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Posted by Rana Tanveer in Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, ANAY WALEY GHAZWA-I-HIND KAY JAANBAZ, GENOCIDE & DISCRIMINATION OF SIKHS IN INDIA, Hindu India, HIndu Terrorism, Hindus Ignore Rape, India, India Hall of Shame, INDIA'S HINDUISM, Makaar Dushman, Suppression of Women in Hindu India on August 17th, 2013
The Indian government tried to make this year’s Independence Day a special one, despite the country’s economic woes. That was never going to be easy, with the rupee continuing its long slide to record lows. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged the problems of India’s economy in his speech at the Red Fort, the Muslim-Mughal-era citadel in the center of Delhi. “Economic growth has slowed down at present, and we are working hard to remedy the situation,” Singh said as he marked the anniversary of the end of British rule in 1947.
In the days before the Aug. 15 holiday, the government tried to change the subject by publicizing some impressive military breakthroughs. The country activated the atomic reactor for its first Made-in-India nuclear submarine over the weekend, for instance, and followed that up with the launch of its first home-developed aircraft carrier. The 37,500-ton ship won’t actually be operational for several more years, so the debut seemed timed to provide a nice setup for Independence Day.
Then disaster struck. A day before the holiday, an explosion rocked a diesel-powered Indian navy submarine docked in Mumbai. The blast and the fire that followed left 18 Indian sailors dead. India is “deeply pained that we lost the submarine,” the Prime Ministers aid in his speech. “We pay homage to the brave hearts we have lost.”
At the same time that it was trying to use military wins to distract from the country’s economic problems, the government was trying to stem the currency’s weakness. Over the past few weeks, the finance ministry and the central bank have announced measures to prop up the rupee. The Reserve Bank of India yesterday cut the amount Indian companies can invest abroad: The limit had been 400 percent of a company’s net worth, but on Aug.14 the central bank lowered that to 100 percent.
The RBI also curtailed the amount of money Indians can send overseas: The annual limit had been $200,000, and the central bank cut that to $75,000. The central bank has also tried to make foreign-exchange deposits more attractive to local banks by exempting non-rupee deposits of Indians abroad from requirements to keep 4 percent in cash and invest 23 percent in government-approved securities.
The government is trying to discourage Indians from buying gold, too. The country is the world’s largest consumer of the glittery metal—and all the gold comes from abroad. That’s a major source of the country’s trade problems. Last month the government increased tariffs on gold and other precious metals while also increasing taxes on gold. Not everyone is impressed. In a report published on Aug. 14, HSBC (HBC) economist Leif Eskesen called the steps “a new set of plumbing measures” to curb oil, gold, and nonessential imports and open up for more external debt financing. “Will this be enough to fix the leaks?” he wrote. “We do not think so. Ultimately structural reform implementation is the solution.”
Einhorn is Asia regional editor in Bloomberg Businessweek’s Hong Kong bureau. Follow him on Twitter @BruceEinhorn.
