Misinterpreting ‘Rape as a Western Problem’ By Kamal Siddiqi: New Age Islam's Selection, 24 January 2018
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
24 January 2018
• Misinterpreting ‘Rape as a Western Problem’
By Kamal Siddiqi
• Online Predators
By Usama Khilji
• Kasur: Technology, Crime and Capability
By Hasaan Khawar
• Strength in Integration
By Muneeb Qadir
• Ghani’s Admission and Afghan Conflict
By Dr Raza Khan
• Growing Anti-Immigration Sentiment in the US
By Shahid Javed Burki
Compiled By New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Misinterpreting ‘Rape As A Western Problem’
By Kamal Siddiqi
January 22, 2018
Shah Farman, the controversial minister of information in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government and an important member of the provincial PTI leadership, has said that the rape of minors in our society is a result of the “rapid adoption of western culture.” In a debate in the provincial assembly where lawmakers lamented the poor performance of the K-P police in finding leads into the rape and murder of a minor in Mardan some weeks back, Shah Farman insisted that a large number of such cases take place in western countries. “We are following the culture of these countries, as a result, such issues are emerging,” he said, as he had the chutzpah to accuse lawmakers of “failing in their responsibility towards society.” His advice was that they should try and find a solution to the problem “rather than just passing resolutions in the house.”
What is worrisome is that Shah Farman isn’t some random member of the house. This is the spokesperson of the PTI-led government of KhyberPakhtunkhwa. What he says is a reflection of the policies of the provincial government. What is even more worrisome is that no one from the government has come forward to clarify or contradict these remarks.
It was left to another PTI lawmaker, Dr Haider Ali, who took strong exception to Shah Farman’s comments, noting that in western countries rapists and murderers are also taken to task. “In the West, you cannot play with the ladies and children like this. Their legal system is very strong and the people involved are arrested and punished, unlike in ours where an SHO is suspended and then the matter gets covered up,” he lashed out, adding that local family and religious traditions used to prevent such incidents, but both of these institutions have now weakened and there was a need to find a new solution to these issues. The inability of the much-trumpeted K-P police to find the rapist and killer of the Mardan minor is one thing. The fact that the government has instead tried to cover up its inefficiencies is another.
Let us face the facts. Shah Farman is misogynist. Misogyny is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. Misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including social exclusion, sex discrimination, hostility, androcentrism, patriarchy, male privilege, belittling of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification.
He is not alone. There are hundreds such men in our corridors of power. Who can forget the comments of our beloved commando general who said that women get raped so that they can get immigration to Canada? How do we deal with the attitudes of such people?
Shah Farman is not new to controversy. He was sacked in 2014 for poor performance only to be brought back recently. It seems the PTI has problems finding good spokespersons. The government has changed its information minister for the fourth time since assuming power in 2013. In 2014, Shah Farman was sacked owing to his ‘poor performance.’ Now he is back. In 2017, as K-P minister for public health engineering Shah Farman insulted his fellow female lawmaker Nighat Orakzai on the floor of K-P Assembly. When Orakzai interrupted his address on the floor of the house to allege that a significant amount of development funds were diverted to Nowshera (Chief Minister Pervez Khattak’s constituency) Shah Farman shouted at her and asked her to stay silent in a very insulting manner. No action was taken against him by his party.
The problem isn’t the party. It’s the attitude of Pakistani men. For many, women aren’t something to worry about. Whether it’s silencing them on the floor of the house or covering up a rape, it seems the same to them. This is the rape and murder of a four-year-old girl, who was coaxed away from her home in Mardan and her body was found dumped in a field a day later. For these characters, it isn’t important enough.
The K-P Assembly was told by PPP lawmaker Nighat Orakzai, who opened the discussion on the topic that she had travelled to Mardan and met with the girl’s family. She added that she had also spoken to officials of the Mardan police.
