E-Paper PDF 20 October (ISB)

CMYK

20 October, 2019 I 20 Safar-ul-Muzaffar, 1441 I Rs 27.00 I Vol X No 110 I 76 Pages I Islamabad Edition

Govt urGes Fazl not to march For Kashmir’s saKe g

defence MiniSter KhattaK SayS JUi-f chief’S refUSal to hold talKS with govt PointS to anti-KaShMir agenda

ISLAMABAD

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staff rEpOrt

he Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s focal person for talks with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Defence Minister Pervez Khattak on Saturday said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s refusal to come to the table points towards an anti-Kashmir agenda.

Addressing a press conference along with Federal Minister for education Shafqat Mehmood at Parliament house, Khattak said that the opposition, rather than showing willingness or taking any steps to solve issues, is bent upon its demand for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s resignation.

Making it clear that the issue of Azadi March would be resolved through dialogue between the government and JUI-F leadership, the PTI leaders said that the government had never closed doors to dialogue in its sit-in during the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government’s tenure.

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SayS PM’S reSignation ‘oUt of qUeStion’, warnS of iMPoSing State’S writ if oPP PartieS reSort to violence

“We are requesting the opposition parties to come and talk,” Khattak said, adding that in democracy, discussing issues is necessary for resolving them. he denied rumours that the government had been pushed into forming a committee “out of fear”, saying that things can only be resolved through dialogue whereas the government would fully follow procedures of democracy.

Making it clear that the premier’s resignation was out of question, Khattak said that the issues would be resolved through dialogue and the government’s writ would be implemented otherwise the only way forward would be to act and “make decisions according to the law”.

“We are requesting the opposition parties to come and talk. Because if you have any issues then you should talk. This is a democracy.

If you don’t sit with us and talk, then we would have fulfilled our responsibility. Whatever happens afterwards will be on you,” he said while adding that the government would consult all parties on the Azadi March.

Khattak warned that the opposition’s stubborn behaviour will only result in “utter lawlessness” and yield no results. he hoped that messages sent to the senior leadership of opposition parties would yield positive results and that they would come to the table to pave a way towards a solution so that all attention can be used to deal with the Kashmir issue as “which seems to be constantly cast aside”.

“It seems there is some other agenda; an agenda has been formed to bury the issue of Kashmir,” the defence minister added. emphasising that the government was responsible for protecting the nation from anarchy and destruction, the defence minister said that the matter of Azadi March was not just a political issue but encompassed civil life as well.

“The government has to establish its writ.

If someone challenges the government, it is not just Imran Khan that is the government, it is the state. And it is not just PTI that forms the state, we have a whole system and if someone wishes it harm, they will get the rightful response,” he added.

The defence minister said that whenever one tunes into Indian media channels, “it seems people (in Pakistan) are working on their (Indian) agenda”. “They are happy to see Pakistan descend into chaos.” he said the government for that reason wishes to sit down and hold talks and strengthen the country’s position against external threats.

Khattak, drawing a comparison from a protest sit in by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf — which was part of the opposition in 2014 — said that the PTI approach had been different whereby before a protest was called, the National Assembly, courts, and election Commission of Pakistan were all approached first.

“When all options were exhausted, only then did Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was the party leader, decide to march on Islamabad.”

Khattak said the PTI “didn’t just come out without a rhyme or reason”. “We had an issue (election rigging) and a list of demands.”