Reference
Extremism is what matters all else is secondary
Ayaz Amir
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
From Print EditionIslamabad diary
Punjab, heart and soul of Pakistan, will it also now be the death of Pakistan? Dangerous thought but relevant question because the land of the five rivers, now also the land which rules the rest of troubled Pakistan, has its head buried deep in the sand, conscious of every problem under the sun except what is destroying this country: extremism, terrorism and the by-product of these two, sectarianism.Not theoretical sectarianism… with that most societies can live…but murderous sectarianism, its work accomplished by the bullet and the bomb. So much so that the Shiite community is on the verge of mentally exiting from the ideological confines of a republic confused by nothing so much as its ideology.Spectacular jailbreaks which reveal as much about Taliban skill and daring as the bankruptcy of our defences, or random killings across the country…but it’s much more than that. Consider the sweep of Taliban strategy. They strike at targets in the Frontier – Bannu, DI Khan – and just when we think the problem is the Frontier, there is an incident across the Line of Control and, overnight, a crisis with India, thus diverting, like nothing else could, the attention of the Pakistan Army.Not just strategy but grand strategy, Mumbai on a smaller scale: just when the army is engaged in the west, pull its attention to the east.Yet we are still thinking what to do….still, Allah be praised, trying to stitch together that exercise in metaphysics called our counter-terrorism policy. Pity the strain on our minds because the government of the mini-mandate, in essence a Punjabi government, is still not mentally ready to grasp the true dimensions of this problem.It is not ready to accept the fact that Taliban terrorism is no longer just about the American presence in Afghanistan or the Emirate of North Waziristan. Its sources, its support bases, are now spread across the country, not least in the sacred land of the five rivers.But to strike at these madressahs and watering holes in Punjab, to take up this fight in earnest, is to court the hostility of conservative Punjab. And conservative Punjab, retail-bazaar Punjab, middle-class Punjab, is from where the big or small mandate draws its primary strength.This is a paralysis of politics. It is about evenly matched by a creeping paralysis on the military front. For all practical purposes the army chief is now a lame-duck chief, his over-extended term ending in November. He has done good things including resuscitating army morale after the disasters of the Musharraf years, although one wishes he could have kept some check on the business skills of his brothers.Of what use present pomp and glory if in years to come what is remembered about him are the exploits of his near and dear ones? Musharraf did a lot of good too. But in today’s climate is anyone willing to say a kindly word about him? In a Republic like ours we never seem to learn. And our paladins never seem to know when to depart.So there we have it: a government to all appearances with all the authority it needs, a prime minister certainly with more authority than his predecessors or even Musharraf, but heads buried deep in the sand, and an army command ruefully contemplating the evening sun as it is about to set.This is a vacuum of the deepest sort, government and command at a standstill. Chaudhry Nisar, the interior minister, is an able man but he talks too much, a loudspeaker constantly on. Jaish-e-Muhammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Sipah-e-Sahaba, the tentacles of what we have started calling the Punjabi Taliban, are all in Punjab. The frontlines of extremism may be in the Frontier. But the ‘strategic depth’ of this phenomenon is now in Punjab. From the attitude of the Punjab government, which claims infallibility for itself, one wouldn’t suspect this at all.Forget about formulating a policy on terrorism. That can wait. Mosque loudspeakers in Punjab now defy the Loudspeaker Ordinance, as they defy common sense. If the interior ministry tackles this nuisance first maybe its words come to merit greater credibility.Surprising thing is that where the government wants to act, and where its heart is, it can act very fast. Look at the circular debt payoffs to power producers. No questions asked and no list of who’s been given what. Nandipur power project, its cost jacked up and up, but government unfazed. When it comes to interests close to the bone, all innocence disappears and alacrity is the watchword. When it comes to extremism and terrorism, probably because there is no immediate profit in this, it is either (for more meditation) a trip to Murree, favourite summer destination, or the way of the ostrich.The Taliban are inhibited by no such compulsions, minds distracted by no Nandipur adventures. They are focused utterly on the destabilisation of the Pakistani state and the spread of extremist thought. This is what makes this an unequal contest. The Republic has resources and guns and the atom bomb. But it lacks leadership and what leadership there is, gifts of a wayward destiny, is without conviction.One thing is for sure, and this can be the first commandment of war. Expect no Battle of Stalingrad, no Vietnam, no victories in the mountains, from a leadership which has most of its money parked abroad. This is a contradiction in terms, not resolvable by platitudes. Similarly, an army command infected by that most alluring of fancies, love of real estate, can lead a nation in no life-and-death struggle. Call this the second commandment.How many houses did Churchill own? Only Chartwell Manor