Monday, November 27, 2017

WHAT HAPPENED TO 'INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY'?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/11/27/what-happened-to-innocent-until-proven-guilty/

There were serious doubts concerning several accusations of blasphemy, quite a strong sense that other, unrelated motives triggered the accusations. In the case of Sawan Masih and the Christian Joseph colony, Sawan denied he had made blasphemous statements. He said that a business concern had its eyes on the land occupied by the colony and they had triggered the events that led to the accusations.
After the accusations against Masih many of the houses in Joseph colony were burnt and the residents fled. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is a serious matter that such allegations can be used to ‘settle personal scores’.
There is a Latin expression: Ei incumbet probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. It means that ‘the burden of proof is upon the one who declares, not upon one who denies.’ This is behind the principle that a person is considered innocent unless proven guilty. Most systems of law agree with this principle, including the Islamic. In fact under the Islamic concept of justice even casting suspicion on a person is highly condemned as per hadith documented by Imams Nawawi, Bukhari and Muslim. Hazrat Ali has also been cited as saying, ‘Avert the prescribed punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence’. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights also incorporates this principle as do civilian codes of law in many countries.
An accusation that defames an individual, group, organisation or an ideology is called ‘slander’ if verbal, or libel if written and used in media. In ancient England, slander was punished by cutting off the slanderer’s tongue. In modern times defamation is punishable in various ways prescribed by the code of many countries. Many celebrities including Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and Scarlett Johanssen have successfully sued in such cases.
So, although this equally applies to finger wagging rants against their opponents by politicians, in light of what has suddenly taken centre stage these days, what about allegations of sexual harassment?
  • For the media, which is responsible for bringing issues to light and carrying them around the world, there exists a code of ethics. Whether it is taken seriously is debatable
While it would be insane to doubt that sexual harassment occurs, and occurs very frequently indeed, could it not be that allegations of sexual harassment are also at times used to ‘settle personal scores’? It is certainly not out of the question. And if so, how should these be handled?
It is slander in itself to cast a general doubt on such accusations. In fact it would be very wrong, since very many of those accusations are founded in truth, and in fact women are being encouraged to speak up against such abuse. But what of the cases where there is no way to prove the accuser right?
There is almost no woman who has not undergone some form of sexual harassment, small or large. On the other hand it is equally true that men are vulnerable to sexual allegations, because they are so easy to make, so difficult to disprove, and so often true. Their mere presence can ruin a man, personally as well as professionally, and unless they possess a skin as thick as the POTUS, it spells the end of the accused’s credibility. It is all the more important, then, that such accusations should be verified.
There is no way to verify the truth of sexual accusations made years after the event, and some very public accusations were made decades after a supposed event. Unless these are verifiable, surely it is best in such cases for the accuser to stay away from the person she accuses and carry on maintaining the silence she has for so many years, unless the accused still has access to her.
Accusations by and against well-known persons include the public and the media, neither of whom are without certain obligations. The public is of course under various personal, societal and religious obligations.
For the media, which is responsible for bringing issues to light and carrying them around the world, there exists a code of ethics. Whether it is taken seriously is debatable.
I quote Wikipedia: ‘The Society of Professional Journalists created a code of ethics in use today. The main mantra of the code is to ‘seek truth and report it’.
The code says that journalists should: “Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.”(Straubhaar, LaRose and Davenport).
That journalists should show good taste, and avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.” (Straubhaar, LaRose and Davenport).
Which of these factors have been adhered to in reporting the sexual harassment allegations that sprouted so suddenly like mushrooms in the wake of the allegations against Weinstein?
What’s more, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, which recently sent around a notice to all cell phones warning that ‘Uploading, downloading and sharing of any blasphemous content on the internet is a punishable offence under the law’, needs to understand that to accuse someone of blasphemy lays the accuser, including the state of Pakistan as represented by the PTA open to an accusation of slander, which is as serious an accusation as any other. Unless they can manage to prove their allegation, which in such cases has very often been impossible.
But no one seems to care about that.

Monday, November 20, 2017

SHOULD LITTLE BOY AND FAT MAN BE IN RECKLESS HANDS?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/11/20/should-little-boy-and-fat-man-be-in-reckless-hands/

  • A nuclear confrontation is after all not simply a confrontation, it is an annihilation