CONTINUED ON BACK PAGE

govt asks lhc to transfer Sana’s case to rawalpindi g

Shehryar afridi citeS threatS to witneSSeS, SeeKS hearing on daily BaSiS

STORY ON PAGE 02

Manmohan Singh confirms participation in Kartarpur event

STORY ON BACK PAGE

Turkey, Kurds trade accusations even as Syria truce takes hold

STORY ON BACK PAGE

UK lawmakers vote to delay final Brexit decision again STORY ON BACK PAGE

ISLAMABAD: Shia Muslims take out processions and flagellate themselves to mark chehlum of Hazrat Imam Hussain. The commemoration marks the 40th day following the death of the imam in the 7th century. ONLINE

CMYK

CMYK Sunday, 20 October, 2019

02 ISLAMABAD

Govt asks LHC to transfer sana’s Case to rawaLpindi ISLAMABAD

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Staff RepoRt

he federal government on Saturday requested the Lahore high Court (LhC) to “immediately” transfer the case of former Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah to Rawalpindi, citing protection of the witnesses while requesting the court for a daily hearing of the case.

“It is my humble submission to the Lahore high Court chief justice to shift Sanaullah’s case to Rawalpindi and order the court to conduct its hearing on daily basis,” Minister of State for Narcotics Con-

trol Shehryar Afridi said in a press conference. The minister also asked the Inspector General of Punjab Police to ensure the protection of witnesses after their “complaints of being threatened”.

“From the very first day, I emphasized in every press conference, talk show, and other forums to start Rana Sanaullah’s trial [after indictment] but I have failed to understand the reason behind procrastination,” he said, citing the report of a national daily which stated that the duty judge had turned down the prosecution plea for initiation of Sana’s trial. he said the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) had sufficient evidence

against Rana Sanaullah in the narcotics case which would be provided when the trial would officially start.

Therefore, the trial of Rana Sanaullah should be started at the earliest in order to remove confusion among the masses, he added.

Following the procedure mentioned in the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), he claimed the ANF had submitted evidence against Rana Sanaullah in a court within 17 days of his arrest.

The evidence comprised “recovered heroin, weapons, chemical analysis report and other instruments of the case”, he added. The government or any other institution could not intervene in the judicial process, he clarified.

Afridi said the media had started the ANF and government’s trial despite the fact that the prosecution witnesses were yet to record their statements before the court. Though, the apex court had barred the media from airing the statement of an

accused in Altaf hussain case, the media was still giving full media coverage to Rana Sanaullah and creating hype in this case, he added.

Besides finding out Rana’s illegal investment in real estate, he said the government had traced out his bank accounts in which he had stashed big amount of money. The former law minister declared the advocacy as his source of income in tax returns, Afridi added.

Being an advocate, the minister said not a single law book carried Rana Sanaullah’s name. he ‘appealed’ to the nation and media to avoid criticism on the government institutions as the ANF was working efficiently and rendered many sacrifices in a war against drugs.

The ANF, in line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan, had been tightening the noose around drug mafias instead of drug addicts to root out the trade of illegal substances in the country, he added.

The performance of ANF had been applauded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and other international institutions, the minister claimed.

CMYK

CMYK Sunday, 20 October, 2019

NEWS

Govt to Ban JUi-f’s ansarUL isLaM winG ISLAMABAD

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AhmAD AhmADANi

HE federal government has decided to ban the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s Asarul Islam force under Article 256 and Section 2 of the Private Military Organization Act 1974.

The Interior Ministry has also obtained the approval of the federal cabinet and a notification will be issued to this effect next week. After the issuance of the notification, the ministry will forward recommendations to the provinces to take action against the Ansarul Islam under Article 146. “Article 146 (1) of the constitution permits the federal government to delegate any of its pow-

ers to the provinces, conditionally or unconditionally, but with the consent of the provincial governments,” said documents. “Notwithstanding anything contained in the constitution, the federal government may with the consent of the government of a province, entrust either conditionally or unconditionally to that government, or to its officers functions in relation to any matter to which the executive authority of the federation extends”, reads Article 146 (1) of the constitution.

Meanwhile, JUI-F Spokesman Hafiz Hussain Ahmed told Pakistan Today that the JUI-F has not received any official information in this regard. However, the party will consult its lawyers to deal with the

matter in the court of law if the government decided to ban the “volunteer organisation”, he added.