which he bought with his money from his books and journalism. And after the war, imagine this, he couldn’t afford to keep the house and a consortium of businessmen bought it and the arrangement was that as long as he and his wife lived they would pay nominal rent and after their deaths the estate would go to the National Trust. On Churchill’s death in 1965 his wife decided to hand over the house to the National Trust immediately. How many suits did Stalin possess? How extensive was Ho Chi Minh’s wardrobe?So what are we talking about? In normal times none of this would have mattered. The Sharifs could have doubled their Raiwind estate and army chiefs could have more private homes than they have become accustomed to. But the Taliban are at the gates and they have the initiative and a better sense of strategy, a better sense of the indirect approach, than the Military Operations Directorate.For most of us this is the only country we are likely to have. We have already made a cult of the ‘internally-displaced person’ (IDP). The greatest Partition of the last century fell to our lot. Dismemberment we have experienced. How many more traumas can we go through, especially when the space for traumas is shrinking? The IDPs of the Khyber Agency can find refuge near Peshawar, those of North Waziristan in Kohat. To which kingdom on the hill will the IDPs of Punjab go?So the luxury of half-measures is not ours to afford because time is slipping by, and time is not on our side. And please select a proper army chief, a fighting man, not a desk-bound general, or someone keen on remaking his fortune. If the Sharifs fumble this, and they will have their own calculations, then forget about Churchill. Let the spirit of appeasement guide us as we respectfully approach the Taliban, peace-offerings in hand and ingratiating smiles on our lips.Tailpiece: Two excellent columns on terrorism I have just read, one by Ayesha Siddiqa, the other by Tariq Mahmud, former interior secretary. This means we have people who understand the problem. Why are our bonzes so dumb?Email: winlust@yahoo.com
What a shameless creature , for power she had her brother killed in cold blood on the gate of 70 clifton , Bhutto’s house , and than was assassinated by her own. Comment by PTT Contributor: k.d.
The life and times of the Bhuttos is seen afresh in a passionately partisan but well-constructed memoir. William Dalrymplereviews it in context.
The Bhuttos’ acrimonious family squabbles have long resembled one of the bloody succession disputes that habitually plagued South Asia during the time of the Great Mughals. In the case of the Bhuttos, they date back to the moment when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested on July 5, 1977.Unsure how to defend their father and his legacy, his children had reacted in different ways. Benazir believed the struggle should be peaceful and political. Her brothers initially tried the same approach, forming al-Nusrat, the Save Bhutto committee; but after two futile years they decided in 1979 to turn to the armed struggle.
Murtaza was 23 and had just left Harvard where he got a top first, and where he was taught by, among others, Samuel Huntington. Forbidden by his father from returning to Zia’s Pakistan, he flew from the US first to London, then on to Beirut, where he and his younger brother Shahnawaz were adopted by Yasser Arafat. Under his guidance they received the arms and training necessary to form the Pakistan Liberation Army, later renamed Al-Zulfiquar or The Sword.
Just before his daughter Fatima was born, Murtaza and his brother had found shelter in Kabul as guests of the pro-Soviet government. There the boys had married a pair of Afghan sisters, Fauzia and Rehana Fasihudin, the beautiful daughters of a senior Afghan official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs mother was Fauzia.
For all its PLO training in camps in Syria, Afghanistan and Libya, Al-Zulfiquar achieved little except for two failed assassination attempts on Zia and the hijacking of a Pakistan International Airways flight in 1981. This was diverted from Karachi to Kabul and secured the release of some 55 political prisoners; but it also resulted in the death of an innocent passenger, a young army officer. Zia used the hijacking as a means of cracking down on the Pakistan Peoples Party, and got the two boys placed on the Federal Investigation Agency’s most-wanted list. Benazir was forced to distance herself from her two brothers even though they subsequently denied sanctioning the hijack, and claimed only to have acted as negotiators once the plane landed in Kabul. While much about the details of the hijacking remains mysterious, Murtaza was posthumously acquitted of hijacking in 2003.
I first encountered the family in 1994 when, as a young foreign correspondent on assignment for the Sunday Times, I was sent to Pakistan to write a long magazine piece on the Bhutto dynasty. I met Benazir in the giddy pseudo-Mexican Prime Minister’s House that she had built in the middle of Islamabad.
It was the beginning of Benazir’s second term as Prime Minister, and she was at her most imperial. She both walked and talked in a deliberately measured and regal manner, and frequently used the royal “we”. During my interview, she took a full three minutes to float down the hundred yards of lawns separating the Prime Minister’s House from the chairs where I had been told to wait for her. There followed an interlude when Benazir found the sun was not shining in quite the way she wanted it to: “The sun is in the wrong direction,” she announced. Her hair was arranged in a sort of baroque beehive topped by white gauze dupatta like one of those Roman princesses inCaligula or Rome.
