HIGH MORALE

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/03/28/high-morale/

• Emergancy measures show what should be done routinely

High morale among the people of a country leads to hope and confidence and provides citizens with an incentive to work towards the future. Governments therefore have a responsibility to maintain morale among the people they govern, but this morale-boosting must be based on truth, something real to be hopeful about. Word-mongering, empty words without substance, is nothing but the worst kind of electioneering.

What can be done to make a real difference in an emergency such as in these current virus-ridden times?

It’s a tough situation. Whatever course of action is decided upon is condemned by someone or the other. The government must be strong enough to withstand that opposition if it genuinely believes in the measures settles upon. It must also institute such measures that are possible in normal times. Such as measures to maintain hygiene.

Rumour is strong that streets are to be sanitized starting the next day or so. At the time of writing this column this is hearsay. If it is true, that is one good thing that is being done. Although why something short of ‘sanitising’ cannot be done routinely is difficult to understand. It is all about the will to improve things, making a careful plan and sticking to it. As it is, if it is done just the once, it takes little time for the dirt to accumulate once again.

A big factor in the spread of infection in a country like Pakistan are houseflies. Apparently these can carry infection on their legs, and flies are a given in the presence of piles of garbage. (According to the WHO mosquitoes cannot transmit COVID-19).  Effective measures for waste management and cleaning are a must in every way, at any time.

The other measure that is possible to take in advance is to stockpile equipment that comes in useful in the event of an emergency such as these pandemics. After all in our own lifetime the COVID-19 pandemic is just one of several such pandemics. There ought at least to be a sufficient quantity of masks and gloves in stock, and expensive as they are, as many ventilators as possible.

Every hospital needs a protocol, similar to that (which should be) in place in case of fire. Events such as the current pandemic require strict isolation. Detailed plans for this isolation are urgently required, plans involving points where the patients will enter from, where they will be directed to and treated, how they will leave, as well as effective plans for disposal of infected substances. It is NOT possible to determine these at the last minute.

The hardest hit at times like these are the poor, as they are almost on every occasion. Funds must be set aside for such contingencies along with a detailed plan for distribution.

One of the major factors that has surfaced in this, as in many other event, is the role played by the clergy.

It is the government that is the elected representative of the country. The clergy– and other organisations– are not. As such it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that the electorate is as safe from harm as possible. Otherwise, as Muhammad Malik so pertinently enquired, who is responsible in the case of disaster, and the PM accepted that he, as the Prime Minister was. That dialogue incidentally resulted in much furor which ended up in Malik apologizing for some reason. Perhaps he was made to. Anyway.

When events such as the current pandemic take place, isolation is crucially important as has been pointed out. Infection spreads in crowds. As such, all places where crowds accumulate must be temporary shut-down. Therefore schools, cinemas, bazaars, malls, restaurants, and as many offices as possible, these have been shut down. Mosques must be included in this list of places to be shut down. This is up to the government to decide, not the clerics. As it happened this time, the President asked for a fatwa from Al-Azhar, but when it came back saying that yes, mosques should be shut down, the Pakistani clerics did not accept it. It puts one in mind of US President Donald Trump who was intent on not shutting down contact with the UK because that is where his businesses are located.

In Dubai, congregational prayers have been suspended for the period of one month, and the later lines of the azzan there have been amended to say ‘“Al Salat Fi Buyootikum,” which means ‘pray at home’ instead of “Hayya Alasalah” which means ‘come to prayer.’

These decisions are for the people’s representatives to make. Clerics are neither qualified nor elected to represent the people. A government that cannot stand up to them, not once but every time, is not strong enough, and whatever such a government says, is not likely to raise morale in any segment of society. A genuinely strong government on the other hand is capable of raising morale. There is the added advantage of such a government being good for the country.

THE LATEST PANDEMIC

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/03/22/the-latest-pandemic/

The world is not new to pandemics. 165 to 180 AD it witnessed the Antonine Plague, probably smallpox. It killed about 5 million people. The Bubonic Plague in the 14th century killed about 200 million. Over centuries other plagues followed. There was SARS in 2003, and HIV-AIDS which has killed almost 35million persons.

