Day: June 23, 2012

SANGHAR: A man killed his wife and two daughters in Alam Zardari village in the Sarhari area on Friday. Sohrab Brohi axed to death his daughters Lal Khatoon, 25, and Khair Khatoon, 18.

Their mother Khair Bibi, 40, who tried to rescue the girls, received injuries. She died while being taken to hospital.

Neighbours caught hold of Sohrab and beat him up. He was injured and taken to a hospital in Shahdadkot where police took him into custody.

Bodies of the two sisters were taken to Rural Health Centre in Sarhari for post-mortem and later to their village for burial.

Motive behind the killings could not be ascertained. Police believed that a domestic dispute might have been the cause.

Dawn

THE Supreme Court has taken suo motu notice of the Kohistan incident and sought a report from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary, commissioner and DIG of Hazara division besides the Kohistan DPO. A local jirga had [allegedly] sentenced five girls to death for clapping while two boys were dancing during a marriage ceremony. The girls were allegedly killed on the orders of the jirga but the administration and the ulema accused of issuing the decree denied any such incident. The Supreme Court ordered that the girls, if alive, should be produced in court under protective custody.

It is an open secret that the office-bearers of NGOs that thrive on foreign funding are in the habit of distorting facts and exploiting such incidents to tarnish the image of Pakistan at internationally. Those who are an authority on the local traditions of Kohistan also denied any such happening. The former nazim of Kohistan has clarified there is no tradition in the area that is contrary to the injunctions of Islam. The inhabitants of the remote areas of Pakistan and the residents of urban Kohistan seek guidance of the ulema on complicated issues. And the ulema always advise them to strictly follow the constitution, laws, rules and regulations of Pakistan while remaining within the ambit of the Sharia. …The people who had levelled the allegations could not provide any documentary proof nor did the local administration find any concrete evidence regarding the alleged killing of the girls. The Kohistan DCO has termed the news baseless that a jirga pronounced the death sentence… According to the DCO, two among the four ‘convicted’ girls are married … one is living with her husband in Mansehra while the other is in Muzaffarabad

Dawn

THIS is apropos of the letter ‘Kohistan girls’ case’ (June 6). I agree with the views of the writer regarding the jirga system in our society. We have been following century-old obsolete systems in society which is a great impediment for women to have education and to live a free dignified life.

In Balochistan jirga, in Sindh wadero, in Punjab chaudhry and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sardar — these conventional kinds of cultures in our society — are not acceptable in the current globalised and enlightened moderation era. These systems only create chaos and turmoil in society.

Owing to these cultures, educational institutions get devastated and women are not allowed to go out of their houses throughout most of the country.

Besides, these men-dominated cultures do not like giving fundamental rights to their womenfolk. Honour killings in Sindh and slaughtering of women in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are a few examples of these outdated cultures.

Whatever bills are being passed by the government regarding women is a good step in the right direction. However, it remains to be seen whether they are implemented in the right way.

The current killing of women in Kohistan merely for singing and clapping at a marriage is really a shameful act. Now the question is: how do you change the thinking of these people who set up society’s norms and values? They do what has been injected in their minds for the past several centuries. Their so-called norms and values include taking the lives of innocent people every day and night.

All humanitarian organisations, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, policymakers and politicians need to be serious regarding all these happenings and urgent steps should be taken to put these culprits behind bars.

Dawn

Lawmakers during a Sindh Assembly session on Friday condemned the abusive language used by MPA Sheikh Alauddin against a female lawmaker in the Punjab Assembly, and demanded the legislator’s suspension.

When Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) MPA Farheen Mughal, who had also spoken about the issue during the previous assembly session, quoted what Alauddin had said to the female lawmaker, every MPA present stood up and chanted “shame, shame” in unison.

Later, Mughal said Punjab Assembly Speaker Rana Iqbal had committed an injustice against women by allowing Alauddin to use such derogatory language.

She also questioned as to why the superior judiciary was silent over the incident and not yet taken suo moto notice.

In a fit of anger, Mughal said if Alauddin had used such language in the Sindh Assembly, they [female MPAs] would have “killed him”. Calling for Alauddin’s arrest, she said it was the “voice of their hearts” that the Punjab MPA be hanged.

Talking about Yusuf Raza Gilani’s disqualification as the prime minister, Ayesha Khoso, also a PPP MPA, said whenever politicians expressed their desire to strengthen the parliament, conspiracies were hatched to remove them.

“Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged because he wanted to empower parliament and now Yusuf Raza Gilani has fallen victim to the same conspiracy.”

Adding to Khoso’s remarks, PPP’s Dr Abdul Sattar Rajpar said one of his party’s prime ministers was hanged and another disqualified. He wondered what would be the “fate” of the next prime minister, as arrest warrants were issued to the party’s previous candidate for the position.

The News

KOHAT: Militants blew up a girls’ school with explosive material in Kohat district, police informed on Friday.The police said miscreants had planted an explosive device in the girls’ school at Ghulam Banda area which went off late on Thursday night. The blast completely destroyed three rooms and the sidewalls of the school, however no causality was reported.

The News