A couple of days later in Karachi, I met Benazir’s brother Murtaza in very different circumstances. Murtaza was on trial in Karachi for his alleged terrorist offences. A one hundred rupee bribe got me through the police cordon, and I soon found Murtaza with his mother — Begum Bhutto — in an annexe beside the courtroom. Murtaza looked strikingly like his father, Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He was handsome, very tall — well over six feet — with a deep voice and, like his father, exuded an air of self-confidence, bonhomie and charisma. He invited me to sit down: “Benazir doesn’t care what the local press says about her,” he said, “but she’s very sensitive to what her friends in London and New York get to read about her.”
“Has your sister got in touch with you since you returned to Pakistan?” I asked. “No. Nothing. Not one note.”“Did you expect her to intervene and get you off the hook?” I asked. “What kind of reception did you hope she would lay on for you when you returned from Damascus?”
“I didn’t want any favours,” replied Murtaza. “I just wanted her to let justice take its course, and for her not to interfere in the legal process. As it is, she has instructed the prosecution to use delaying tactics to keep me in confinement as long as possible. This trial has been going on for three months now and they still haven’t finished examining the first witness. She’s become paranoid and is convinced I’m trying to topple her.”
Murtaza went on to describe an incident the previous week when the police had opened fire on Begum Bhutto as she left her house to visit her husband’s grave. When the Begum ordered the gates of the compound to be opened and made ready to set off, the police opened fire. One person was killed immediately and two others succumbed to their injuries after the police refused to let the ambulances through. That night as three family retainers lay bleeding to death, 15 kilometres away in her new farmhouse, Benazir celebrated her father’s birthday with singing and dancing:“After three deaths, she and her husband danced!” said the Begum now near to tears. “They must have known the police were firing at Al-Murtaza. Would all this have happened if she didn’t order it? But the worst crime was that they refused to let the ambulances through. If only they had let the ambulances through those two boys would be alive now: those two boys who used to love Benazir, who used to run in front of her car.”
The Begum was weeping now. “I kept ringing Benazir saying ‘for God sake stop the siege’, but her people just repeated: ‘Madam is not available’. She wouldn’t even take my call. One call from her walkie-talkie would have got the wounded through. Even General Zia…” The sentence trailed away. “What’s that saying in England?” asked the Begum: “Power corrupts, more power corrupts even more. Is that it?”Two years later, to no one’s great surprise, Murtaza was himself shot dead in similar and equally suspicious circumstances.
Murtaza had been campaigning with his bodyguards in a remote suburb of Karachi. As his convoy neared his home at 70 Clifton, the street lights were abruptly turned off.
It was September 20, 1996, and Murtaza’s decision to take on Benazir had put him into direct conflict not only with his sister, but also with her husband Asif Ali Zardari. Murtaza had an animus against Zardari, who he believed was not just a nakedly and riotously corrupt polo-playing playboy, but had pushed Benazir to abandon the PPP’s once-radical agenda — fighting for social justice. Few believed the rivalry was likely to end peacefully. Both men had reputations for being trigger-happy. Murtaza’s bodyguards were notoriously rough, and Murtaza was alleged to have sentenced to death several former associates, including his future biographer, Raja Anwar, author of an unflattering portrait, The Terrorist Prince.Zardari’s reputation was worse still.So insistent had the rumours become that Zardari had ordered the killing of Murtaza at 3 pm that afternoon, that Murtaza had given a press conference saying he had learnt that an assassination attempt on him was being planned, and he named some of the police officers he claimed were involved in the plot. Several of the officers were among those now waiting, guns cocked, outside his house. According to witnesses, when the leading car drew up at the roadblock, there was a single shot from the police, followed by two more shots, one of which hit the foremost of Murtaza’s armed bodyguards. Murtaza immediately got out of his car and urged his men to hold their fire. As he stood there with his hands raised above his head, urging calm, the police opened fire on the whole party with automatic weapons. The firing went on for nearly 10 minutes..