Orakzai said that the Mardan District Police Officer Dr Mian Saeed and his team had tried their best to cover it up. After the issue was hyped, they held a press conference and admitted rape in the case. If we keep on treating rape as a minor issue, how will we progress as a country?
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1614795/6-misinterpreting-rape-western-problem/
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Online Predators
By Usama Khilji
January 23, 2018
IDEALLY, one should not have to worry about unwelcome advances, whether in a physical or online space; but as most — especially women — would testify, the reality is far from a world where unsolicited advances are non-existent. Equally alarming is the kind of overtures and threats children are vulnerable to when using the internet, and especially social media. However, this does not mean that those susceptible to threats online are banished from having any online presence; rather, it is important to know the layers of protection as well as legal remedies available to internet users, especially women and children.
The reason many Pakistani women do not use their own photo for display on social media is the violation of privacy and harassment that they face online. This shows that as opposed to popular belief, societal cleavages and denial of public space to women is seen in digital spaces as well. Unsolicited messages, explicit photographs, friendship requests, and even marriage proposals from strangers are common on social media in Pakistan.
Even worse is the bullying, abuse, and condescension in response to women expressing their opinions on the internet, especially on matters related to politics, society or religion. Ad hominem attacks, slut-shaming, and rape threats and death threats are a common lived reality for vocal women online; the distance that the use of internet affords abusers encourages this. The case for vocal transgender and other sexual minorities can prove to be even worse. However, there is a comforting presence of vocal activists and their supporters who are becoming increasingly active in calling out abuse on the internet.
The case of a doctor sending his female patient a friend request and leaving comments under her photographs sparked a necessary debate in Pakistan on what constitutes harassment on the internet. Nuanced discussions around the complexities of the fiduciary relationship between patient and doctor, as well as the power disequilibrium between women and men were important takeaways from the case, as is the need for a code of ethics on social media for professionals in fields such as medicine and education.
Children and teenagers can be especially vulnerable over the internet.
Children and teenagers can be especially vulnerable over the internet. Predators, paedophiles, and potential kidnappers lurking behind fake accounts can mislead children into gaining their trust through social media platforms and gaming sites. Further, activity and information publicly available on children’s profiles also serves the risk of providing information regarding the location, contact information, and habits of children.
Given these risks especially for vulnerable groups on the internet, a number of precautions should be taken to increase digital safety.
Firstly, we must ensure that our personal information, as well as our children’s — eg date of birth, telephone number, address, school name, places frequented regularly — is not publicly available on the internet. Caution must also be exercised in the sharing of photos of children publicly on the internet, as well as information such as the school they go to or the location and details of their after-school activities. All information shared on social media platforms should be restricted to friends only rather than publicly visible.
Secondly, we must ensure that everyone in the category of friends or followers that can view our private information and posts are those who we and our children know personally and can trust. There should be no strangers added to our accounts because that risks our safety. Parents or guardians must regularly monitor who their children are interacting with. A relationship of trust must exist between children and adults so that they can share details of strange interactions rather than fearing being blamed for it by adults.
Thirdly, the habit of checking into places live on social media platforms should be discouraged. Not only does this invite potential unwanted corporate advertisements, but also exposes our location to strangers online, inviting the risk of identifying movement patterns.
Whereas these measures are important to pre-empt risks of online presence, there often are breaches of this security as well as of trust we put in people. Fortunately, several legal remedies exist in the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016.
The unauthorised use of identity information is criminalised under Section 16.
Offences against the dignity of a person including dissemination of false information with intention of intimidating and harming reputation or privacy of an individual are criminalised under Section 20.
Section 21 criminalises offences against the modesty of a person, including dissemination of sexually explicit images, as well as imposing photos of individuals on sexually explicit images, and coercing minors or adults into sexually explicit acts. It also protects the right for an adult or guardian of a minor to request removal of such content from the internet.
Section 22 criminalises acts relating to child pornography.
Section 24 stipulates punishment for proven cases of cyber stalking, including attempting to contact a person despite clear disinterest, monitoring the use of internet or phone of an individual, watching or spying on a person that intimidates them, and taking and distributing photos or videos of someone without her or his consent.