The American senate actually held a congressional enquiry recently to debate Donald Trump’s capability of being entrusted with the codes that could trigger nuclear war. In questioning this capability it has only echoed the doubt that exists in the minds of people all over the world: is the man who tweets like a twit capable of judging how, when and if to call for nuclear confrontation?
Donald Trump, after all, is a man who has traded personal insults with the leader of North Korea in much the same way as children do in kindergarten playgrounds, and threatened the Korean regime with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” That sounds uncannily like Harry Truman’s threat against Japan towards the end of the Second World War, when, after the US bombed Hiroshima (that bomb was called ‘Little Boy’) Truman warned Japan to expect “a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Three days after this threat another bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki. This bomb was called ‘Fat Man’.
“We are concerned that the president of the United States is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic, that he might order a nuclear strike that is wildly out of step with US interests,” said Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut.
It isn’t just Democrats who are worried. Bob Corker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, warned that Trump’s reckless threats could put the country on a “path to World War III.”
With repercussions, as the title ‘world war’ indicates, for the entire world.
Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University, was questioned about whether Donald Trump can actually launch such a nuclear attack by himself, and if so, what checks are in place to prevent his doing so arbitrarily. His response was printed in Vox, in which he said: The president of the United States “requires other people to carry out an order, so he can’t just lean on a button and automatically the missiles fly. But he has the legal and political authority on his own to give an order that would cause other people to take steps which would result in a nuclear strike.”
About checks on the POTUS’s authority, Feaver’s response was that there were more checks in place than people realise. “It would raise lots of alarms throughout the system,” he said. “So the chief of staff of the White House, the national security adviser, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — they would all ask, ‘What’s happening? We just got this crazy order. What’s going on?’”
“If they were given reliable information that we’re really under attack, that something is really happening, then you would expect the order to be carried out. But if they’re saying, ‘We don’t know what’s going on. No one’s alerted us,’ they would likely halt the process and get some clarity.”
It is a relief to know that, although if the president’s suitability for such as assessment is questionable, what guarantee the suitability of anyone else? Besides, the real question is — as it should be — whether anyone at all is capable of making this decision?
A nuclear confrontation is after all not simply a confrontation, it is an annihilation. Who, if anyone is entitled, or capable, or should be entitled or can be capable of making a call for the annihilation of a large segment of the human race, and the world it lives in?
This, briefly, is what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the consent of the United Kingdom: Within the first two to four months 90,000 to 14,000 people died in Hiroshima, and 39,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki. Most of these people were civilians. In the following months a huge number of people died of radiation sickness, burns and other injuries, as well as malnutrition. In addition, about 650,000 survivors are officially recognised as ‘explosion-affected people’. Some of these suffer from radiation sickness, others from psychological trauma. Many of them still suffer from discrimination since people tend to think radiation sickness is contagious.
In today’s setting, any such possibility as a nuclear strike by one nation is not the business of that nation and its victim alone. The extent of destruction and the fall-out in terms of radioactivity has far reaching effects, both with regards to physical space, and time, given that nuclear weapons these days are far larger and more powerful than those dropped on Japan after the Second World War. Therefore a strike in one country would have consequences for neighbouring countries as well, perhaps an entire region. The question of who has access to nuclear arms, and what checks exist on the capacity of persons with that access is therefore a matter of concern for the entire world, in which the entire world has a say.


Pakistan, as part of a world community, and as a state with nuclear capability, as well as a neighbour to another state with a similar capability, should give at least this matter some very serious thought. In this matter, without any doubt at all, we cannot afford the disorganisation and discord that appears to be a major factor in every sphere of life in this country.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

SECTARIAN EGOS IN THE REGION

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/11/14/sectarian-egos-in-the-region/

And Pakistan’s priorities

The unrest turned sectarian in 2004 when the Shia led Houthis staged an uprising against the Sunni government. They’re trying to take over the government, said the government; we’re trying to protect the Shia against discrimination, said the Houthis

With food running out and oil wells drying up, the only way out of Yemen’s dilemma is if the blockade imposed by its neighbours is lifted. That is for starters, but it would be a crucial start that would prevent millions of deaths by starvation and disease such as cholera