Two hundred yards down the road, inside the compound of 70 Clifton, the house where Benazir Bhutto had spent her childhood, was Murtaza’s wife Ghinwa, his daughter, the 12-year-old Fatima, and the couple’s young son Zulfikar, then aged six. When the first shot rang out, Fatima was in Zulfikar’s bedroom, helping put him to bed. She immediately ran with him into his windowless dressing room, and threw him onto the floor, protecting him by covering his body with her own.
After 45 minutes, Fatima called the Prime Minister’s House and asked to speak to her aunt. Zardari took her call:
Fatima: “I wish to speak to my aunt, please.”
Zardari: “It’s not possible.”
Fatima: “Why?” [At this point, Fatima says, she heard loud, stagy-sounding wailing.]
Zardari: “She’s hysterical, can’t you hear?”
Fatima: “Why?”
Zardari: “Don’t you know? Your father’s been shot.”
Fatima and Ghinwa immediately left the house and demanded to be taken to see Murtaza. By now there were no bodies in the street. It had all been swept and cleaned up: there was no blood, no glass, or indeed any sign of any violence at all. Each of the seven wounded had been taken to a different location, though none was taken to emergency units of any the different Karachi hospitals. The street was completely empty.“They had taken my father to the Mideast, a dispensary,” says Fatima. “It wasn’t an emergency facility and had no facilities for treating a wounded man. We climbed the stairs, and there was my father lying hooked up to a drip. He was covered in blood and unconscious. You could see he had been shot several times. One of those shots had blown away part of his face. I kissed him and moved aside. He never recovered consciousness. We lost him just after midnight.”
The two bereaved women went straight to a police station to register a report, but the police refused to take it down. Benazir Bhutto was then the Prime Minister, and one might have expected the assassins would have faced the most extreme measures of the state for killing the Prime Minister’s brother. Instead, it was the witnesses and survivors who were arrested. They were kept incommunicado and intimidated. Two died soon afterwards in police custody.
“There were never any criminal proceedings,” says Fatima. “Benazir claimed in the West to be the queen of democracy, but at that time there were so many like us who had lost family to premeditated police killings. We were just one among thousands.”Benazir always protested her innocence in the death of Murtaza, and claimed that the killing was an attempt to frame her by the army’s intelligence services: “Kill a Bhutto to get a Bhutto,” as she used to put it. But Murtaza was, after all, clearly a direct threat to Benazir’s future, and she gained the most from the murder. For this reason her complicity was widely suspected well beyond the immediate family: when Benazir and Zardari attempted to attend Murtaza’s funeral, their car was stoned by villagers who believed them responsible.
The judiciary took the same view, and the tribunal set up to investigate the killing concluded that Benazir’s administration was “probably complicit” in the assassination.. Six weeks later, when Benazir fell from power, partly as a result of public outrage at the killings, Zardari was charged with Murtaza’s murder.Fourteen years on, however, the situation is rather different. Benazir is dead, assassinated, maybe by the military, but equally possibly by some splinter group of the Taliban. Fatima is now a strikingly beautiful 28-year-old, fresh from a university education in New York and London. She has a razor-sharp mind and a forceful, determined personality. Meanwhile, the man Fatima Bhutto holds responsible for her father’s death is not only out of prison, but President of the country. The bravery of writing a memoir taking on such a man is self-evident, but Fatima seems remarkably calm about the dangers she has taken on..
As for the book itself, Songs of Blood and Sword is moving, witty and well-written. It is also passionately partisan: this is not, and does not pretend to be, an objective account of Murtaza Bhutto so much as a love letter from a grieving daughter and an act of literary vengeance and account-settling by a niece who believed her aunt had her father murdered.Future historians will decide whether Murtaza really does deserve to be vindicated for the hijacking in Kabul and will weigh up whether or not Murtaza, who even Fatima describes as “impulsive” and “honourable and foolish”, would have made a better leader than his deeply flawed sister; or indeed whether the equally inconsistent Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto deserves the adulation heaped on him by his granddaughter. But where the book is unquestionably important is the reminder it gives the world as to Benazir’s flaws. Since her death, Benazir has come to be regarded, especially in the US, as something of a martyr for democracy. Yet the brutality of Benazir’s untimely end should not blind anyone to her as astonishingly weak record as a politician. Benazir was no Aung San Suu Kyi, and it is misleading as well as simplistic to depict her as having died for freedom; in reality, Benazir’s instincts were not so much democratic as highly autocratic.