Complaints falling under the ambit of Peca 16 can be submitted to the Federal Investigation Agency through the website of the National Response Centre for Cyber Crime (NR3C), or by complaining directly to the FIA complaint cells. However, justice needs to be made more accessible through all police stations. Further, the cases under Peca 16 so far show that the FIA needs to be equipped with improved investigation capabilities and forensic technology for efficient handling of cases, and judges and investigation officers need to be trained to deal with cases relating to technology and the internet. Until that is done, courts should make use of amicus curiae that are experts in the field.
It must be stressed that perpetrators of abuse and harassment on the internet should not be able to continue with impunity, and blame, shame, and punishment should be reserved for them rather than their victims online that are innocent users of the internet. Further, citizens should become proactive in calling out harassment, abuse, and bullying online. Importantly, the state should focus on administering justice to victims of abuse and harassment on the internet rather than harassing dissenters and critics of state policy that exercise their right to freedom of expression. The process of making the internet, just like our physical spaces, secure for everyone with equity is a slow one, but all stakeholders must act with due diligence and caution.
Source: dawn.com/news/1384578/online-predators
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Kasur: Technology, Crime and Capability
By Hasaan Khawar
January 23, 2018
Punjab’s chief minister has not taken his foot off the pedal on Zainab’s case, as is evident from his recent visit to the office of DPO Kasur. The investigations, however, have not yielded much so far. The killer is still at large.
While investigations are under way, it is interesting to note that almost all the threads pursued by the police so far — CCTV footage, DNA and call records — relate to technology. Had the crime been committed only a few years ago, the investigators would be groping in the dark. But if technology can be of such immense help in solving crimes, are we doing all that is possible to use these tools effectively?
Firstly, the fact that the police failed to take action on 11 preceding crimes in the same string has raised doubts over their capability to use data effectively. While there have been pilot projects to identify crime hotspots, by plotting crime data on GIS maps, the use of such hotspots has not been mainstreamed, preventing timely action by the police in case of peculiar crime patterns.
Furthermore, with the advent of safe city projects, use of CCTV cameras in particular has gained popularity. Such projects around the world, however, often integrate with private security systems to enhance their reach manifold. But in Pakistan, these modern surveillance systems remain isolated. Even in Zainab’s case, the CCTV footage aired on media came from a private unauthenticated source.
Secondly, DNA found on the victim’s body is the most solid lead the police has. Unfortunately, the government does not have a very extensive DNA database to compare it with and generate any meaningful leads. Pakistan does not even have any legislation to set up a DNA bank. The exercise of getting DNA samples from thousands of people from the area is a time-consuming exercise and may take years, without certainty of success.
The UK’s DNA database has 5.7 million profiles, meaning that one out of every 12-13 people is registered in the database. Considering that 80% of these are males and most coming from criminal records, the chances of finding a match increase tremendously. No wonder in UK there is a 63% chance that a crime scene profile matches against an already stored profile.
The Punjab Forensic Science Agency is one of the greatest achievements of the provincial government, with state-of-the-art facility, equipped with polygraph machines, DNA analysis and computer forensic capabilities. Nevertheless, the facility has been severely underused. One could see scores of crime scene investigation vehicles parked in the compound, without being put to optimal use. The police don’t have any protocols for preservation of crime scenes and rarely do they request support from forensic experts. Even in these rare cases, the crime scene is often contaminated by the time forensic experts take charge.
Use of call records and geo-fencing of crime areas is the third thread pursued by the police but such techniques can only be useful if communication patterns have something to do with the crime. These could help in Zainab’s case, only if the crime involved more than one person and they had communicated during the crime occurrence. Whether that was the case or not remains to be seen.
While the police might get lucky and apprehend Zainab’s killer, we must realise that such crimes cannot be solved merely by high-profile inquiries or nudge by political bosses and instead require a robust system that can only be built over time.