The southwestern tip of Yemen juts into where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. Across the water, on the coast of Africa, lies Djibouti. On its north, Yemen is bordered by Saudi Arabia. Yemen has the added misfortune of being the poorest country in the Middle East, the reason behind its unrest. The country has been the scene of riots due to shortage of food in 1992. On that occasion people died. By now the shortage has assumed famine proportions and the stage is set for the worst humanitarian crisis of recent times.
The unrest turned sectarian in 2004 when the Shia led Houthis staged an uprising against the Sunni government. They’re trying to take over the government, said the government; we’re trying to protect the Shia against discrimination, said the Houthis. In reality, the Houthis have the support of many among the Sunnis as well, given conditions in the country.
The BBC reports that more than 7,600 people were killed in Yemen since this civil war started, and 42,000 were injured, ‘the majority in air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition.’ That is a coalition of nine countries formed in 2015 by the Saudis with American support to intervene in the Yemeni civil war. In one of its few displays of sense, Pakistan turned down an invitation to form part of this coalition. One of the ‘achievements’ of the coalition has been to close all routes into the country, resulting in the humanitarian crisis mentioned above. Aid agencies are unable to access recipients at a time when 70pc of the population of Yemen is in need of aid.
More than half the people of Yemen is said to be ‘food insecure’, almost half of those ‘severely food insecure’. More than half the country lacks safe drinking water, and almost a quarter of the children are malnourished.
Despite this injustice, death and tragedy, the people of Pakistan remain focused on little other than the inadequacies of India and its people.
What of the inadequacies of a country that is silent when the rulers of a country we like to call a friend commit a holocaust against the people of another Muslim country? Not that it matters whether the victims are Muslim or not. It is enough that they are human, innocent, and helpless.
It comes of being a weak country dependent on handouts that one is silent when such things happen, when children die for lack of nourishment, and adults, who are short of food themselves, are forced to watch because forces beyond their power are strangling their country, forces that like to call themselves ‘keepers of the keys to holy places’.
Come December, Pakistan will be festive with wedding illuminations, and the greatest worry to furrow our brow will be the one-dish restriction at wedding functions. Enough food will be wasted to feed Yemen for a day, and women will wear garish clothes worth lacs of rupees. And any political conscience that exists will be focused on the freedom of Kashmir.
There are many forces operating in Yemen at present, although famine and death are the biggest. Al Qaeda and ISIL are among them. The Houthis are fighting against both of these, as well as against Saudi Arabia and its powerful allies. Yemen is after all an oil rich country, although probably not for long.
Yemen’s oil reserves are dwindling, and although oil is still one of its major exports, more and more of what it earns from petroleum is consumed by the civil war against the Houthis. Besides, the country is riddled with corruption and shoddy organisation, and spends more than six percent of its GDP on its military. Pakistan, which (officially) spends almost half, is not behind for want of trying.
With food running out and oil wells drying up, the only way out of Yemen’s dilemma is if the blockade imposed by its neighbours is lifted. That is for starters, but it would be a crucial start that would prevent millions of deaths by starvation and disease such as cholera.
Whatever other axes there are to grind, the reason behind the blockade boils down to sectarian egos, Shia versus Sunni, in other words the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the region. Pakistan need support neither, but as in within its own borders, it finds it impossible to avoid partisanship.
Religion ought to be a source of unity rather than discord. Pakistan needs to get its priorities right even though it did not join the alliance.


Monday, November 6, 2017

R.I.P DINA WADIA

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2017/11/06/r-i-p-dina-wadia/

To her father Pakistan would be unrecognisable today
Dina Wadia who looked remarkably like her father, died on the 2nd of November this year at the age of ninety-eight. She lived in New York, far away from the country founded by Jinnah. She was never able to take possession of her father’s house in Bombay, and visited Pakistan just twice, never making it her home.
You wonder if her father would have made it his home either, if he had seen it as it is now. Definitely he would not recognise himself if he heard himself spoken of today. Even less than the previous generation does the present one know the man they call the Father of the Nation, and very little about what he stood for. For them he is yet another almost saintly two dimensional historical figure presented in text books, a fictitious litany starting from Mohammad bin Qasim, all of them cut from the same mold.
You wonder what would have gone through Jinnah’s mind if he had seen his country today. To start with he would have been startled to see just half, after he had said “there is no power on earth that can undo Pakistan.” Lo and behold, it undid itself.
He would have also have been rather taken aback to hear one of its ‘Presidents’ Pervez Musharraf insist that his dream for Pakistan was the same as Jinnah’s, particularly since that President had just imposed martial law in the country. It is doubtful if Jinnah had ever considered martial law and Pakistan in the same breath.
Instead he spoke of the oath taken by troops, and read it out too at an address to the Staff College in Quetta: ‘“I solemnly affirm, in the presence of Alimighty God, that I owe allegiance to the Constitution and the Dominion of Pakistan…” He also reminded them on another occasion that “Do not forget that the armed forces are the servants of the people and you do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted”. Martial law of course is the suspension of law in a country in which the armed forces have deposed the civilian government to take control.
And yet there have been three martial laws in this country, the same that claims the Quaid-e-Azam Rehmatullah Alaih as its leader, incidentally the man who said that “I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr. Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more than happy if there was no prefix to my name.”
Three actually imposed martial laws, that is. There were others but they did not succeed. Or, as is rather more chilling, that are not visible. But of those the less said the better.
Maybe though the most startlingly distressing thing for Jinnah would be that he might stand in imminent danger of his life if he ever stepped foot in the country he founded, given that he came from a Gujrati family, and was born a Shia. Along with him, in much greater danger, would be the man who actually wrote the proposal for the partition of India, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan who, being a member of the Ahmadiyya sect, would be even more damned than the Founder.
“I told you,” Jinnah would cry, “The idea was that we should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own rights and culture and where principle of Islamic social justice could find free play!” And then when people still did not understand he would repeat the famous words from his Presidential address to the Constituent Assembly in 1947: “You may belong to any religion, caste or creed –that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
So what should be done about this state of affairs?
In a country with several sects, each of them intolerant of the others’ existence, the rational thing would be to choose a ‘neutral umpire’.
Jinnah, although he belonged to one of those several sects was as neutral is it gets. His views are well placed for being observed and implemented if the will for progress and peace genuinely exists. The death of his daughter is an occasion to remember the ideals of the father, ideals that are the easiest, maybe the only path to well-being, particularly since they do not conflict with anything rational we believe in.