Within her own party, she declared herself the lifetime president of the PPP, and refused to let her brother Murtaza challenge her for its leadership; his death was an extreme version of the fate of many who opposed her. Benazir also colluded in wider human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings, and during her tenure government death squads murdered hundreds of her opponents. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world’s worst records of custodial deaths, abductions, killings and torture.
Far from reforming herself in exile, Benazir kept a studied distance from the pioneering lawyers’ movement which led the civil protests against President Musharraf’s unconstitutional attempts to manipulate the Supreme Court. She also sidelined those in her party who did support the lawyers. Later she said nothing to stop President Musharraf ordering the US-brokered “rendition” of her rival Nawaz Sharif to Saudi Arabia, so removing from the election her most formidable democratic opponent. Many of her supporters regarded her deal with Musharraf as a betrayal of all that her party stood for. Her final act in her will was to hand the inappropriately named Pakistan People’s Party over to her teenage son as if it were her personal family fiefdom.
Worse still, Benazir was a notably inept administrator. During her first 20-month-long premiership, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation, and during her two periods in power she did almost nothing to help the liberal causes she espoused so enthusiastically to the Western media. Instead, it was under her watch that Pakistan’s secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped install the Taliban in Pakistan, and she did nothing to rein in the agency’s disastrous policy of training up Islamist jihadis from the country’s madrasas to do the ISI’s dirty work in Kashmir and Afghanistan. As a young correspondent covering the conflict in Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I saw how during her premiership, Pakistan sidelined the Kashmiris’ own secular resistance movement, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, and instead gave aid and training to the brutal Islamist outfits it created and controlled, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat ul-Mujahedin. Benazir’s administration, in other words, helped train the very assassins who are most likely to have shot her.
Benazir was, above all, a feudal landowner, whose family owned great tracts of Sindh, and with the sense of entitlement this produced. Democracy has never thrived in Pakistan in part because landowning remains the base from which politicians emerge. In this sense, Pakistani democracy in Pakistan is really a form of “elective feudalism”: the Bhuttos’ feudal friends and allies were nominated for seats by Benazir, and these landowners made sure their peasants voted them in.
Behind Pakistan’s swings between military government.
Posted by malika in MQM KILLERS THREATEN JOURNALISTS on August 16th, 2013
” Bol kay Lab azad hain Terey “
My silence should not be looked upon as my weakness ! My truth should be judged by my viewers and many of those who have eagerly waited to hear the “The truth “that lead to my resignation from Samaa after 4 years. Long hard four years of work , when I think back it seems like a journey of a life time.
My father always said ” Don’t speak too much truth its not worth it” in this male dominated society. I always laughed and in my 15 years of journalistic career it seems he was right. He passed away two years ago fearing everyday for my life. The city I love the most was burning everyday , and everyday someone I did not know died in target killing.
So I became the voice of the people but now I am unheard .I tried protecting the rights of the Pakistanis but now my rights are being violated . I fearlessly talked about the better future of my fellow citizens but my future has been compromised. I talked against the ruthless target killing in Karachi but now I am on the hit list of target killers”
World can be difficult life unpredictable but be a woman and to be an anchor and journalist life is threateningly violent in Pakistan and specially in Karachi.
I am in self imposed exile due to serious threats from unknown target killers.The security agencies have asked me to do so. How strange I cant move freely in my own Home land ! Why ? When will this mayhem stop ? how do I celebrate the independence day ? Are we independent ? These questions haunt me everyday.
“I have spent 15 years a journalist and have been doing current affairs shows on private news TV channels of Pakistan but this is the first time , according to law enforcement agencies, I and my family are under serious life threats” Hunt and target a woman.” Not only will this make international headlines but will also tell the world that we are hostage to handful of terrorists these terrorists control our destinies. .