Whatever noise we make, we can never compensate for the police’s lack of responsiveness in the initial few hours, neither can we retrospectively collect a large number of DNA profiles in a short span of time. What however can still be done is to learn from this incident and start building a law-enforcement system capable of solving such crimes in future.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1615255/6-kasur-technology-crime-capability/
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Strength in Integration
By Muneeb Qadir
January 24, 2018
Migration is one of the most common features that shape history, communities and identities. It is not just a historical occurrence and continues to hold immense relevance to date. Therefore, it is quite unfortunate to see the aversion towards migration demonstrated by a majority of countries.
We do not need to look too far to understand why there has been an escalating international refugee crisis over the last few years. Countries in the Middle East have been caught up in endless civil wars. Since the Arab Spring, there have been violent changes in regime that have resulted in complete political turmoil across Yemen, Libya and Lebanon.
Syria has been divided between the forces that are loyal to Bashar al-Assad and the rebels fighting against his oppressive regime. Its problems have only been exacerbated by the emergence of Isis. So, if you are faced with death and torture from all sides, what will your natural instinct be? The answer is simple: survival. The same applies to migrants fleeing from Afghanistan and the war-torn African countries.
What has the reaction of the host states been towards refugees and asylum-seekers? When refugees undertake perilous voyages to Europe, they are simply labelled as ‘illegal immigrants’. However, we need to know whether these people are truly illegal or their host countries are acting illegally by refusing to accommodate them.
The EU countries, which have been faced with an inflow of refugees since 2014, are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention 1951 and its 1967 Protocol, which obliges them to accommodate refugees who enter their country. Refugees are defined as people who flee the risk of persecution. These are the kind of circumstances that migrants who have fled to Europe are trying to avoid. By not tending to these vulnerable refugees, the states are breaching their international law obligations.
There are countless refugees who are waiting for their applications to be considered for review by the EU states. The refugees, who had been camping at Calais, have been forced away by the authorities who have destroyed the Calais ‘jungle’.
However, the status of immigrants that has posed to be a major political stumbling block for a large part of the Western world. Last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May agreed with French President Emmanuel Macron to contribute GBP 45 billion for extra security at the Calais Border against immigrants seeking asylum in the UK as part of Britain’s wish to secure a trade deal with France post-Brexit.
In addition, the US has just faced its first government shutdown since 2013 after the Congress refused to agree on funds for the government in the absence of the government’s commitment towards safeguarding the Dreamers against deportation. The Dreamers are a group of young people who had migrated to the US and had been granted permission to stay for an extended period by the Obama administration. But now, they are facing deportation under the Trump administration.
These two recent examples show the Western world’s anti-immigration stance and also indicate how immigration has become a huge political challenge. Within Europe, this stance has resulted in unaccompanied children waiting to reunite with their families, which EU member states had committed to under the Dublin Regulation. The UK has also failed to accommodate its stated target of 480 unaccompanied child refugees under the so-called Dubs scheme. This has exposed children to extreme weather conditions and left them vulnerable to exploitation by child traffickers.
his is hardly surprising since we live in a world where the likes of Trump impose travel bans on Muslims and where Britain votes to leave the EU. However, we need to realise that strength doesn’t lie in divisions but in integration.
Source: thenews.com.pk/print/272127-strength-in-integration
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Ghani’s Admission and Afghan Conflict
By Dr Raza Khan
January 23, 2018
The recent admission by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that his country’s security forces and government would collapse within merely six months without US support reveals the state of affairs in the war-ravaged country. The statement of Ghani made during an interview to a US media outlet suggests that the entire Afghan state paraphernalia is just a façade. This has proven the Afghan Taliban’s long-held argument correct that the Kabul regime is only a puppet of Washington.