He said: “Ansarul Islam has been working as a volunteer organization of JUI since the inception of Pakistan and it is also mentioned in the party manifesto.” So far, no FIR has been registered against it, he said, adding he came to know about the potential ban through media reports. Responding to a question pertaining to the uniform, he said uniform was only for the recognition of volunteers and march past was only to check the preparedness of this volunteer organization to handle the large gathering– the Azadi March.

“Every religious and political party of the country has its separate

volunteer organisation to control and manage the party meetings, processions, and other party activities, “ said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed. According to an intelligence report, the JUI-F has constituted an ‘armed wing’ named Ansarul Islam ahead of the anti-government march on Oct 27. “It seems the uniformed force intends to challenge the writ of the state and witnessed preparing for a confrontation with the law enforcement agencies,” the summary said, adding the force was 80,000-strong. There is an apprehension of worsening the law and order situation during the ‘Azadi March’,” the summary said.

“Formation of Ansarul Islam as an armed force is a violation of Article 256 of the Constitution,” the summary said. It is not improbable that Ansarul Islam militia might have arms and its activities could pose a threat to peace in Islamabad as well as in provinces, the summary said. Article 256 prohibits the formation of an armed organisation.

The National Action Plan doesn’t permit an armed outfit, the summary stated.

right to protest constitutional, says pML-n’s ahsan iqbal lahore: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Secretary General Ahsan Iqbal on Saturday sought to remind the government that carrying out a protest was a right accorded to citizens by the Constitution of Pakistan. “How can ones who themselves staged a sit-in object to a protest?” He said that the offer for talks was a “two-faced move”. Iqbal, in a stark reminder of the 2014 sit-in by the PTI, said: “The 126day sit-in caused a complete shut down of schools, the Chinese president’s tour was cancelled and now you are worried about the education of children?” “Imran Khan should first render an apology to the nation and to Nawaz Sharif before talking about negotiations,” he added. The PML-N leader, in another swipe at PTI, questioned the conscience with which the party’s representatives were “delivering sermons on the wisdom of talks” when they “descended onto the PTV offices, the Supreme Court building and the Parliament?” “On the one hand, this incompetent prime minister lays before us this farce of a committee, and on the other he bad mouths his political opponents and ridicules them,” he said. Iqbal said that it is not only Shehbaz Sharif and Maulana Fazlur Rehman who view him as “incompetent” and “a failure”, but the entire nation who endorse the view. STAFF REPORT

whiteLiES Apollo

Opp parties in two minds over JUI-F’s Azadi March: Firdous ISLAMABAD STAFF REPORT

Special Assistant to the PM on Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan on Saturday claimed that the opposition parties are confused on the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) call of sit-in. She said the government accepts the right of peaceful protest, but no one would be allowed to create chaos with the help of militia.

“The law will take due course of action in this regard,” added the SAPM. Firdous said the provincial governments have chalked out their strategies for Azadi March and the decision to put Mualana Fazl under house arrest has to be taken by the provin-

cial governments. Commenting on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) meeting, Firdous said that the opponents’s steps failed to place Pakistan on the black list.

In a tweet shared on her official Twitter account, she asked Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to be careful and “take a look at your wrongdoings.”

“Calm down a bit and think why has Bhutto not remained alive in Larkana,” she stated, adding that public meetings organised by government resources do not reflect public sentiments. “Your stance fell through by the public’s power of vote […] our institutions guarantee our pride, defence and security,” she said. “Which of your masters are getting pleasure from your ir-

LAHORE Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed said on Saturday that Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) suspension of negotiation is undemocratic and opposed to political norms.

Rasheed while addressing a press conference stated, “Even if all chaudhries die, Maulana still won’t be able to come into power to form a gov-

ernment.” “The sit-in is still in the grey list, the JUI-F is still not sure of holding it,” he said. “Maulana is making a mistake, his career can end and he is only doing it on someone else’s signals,” he added. “This time, if an attempt is made to derail democracy, a decision to counter any such scheme will be made promptly. PM Imran formed a committee to hold dialogue with the opposition parties and that’s how democracy works,” he said. “I am not against semi-

responsible statements?” she asked, adding: “If you had cared about the state, then you wouldn’t have played a film of irresponsible statements.”

