), who has been in jail in connection with Benazir Bhutto murder case.

In General Group (girls) Hafiza Wardah (936 marks) got 1st position, Hafiza Maria Abdur Rasheed (930 marks) got second position while Shair Numa (927 marks) got third position.

Earlier, the Pindi Board held prize distribution ceremony for the position holders at Government College for Women, 6th Road. PML-N MNA Hanif Abbasi was the chief guest.

The ceremony was attended by acting chairman, Pindi Board Dr Mohammad Ashraf, Secretary Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, Controller Examinations Javed Masood Bhatti, heads of educational institutions and large numbers of parents.

The organizers of function informed the audience that Rasheed Ahmed could not attend the function for security reasons.

While addressing the gathering, MNA Hanif Abbasi said that the Punjab government was committed to providing better educational facilities to the people and in this regard, it had spent millions of rupees.

He said that the provincial government had already improved the condition of educational institutes in the city and also sent students aboard for higher education. He said that the government was also working on Danish Schools to provide quality education to poor.

Later, he distributed medals and shields among the position holders.

Source: Dawn

Date:8/3/2011

By: Farah Khalid Khan

Many international and domestic laws have struggled through times to uphold human rights, but discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed and ethnicity occurs frequently enough to be qualified as the most unfortunate predicament of mankind in contemporary times.

Although the UN has made a concerted effort to outlaw racial discrimination and protect human rights through various conventions, yet the implementation of these instruments of international law remains questionable.

Racial discrimination in general, and racial profiling in particular, is gradually precipitating into a non-temporary phenomenon for Muslims and every step in that direction leads to a violation of human rights. Ethnic or racial profiling, as defined by the European Commission, is “encompassing any behaviour or discriminatory practices by law enforcement officials and other public actors, against individuals on the basis of their race, ethnicity, religion or national origin, as opposed to individual behaviour or whether they match a particular ‘suspect’ description.”

It differs from criminal profiling in that the latter is based on objective evidence of criminal activity, whereas the former is based on stereotypical assumptions. The international law could not, therefore, be implemented properly by Europe’s national legislatures and even when it has taken some semblance of implementation, for example, in the form of ECHR (European Convention on Human Rights), the mechanism by the institutions is contrary to the convention.

Muslims are the largest religious minority in Europe and they have been the victims of racial profiling at various occasions, whether it is at the airports, security check posts, surveillances or public places. According to the European Union, 32 percent of British Muslims have been subjected to discrimination at airports and are stopped 128 times more than any other race.

Then the Open Justice Society’s report revealed that a data mining practice searched the personal data of almost 8.3 million targeted, specifically Muslims, and not even a single terrorist was identified. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights report illustrates that in Sweden and other countries, up to every fifth job is closed for people with Arabic-sounding names.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights says that one in three Muslims are discriminated against and 25 percent Muslims surveyed were discriminated against by law enforcement agencies – almost 40 percent of these believe that it was because of “ethnic profiling”.

Besides this, the French law prohibiting burqa in public places is another reflection of state intolerance. The discrimination of races is not only limited to Muslims in Europe, but also to Jews and people of Roma origin. This strengthens the premise that there is an inherent failure to adhere to the notions of human equality, as propagated in international and national laws of the European states.

The International Convention on Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) have been ratified by most European countries. The ICCPR (Article 9) clearly states that every person has a right to security and life. Most European states have ratified the ICCPR and ICERD and are signatories to declarations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion and race; this signifies the willingness of these states to uphold human rights in the international arena.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (Article 14) states that it is against all forms of discrimination, yet this phenomenon plagues most of Europe. Protocol No 12 of ECHR prohibits “discrimination on any grounds in respect of any right set forth in national law by a public authority.” The explanatory report clarifies that it applies to discrimination by public authorities in exercise of discretionary powers.

France, Germany, UK, Poland, Switzerland, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria and others have not ratified the protocol. The UK claims that the “scope is too wide” and that the Protocol has “unacceptable uncertainties”. It was intended to go beyond the limited guarantee given by Article 14, which did not specify discrimination by “public authority”. Unfortunately, only seven of the European Union members are state parties to it. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) handed down 795 judgments in 2010 proving that most EU states are not in compliance with all ECHR obligations.

Post-9/11 and 7/7, police powers were increased to allow stop and search of vehicles, spontaneous on raids houses, electronic data mining and closely monitored electronic transactions. According to a study by the Institute of Race Relations, numerous times anti-terrorism statutes have been used wrongly against Muslim defendants. The ECtHR dismissed a complaint by French Muslim girls that the ban on hijab violated their basic right to religion and right to freedom, along with right to education.

Recently, the ECtHR rejected two cases against the constitutional ban on the construction of minarets. A case, titled Mrs Dahlab vs. Switzerland, was ruled in favour of the state saying that the hijab “seemed to be imposed on women” and that a teacher was supposed to be a symbol of equality and democratic values for her pupils. Hence, Dahlab was refused the right to wear hijab during classes.

Institutionalised racial profiling is equivalent to legitimising intolerance. The paranoia that gives birth to racial profiling floats on the premise that terrorists are Muslims. Hence, all Muslims are likely to become terrorists. Racial profiling is a failed tactic used by law enforcement agencies to control crime or terrorism because there is no statistically proven correlation between the race, ethnicity or religion of an individual and their propensity to commit crime.

It is an outright breach of the ICERD, ICCPR and ECHR (Article 14), whereby discrimination on the basis of race and religion is prohibited. Certainly, international agreements are supposed to be respected: “Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith” (Vienna Convention on Law of Treaties 1969). So, the implementation of international law is a responsibility equally crucial as the law itself.

It is now established that it was naïve of us to think that racial profiling was a temporary post-9/11 or 7/7 phenomenon. The reluctance to ratify Protocol.12 of the ECHR is just another evidence of the extent of institutionalised racial discrimination and an inability to adhere to the normative standards that these countries have set for themselves. A reactionary phenomenon, therefore, is on its way to become a behavioural issue, which might precipitate into the alienation of Muslims in Europe if left unaddressed.
Source: The Nation
Date:8/3/2011