“ This actually started on 11th May 2013 when Pakistan was witnessing General Elections 2013 and voting for political transaction from one democratic government to another was taking place. As a journalist and host of news channel, I was covering voting process around Pakistan via special election transmission. On that day, I witnessed that, huge numbers of people came out to cast their votes which was not seen in the past. I was jubilant excited and praying “God let there be a change let the Pakistanis decide for a new beginning “.
My excitement turned into my nightmare. I decided to cast my vote along with my old mother and my brother. I went to my polling constituency called NA 250 (DHA girls college polling station) and there I saw crowds of people huge numbers hundreds of excited women , youngsters , girls and boys. Now it was around 2 o clock in the afternoon the polling had started very late in fact the ballot boxes were brought by the candidate himself in custody of rangers. I started talking to the people they were tired and hot and by now getting impatient as the line was huge but the voting was very slow. As a journalist, I entered the polling station forcibly to know why polling was so delayed and slow? As I went inside I saw total ciaos. There was hardly any staff and people were pushing and shoving puzzled what to do.I started surveying the rooms polling was going on in a few rooms but at a snail’s pace and the staff was scared. I asked them why was there so much less staff and why were they taking so much time ?They said dont ask us ,ask the presiding officer who was no where to be seen. I saw one room which was locked from inside, I tried opening it because my instinct said something was wrong as I pushed the crowd pushed with me and we manged to get inside and there I witnessed that polling officer hostage and a few young men stamping fake votes for a political party, Mutahida Qaumi Moment (MQM). I questioned them about rigging but they misbehaved with me and started to run away . By this time many voters had entered behind me and there started a fight I tried stopping them yelling that I am a journalist but the fight got worse and the boys stamping the ballots ran pushing and ripping my shirt and in this total madness my old mother fell. I barely managed to get out and tried yelling for help from the two rangers standing on guard but no one came to help. They just looked the other way and went out . A few men helped me my mother and a few other women get out .Meanwhile, I asked my channel Samaa to take my audio beeper for that breaking news and in that beeper I said whatever I saw at the polling station in detail. I asked for the Sindh election commissioner to intervene and thus began the full fledged words of war between two political parties MQM and PTI which led to protests all around Karachi by night.
“On the same evening, I went to my news channel to do my live election transmission and tried to invite politicians from MQM to discuss the events of the day but my office management stopped me. I was told due to my audio beeper they (MQM) Mutahida Qaumi Movement were very angry. I was asked again and again not to raise this issue from my management and to divert the elections transmission show to the other parts of Pakistan . During my program transmission I was very upset for not being able to speak the truth . The story that really mattered to me now was NA 250. Later that night Mr. Altaf Hussain, the founder and chairman of Mutahida Qaumi Moment (MQM) made very incited telephonic speeches from London in which he talked about killing people and abused the journalists and anchors calling them barking dogs.
By now the entire media of Pakistan had focused on Karachi.
The next few days I did shows on Mr. Altaf Hussain”s incited speeches,despite my channel’s go soft policy on MQM . I invited politicians from both the political parties. Heated debates took place and Mr. Altaf Hussain;s speeches were highly criticized by everyone in Pakistan and abroad.
After my last show of the week Governor Sindh, Mr. Ishrat Ul Ibad and senior leaders of MQM spoke gently with me about those shows . The same night Mr. Altaf Hussain apologized for the comments he had made about journalists and anchors. I liked that gesture and appreciated it publicly. Then I left to Saudi Arabia for three days to offer Umrah (The Muslims religious obligation to go to Saudi Arabia and perform prayer) when I came back, the world became different for me” .