In 1917, the year before the end of the First World War, hospitals and camps in several countries were crowded with injured soldiers and civilian casualties of war. It was said that in France a 100,000 soldiers came in and out of just one of its many hospitals.

That was when a new disease started spreading around the world, as a result of which many people died. It was identified as a strain of the ‘flu said to have started in infected poultry and transmitted to the pigs. Another opinion is that it went from birds to humans, and from there to the pigs.

As a result of the First World War, people moved around more than they would normally have done at the time and they carried infection from one place to another. There were also many injured persons who were more vulnerable to infection. The crowded hospitals and camps provided ideal conditions for the spread of this disease.

The USA was lucky that epidemic was never dubbed the ‘American ‘flu’, even though the 1918 ‘flu is said to have started in the USA, a position supported by several historians. But since it occurred so soon after the end of the First World War, censorship following the war played down its effects in the UK and USA to maintain morale and played up its effects in Spain – which had been hit hard but had not participated in the war.

China in that instance saw the fewest cases of this flu in contrast to the Covid-19 this year.

That ‘flu spread around the world, assuming pandemic proportions in 1918.

It is estimated that as a result of this pandemic anything between 17 to 100 million persons died around the world. At least 12 million people died in British-ruled India, about 5 percent of its population at the time. A large section of the world population today has at least one ancestor who died of the ‘flu at the time.

The situation then was eerily similar to the present when the COVID-19 has immobilized much of the world.

So, the world has been there before, and this situation in which we find ourselves is nothing new. Have we learnt anything from those pandemics?

Almost all those pandemics had a ‘pre-human host’, birds, rats, fleas, pigs, camels, and others, creatures that spread the infection to humans. So you would expect that we would already have better control of food source. Diseases require quarantine facilities, attention to hygiene, and afterwards care both financial and medical. Thousands of years later, none of these things are at a satisfactory level.

Scientists and medical personnel have played their role. Cures have been discovered, and doctors and nurses regularly put themselves in harm’s way. But have governments done their job?

The pandemonium and scramble to deal with COVID-19 testifies to the fact that we are ill equipped to deal with such a crisis which can and does arise at any time, with no warning.

In Pakistan medical facilities are woefully inadequate to deal with routine matters. At this time when we need them most we find ourselves to be short in every sense of the word. What has the government, and more specifically the Ministry of Health, been doing instead of preparing for eventualities which are by no means unusual?

The situation in hospitals in the Punjab would be comical if it weren’t so critically dangerous. There is no protocol in place in case of such an emergency, such as the protocol in place for events such as fires. People have no idea where to get themselves tested from and are shunted from window to department in search of the correct destination. Kits are in short supply, although that is understandable, given that this is a new form of virus.

There are only a handful of ventilators, even though these are urgently required in any form of respiratory illness. There is no concept of quarantine, neither among the staff nor the public, and the state of hygiene is as abysmal as always. The administration and bureaucrats are busy passing the blame to anyone but their own selves.

The situation has been compounded as always by the religious fraternity which has refused to allow mosques to be shut down for the period of this emergency. So although people have been asked to isolate themselves as much as possible (not possible in case of the less affluent segment of society) they congregate every Friday and pass the virus around.

Perhaps the most disgusting of all has been the oath-taking ceremony of the Chief Justice of the High Court on the March 19, which hundreds of invitees attended seated cheek by jowl in the city where Section 144 has been imposed. Clearly the law does not apply equally to all.

But infectious diseases are much less discerning.