There is little doubt that America’s critical financial and military support to Kabul is the latter’s lifeblood but the question is why the Afghan president had to make such a revelation. There could be multiple objectives of such an admission. The foremost is that Ghani wants to convey to Washington that it has to keep on financing his government. However, the US presence in Afghanistan is also critically needed. But here the question arises is that for how long would Washington financially and militarily sustain the Afghan regime. The US has already spent nearly $1 trillion on the war effort in Afghanistan since the fiscal year 2002, including $121 billion on reconstruction efforts alone. So if by spending so much money and even losing around 2,400 of its soldiers Washington could not erect a viable state structure in Afghanistan then such a sponsored reconstruction strategy needs to be revisited. The US in the middle of last year came up with a new Afghan strategy but most of it revolves around militarily defeating the insurgency of the Afghan Taliban. There is little comprehensive non-military aspect of the strategy to win the war against the Taliban. Whereas the fundamental reason for the seemingly interminable conflict and insurgency in Afghanistan is social and political.
Before throwing light on the basic problem in Afghanistan it is important to note that President Ghani’s disclosure that the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) could not withstand the Taliban insurgency for more than six months without US support reveals utmost incompetence of more than 300,000-plus members of the ANDSF. According to the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a watchdog agency, “More than 60% [$73.5 billion] of the approximately $121 billion in US funding for reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2002 has gone to build up the ANDSF.” No meaningful and highly professional force could be raised with such a huge investment which itself is surprising.
On the contrary, President Ghani’s top US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, thinks the new US war strategy in Afghanistan would achieve its objectives and the foremost of which is to defeat the Taliban. But as the new US strategy focuses on the Pakistan factor in Afghanistan believing that pressuring Islamabad would result in the Taliban’s defeat by pulling from the latter its major source of sustenance, it is somewhat unrealistic. Considering Pakistan, howsoever huge its role in Afghanistan may have been, as the mainspring of instability and insurgency in Afghanistan is somewhat incorrect and externalisation of blame. Factual analysis reveals that much of the problem lies within Afghanistan. If the 300,000-plus strong ANDSF personnel have been suffering from large-scale incompetence and lack of professionalism, could anyone blame Pakistan for this ineptitude? The Afghan leadership and its American supporters need thorough soul-searching for achieving any desired results.
The fundamental problem in Afghanistan has been its inability to establish modern self-sustained political, economic and administrative structures. The Afghan state has always been the extension of a tribal social structure. Modern Afghanistan as a result could not establish a viable and vibrant state structure and institutions respectively. Afghan society has always been based on a tribal social system. The state could not dismantle the long-existing tribal value system and pave the way for the formation of a modern, civilised, forward-looking Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban if partly were the result of external engineering; Afghan social structure is also largely responsible for their and many other militias’ emergence.
US And Pakistan Clash at UN over Afghanistan
The US and Nato allies’ war effort in Afghanistan has failed primarily because the Western forces could either not understand the true character of the conflict and insurgency in Afghanistan or the strategy has been faulty with misplaced emphasis. Realistic analysis is that Afghanistan has had lacked institution-making and infrastructure development. The two presidents which Afghanistan has had since the introduction of the existing constitution in 2003 namely Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani have lacked the ability and commitment to address the multipronged conflict and crisis of Afghanistan. They could not lead from the front. The only qualifying factor for Karzai was his Pakhtun background. Same is the case with Ghani. Though President Ghani has been far more articulate and committed than Karzai, he still could not understand the dynamics of the crisis in Afghanistan and Karzai’s personal political and economic interests, which prevented him to lead from the front. Personal political ambitions also greatly compromised the effectiveness of his administration. The Western allies banking on Karzai and Ghani has proved disastrous for Afghanistan as both for their respective reasons have not been serious about meaningful engagement with the Taliban for peace talks.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1615342/6-ghanis-admission-afghan-conflict/
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Growing Anti-Immigration Sentiment in the US
By Shahid Javed Burki
January 22, 2018
As I write, Donald Trump and his associates from the Republican Party are embroiled in a dispute over immigration with the Democrats in the opposition. This is preventing Congress to pass the bill that would keep the government to remain open for business. The conversation between the two groups was sharpened when the president, talking about the people from the island of Haiti and the African continent, used vulgarities. He made it clear that he did not want people from these places to come to his country. This view was expressed at a meeting on January 11th held to negotiate the language of the bill that must be passed by Congress to prevent the government from shutting down for want of funding.