“When I came back, I saw huge deployment of the Police and Rangers outside my home, I was shocked the first thought was Oh God robbery I rushed inside and met a scared housekeeper. Thank God no robbery what then ? As soon as I opened my cell phone the first call I received was by SP of my area. He said only one sentence ” Madam where were you Allah has saved you and your family please don’t leave your house I am on my way. ” The Police and intelligence agencies men came to my house shortly. I was told by them that, “they intercepted telephone calls detailing that four target killers had been assigned to target me or my family and made to look like robbery at gun point.” This was shocking I just couldn’t believe it . According to the intelligence reports the target killers had completed their home work to kill me or any member of my family. In official terms their Rekee was complete. The senior officials told me this was no joke but a clear present and serious threat to my life. They said if you were here, you would have been killed by now. I asked them who wants me dead what have I done ? According to all the intelligence agencies reports including CID, IB Intelligent Bureau, ISI Inter services Intelligence all terrorists belonged to the largest ethnic political party of Karachi Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) these reports were sent to the Government of Pakistan on all levels. Before this incident, I have never received any direct threat from MQM let me clear this and put it on record. Every thing I have written is exactly what has been told to me by the Intelligence agencies of Pakistan.
My immediate response was to do two things I sent my brother back to Canada the same night I never felt so relieved before in my life as I saw his aircraft fly into the air. And the second thing I did was move my old mother to an undisclosed location in Pakistan. And then I cried and I cried so much I did not know whether it was pain or tears of relief that my family was safe.“
The next day I went to work moving under heavy security.I immediately tried to contact Mr. Altaf Hussain to tell him what the agencies were telling me, but London office of MQM didn’t respond, though in past Mr. Altaf Hussain use to be in touch with me very often”. Finally I got through to Mr. Nusrat Nadeem member Rabitta committee London I told him everything he listened to me patiently and denied everything. He sent Mr. Wasaay Jalil and Mr.Saif Abbas senior members of MQM to my house to reassure me that nothing of the above was the truth and that the agencies were lying . I was unsure who to believe ? My saviors had become my enemies ! Were the agencies pitting me against MQM to play their proxy wars ? Or was this whole thing the truth ? By now my mother was pushing me to resign .
“I requested help from my news channel (Samaa TV), from the government and from law enforcement agencies but no one was ready to seriously resolve this issue I was told to move in a bullet proof car ! To keep a low profile or rather better move from Karachi . How can I a journalist move in a bullet proof car ? Where would I get a car like that from ? But no one was there to help me. What did I do which compelled any political party to send target killers for me? I was doing my job honestly.
“I was invited by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in energy conference and there without taking the name of any political party, I informed Mr. Nawaz Sharif about the potential threats of target killing at me and my family and that was the triggering point for me and I broke down and sobbed for Karachi. The entire Media was sitting there but the PM had nothing to say he only expressed sorrow at my dilemma . Besides that, I met and informed Interior Federal Minister, Choudhary Nisar and Director General, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) but my all efforts went into vein” I still seek the truth ? I resigned that day from Samaa as I was dumb founded at their indifference to this whole situation they did not even have a word of sympathy let alone provide any security or help resolve this matter for me.
“I would never leave my homeland and I would never leave my profession, no matter if gangs kill me. Furthermore, I will write a book regarding my experiences as a female Journalist which will truly reveal the real persona of political entities and true colors of the establishment of Pakistan.I am not leaving my country and profession, I lived as a journalist and will die as a journalist. I may not live but my writings will surely live and will keep enlightening people”
“According to UNESCO, After Mexico, Pakistan is second dangerous place for Journalists. Previously, institutions used to threaten Journalists but now political parties and different gangs are involved in the killings and harassing journalists”
I salute the journalists and anchors who raised their voice for me. And above all I salute the people of Pakistan and my viewers who have been a beacon of hope in these testing times for me and my team members Ahmed Khan , Aijaz Khoker and Zeeshan of the program “Tonight with Jasmeen “who have all resigned with me.
I am still seeking the truth.
According to committee for protecting Journalists, 52 journalists have been killed since 1992 in Pakistan http://www.cpj.org/killed/
Posted by Waziri in Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, India, India Hall of Shame, INDIAN ARMY CHIEF-TOKENISM TO APPEASE SIKH MINORITY, Makaar Dushman on August 12th, 2013
THE INDIAN ARMY 16 TH CORP(INSIGNIA BELOW) WHOSE NOSE WAS BLOODIED BY BABUR SHERS OF PAK FAUJ. US RUN PAKISTAN MEDIA PRESSITITUTES,LIKE GEO, DUNYA, WAQT, AAJ, AND OTHERS FAILED TO REPORT THIS STORY