A MUCH LARGER SCHENGEN

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/03/15/much-larger-schengen/

• The world-state is still far away

It may be a joke that the US President Donald Trump imagines Schengen to be a place ‘somewhere out there in China’, but he may well do so, given the rest of his misconceptions, even worse than the idea that we have been ruled by Turks for 600 years. Yet, the idea of Schengen, although it may be restricted at present to an area comprised of just 26 European states with no border or visa controls like one big state, and even though the ‘one big state’ is only for the purpose of international travel: you get a Schengen visa and you can visit any of those26 states– that idea makes you stop and think. Would something like that, even more than that, on a much larger scale, be possible? Like a much larger, much more powerful Schengen;

Civilisation after all seems to have been moving from a scattering of individuals towards a conglomeration of individuals into a single unit, the unit getting larger and larger until who knows, unlikely as it seems at present, one day Dante’s dream of world government may come true. Even ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian Kings dreamt of ruling ‘all that the sun encircles.’ Somewhat flawed as to the science if encircle means to travel around, but the idea was out there.

Those scattered groups of humans went on to form tribes, which still exist today, although today they are part of one State or another. Before that it was after hundreds of years of living as independent tribes that Sumer came into being around 4500 BC, and what might have been the first ever city, Uruk. Uruk had some 50,000 to 80,000 citizens living in approximately a 2.5 sq mile area surrounded by walls. The region in was what is now Iraq, east of the Euphrates River. There were no countries at that point.

Not many people know much about San Marino or even of its existence today, but that was the first country as we know it, and it came into existence a few thousand years after Sumer in 301 BC. Its constitution, which was written in 1600 AD, is one of the oldest in the world. Today it is one of the world’s smallest countries, a tiny mountainous area entirely surrounded by Italy. But from a single country the world went on to many, and then groups of several nations banded together for various reasons, for example the African Union (AU), the Commonwealth of Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and others, with the European Union as the most recognized, with its open borders, single currency, and unified economic policy.

When the League of Nations came into being after the First World War it was unable to prevent the Second World War. Around then came Communism at its peak, and the United Nations which came into being after the Second World War with its most important feature, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN’s members consist of almost all the recognized countries of the world, that is 196 out of 199. But it seems unlikely that even the United Nations as it exists today will be able to prevent a third world war if it comes to the point. The United Nations must widen its remit.

Several persons including Gandhi, Bertrand Russell and Einstein were keen to allow the UN to grow towards becoming a world federal government, but for now it is still restricted to aiming for international justice, peace and security, fostering economic cooperation, education, and providing a meeting point for the nations of the world.

The idea of a single entity is now more than appealing. It appears almost inevitable with the means of transport we now possess, and the communications technology at our fingertips which is almost impossible to control. In fact communications and viruses have been thumbing their noses at authorities today, crossing borders with impunity despite controls, respecting neither regulations nor differences. The list is likely to grow.

After Dante, many people have advocated world government. Kant, Ulysses Grant, and even Lord Tennyson, who said: “…in the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold, a fretful realm in awe. And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.”

There was also William Gladstone, Friedrich Nietzsche, and then later Bahaullah, the founder of the Baha’i faith. Bahaullah apparently ‘envisioned a set of new social structures based on participation and consultation among the world’s people, including a world legislature, an international court, and an international executive empowered to carry out the decisions of these bodies.

Bahai’s great grandson described Bahai’s vision of a world state as per the Bahai faith as ‘the world’s future super-state’ with the Bahai faith as the ‘state religion of an independent and sovereign power.’

And this is where the problem comes in.

Of the factors that would prevent a world state, two of the most major are likely to be racial and religious constraints.

Unless the major religions can be brought to sit at the same table without each trying to eliminate the other, unless governments that build walls against other nations can be taught to build bridges instead there can be no such thing as a single unified independent and sovereign force that includes all the people of the world. And till that happens, war is likely to be the method of choice in resolving disputes.

People can be taught racial non-discrimination, but can they be persuaded to leave religion out of matters of State?

THE AURAT MARCH IN PERSPECTIVE

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/03/08/aurat-march-perspective/

A well-known male playwright’s despicable invective against a female activist on a television show has a horrifying number of supporters. You wonder which of his words make people support him. Is it asking a woman to ‘go take a look at your body!’ and ‘what the hell is it like?’ Is it telling her that he would ‘spit on her’? Or is it calling her an ‘ulloo ki patthi’, a foul phrase of abuse? That was not all the ‘man’ said to the woman on the show, but it was enough to indicate the stuff he is made of, and it is nothing smart, civilised or humane.