According to a report in The Washington Post, “Trump’s ping-ponging from deal making to feuding, from elation to fury, has come to define the contentious immigration talks between the White House and Congress, perplexing members of both parties as they navigate the president’s vulgarities, his combativeness and his willingness to change his position. This behaviour confirmed several minds that the current American president is mentally unstable and not fit to remain in the office.” The way he has talked about Pakistan in public — on August 21st and again on December 17th — the latter when his administration released the formal United States foreign policy strategy is one other measure of the man’s unsteady behaviour. Trump’s approach towards Pakistanis and Pakistan will significantly affect the making of foreign policy by Islamabad.
Pakistanis now have a growing presence in the United States. The exact count is not available; estimates range from 450,000 to 800,000. The lower estimate is from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) while the higher number is from the Pakistan embassy in Washington. According to the MPI, the Pakistani diaspora accounts for merely 0.8 per cent of the total US foreign-born population but is growing rapidly. Nearly two-thirds of all Pakistani immigrants to the United States are American citizens — the third-highest naturalisation rate of a group of 15 diaspora communities studied by the MPI. According to a report by the Asian American Centre for Justice, Pakistani-Americans comprise the second fastest growing Asian-American ethnic group in the country. Their numbers have doubled between 2000 and 2010 from just over 200,000 to 450,000. The United States is now the fifthlargest country for Pakistani migrants. Saudi Arabia is the most favoured destination for Pakistanis leaving their country. But there is a major difference between the Arab nations and the United States. While the American system allows the new arrivals to eventually become citizens, that option is not available in most of the Arab world.
High-earning professionals constitute the vast majority of Pakistanis who have arrived and settled in the United States. This is the reason why the average household income for the Pakistani-Americans is well above the national average. This is about the same as the Indians in the United States. But there is one important difference between these two communities. The America-Indians now have a visible presence in the senior echelons of the American political system. A few years ago, of the 50 governors in the country, two were of Indian origin. One of them, Nicki Haley of South Carolina, is now the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. There is a senator and a couple of members in the House of Representatives of Indian origin. A person of Indian origin is the deputy information adviser in the White House. Pakistanis believe that the presence of Indians in senior policymaking positions has contributed to the anti-Pakistan stance by the Trump administration. Haley, for instance, told the press that “we have asked the Indians to keep an eye on Pakistan.”
The proportion of non-European migrants to the United States increased significantly after the approval by Congress of the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This initiative was taken by then president Lyndon Johnson. The act removed immigration quotas based on national origin. The idea was to open the country to non-Europeans. President Johnson was not concerned that that would result in increasing the proportion of the non-whites in the country’s population. That happened, as the opportunities available in the United States to those from Asia and Africa were more numerous than was the case in Europe. What came to be known as the process of globalisation also put the United States on the radar screens of the ambitious in these continents, who had the skills that were needed in the United States. The Pakistani diasporas worldwide are a major source of foreign capital inflows into the country. They come in the form of remittances that averaged $2.7 billion a quarter from 2002 until 2017. They reached an all-time high of $5.5 billion in the second quarter of 2016. The lowest was $906 million in the third quarter of 2003. The United States is a major source of this inflow.
Those who are already in the United States will stay and see their numbers increase as they add more to their families. However, the growing anti-immigration sentiment will hurt Pakistan in two ways. It is likely that Pakistanis will run into greater scrutiny when they apply for visas. They will also be affected if the Trump administration places some limits on what is called ‘chain migration’. This is the process that allows those who are already in the country to bring in their close relatives. This type of migration has been an important source of addition to the Pakistan-American diaspora.
Source: tribune.com.pk/story/1614796/6-growing-anti-immigration-sentiment-us/
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