As for the lady who has been attacked, she has stood up for many aspects of women’s rights over the years and has been greatly persecuted as a result. She is probably used to it, which does not excuse any of it.

It has been said that this was a ploy for free publicity, that she provoked him by interrupting him repeatedly while he spoke… none of which excuses him. No decent man would speak anyone this way, let alone to a woman. His words should actually be enough to make all self-respecting television channels refuse to carry his plays or seek out his opinion.

Perhaps the episode served a purpose by putting the Aurat March in the spotlight, and in perspective. Certainly, with opinions such as the playwright’s and his supporters, the March becomes even more pertinent.

What, after all, does the Aurat March demand as per its charter?

The charter calls for environmental justice, rights to the city, greater political participation of women, transgender and non-binary people, an end to the sexist treatment of women and transgender persons, and rights for the disabled.

Despite laws for the provision of disabled services, exceedingly few places provide them in Pakistan.

And despite the fact that transgender persons are now eligible for identity cards, they are subject to a great deal of discrimination.

In 2018, the State of Nevada in the USA became the first State in the country with a majority of women in the legislature. The results were as follows:

Firefighters, who have a higher rate of cancer due to exposure, were given suitable compensation in case of this illness. Employees were allowed at least 40 hours of paid leave, including sick leave, per year. Gender discrimination in salaries became illegal. Laws relating to sexual violence and assault and sex trafficking were passed.

So, back to the Aurat March, whose charter also demands economic justice.

According to a study of a 149 countries, Pakistan comes out second from the bottom regarding gender equality. Only 25 percet women may be found in the workforce, while the world average is almost double that figure. One reason of course is that while Pakistan’s overall literacy rate is just around 58 percent, only a small proportion of this consists of females. The greater proportion is male. What’s more, according to a World Bank Global Index Report in 2017, only seven percent of women in the country have financial accounts.

The charter demands minority rights and an end to forced conversions for all, but in this case, of course, particularly for women.

There is little protection for women in Pakistan (witness the way the playwright spoke to the Activist… and got away with it) but minority women have the additional dagger of forced marriages, conversions and allegations of blasphemy hanging above their heads, the latter for both men and women. Let’s not forget Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman, accused and in prison for years following charges of blasphemy on exceedingly flimsy evidence. She has since found asylum in another country. A matter of great shame for Pakistan. In addition there are the cases of Hindu women, allegedly abducted and forced to marry Muslim men, and minority women (and men) killed with few repercussions for the killers.

The charter demands an end to violence and sexual harassment of women.

A study by Human’s Rights Watch carried out a few years ago “estimated that 20 to 30 percent of women in Pakistan have suffered some form of abuse. An estimated 5000 women are killed per year as a result of domestic violence, with thousands of others maimed or disabled.”

According to a survey conducted last year by the Punjab Bureau of Statistics and the Punjab Commission of the Status of Women, in Punjab alone one in every three women between the ages of 15 and 64 has faced some form of violence.

Once again, according to a report produced by Pakistan’s Family Planning and Services Commission, ‘in Pakistan one in every five women wish to use contraceptives but do not have access to them.” As a result the country has around 10 percent of global unsafe abortions and a very high maternal and newborn mortality rate.

Which of these demands is indecent, and not supported by the religion of the majority of this country?

All the above also makes the Aurat March slogan: Mera Jism Meri Marzi extremely pertinent.

There is a simple reason for constraints, discrimination and persecution of any sort, and that reason is Fear.

The furore against the Aurat March, the paranoia against immigration, and religious intolerance, it is fear that leads to all of these. The end result is never positive.

Europe saw its era of persecution. Under Nero, Rome started a policy of persecuting monotheists. This ended a few years later, following which Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 AD. After the Jewish Holocaust in Germany the Jews managed to get their own homeland.

Women fought and obtained the right to suffrage, and God willing they will also obtain their rights in Pakistan, along with justice and non-discrimination, despite men who condemn these fundamental human rights– not for themselves but for women– only because they fear that this will spell an end to their right to treat women with disrespect, dishonor, and cruelty.