“All you care about is the corruption of your father and paternal aunt,” she said.

naries as they are minarets of Islam but the exploiting being done on name of religion is unacceptable. Maulana went to the Golden Temple but never paid a visit to Qaid-e-Azam’s shrine,” he added.

Rasheed said that PM Khan and army chief are two wheels of the same car and are on same page. “The responsibility for the current economic crisis is on former rulers whereas our government is trying to improve the situation,” he said.

Prince William and Kate’s royal tour of Pakistan ‘highly successful’: US paper NEW YORK APP

A leading American newspaper has described the just-concluded trip to Pakistan of Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton as “highly successful”, and said it underscored the effectiveness of fashion as a tool of diplomacy.

“It has been, by all accounts, a highly successful five days of outreach.

They met with Prime Minister Imran Khan! And schoolchildren! Played cricket! Saw many sights!”, The New York Times’s fashion director and chief fashion critic, Vanessa Friedman, wrote in an article interspersed with coloured photographs of the couple’s engagements during the first royal visit to Pakistan in 13 years.

Entitled, ‘In Pakistan, Kate Middleton Aces Fashion Diplomacy’, the article said, “The rapturous summaries of their every move were matched only by the rapturous summaries of their every garment. It’s been a while since clothes

were employed quite so strategically and consistently to send an unspoken, but also unmistakable, message. The effect was refreshing.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with CNN, Kate Middleton said her tour of Pakistan with Prince William was “really special.” “It was amazing seeing some of the geography yesterday, but then to see some of the community activities today has been really special,” she said, Prince William standing alongside her. In her piece, Ms. Friedman of The New York Time said, “From the moment they stepped off the plane, the Duke and Duchess Of Cambridge (O.K., mostly the Duchess, but he played his part too) signaled their intent to allow the quadrillion pictures taken of them to speak louder than the words they uttered mostly behind closed doors.

Their clothes made silent statements cross-border respect, cultural awareness and outreach. No detail, or earring, was overlooked. “Witness the aquamarine-to-silver draped-neck dress

For feedback, comments, suggestions and, most importantly, tips, contact us at whitelies@pakistantoday.com.pk

OUR prince - yes our prince, we’re still in the Commonwealth, I’m afraid - was in Lahore recently and the residents of the city, never ones to want to miss out on a party, really wanted to be invited.

But most of even the crème de la crème wasn’t allowed in, of course. They should take solace in the fact that even cabinet heavy hitters like Brig (retd) Ijaz Shah, Khusro Bakhtiar, Pervez Khattak weren’t let in, what to speak of Firdous Ashiq Awan or Fawad Chaudhry.

Some of the posh set still wanted to let it be known that they were present and posted photos of commoners (non-Royals) on to their social media accounts. * * * * * * * * *

JUI-F’s sit-in still in ‘grey list’, says Sheikh Rasheed STAFF REPORT

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by Catherine Walker with matching pants, a bridge between a tea dress and a shalwar kameez, which the Duchess wore to deplane at Nur Khan airbase on Monday. “Witness the periwinkle-blue shalwar kameez she wore on a visit to Margalla Hills, north of Islamabad, designed by Maheen Khan, who once dressed Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s former prime minister, as well as Jemima Khan, Prime Minister Khan’s ex-wife.

(Ms. Bhutto’s wax figure at Madame Tussauds in London wears Ms. Khan’s design. Coincidence?)”.

“Witness the jade-green A-line jacket by Ms. Walker worn over white pants by Ms. Khan, which the Duchess donned to meet the prime minister, an embroidered dupatta tossed over her shoulder”. “Witness the emerald sequined Jenny Packham chosen for a reception at the Pakistan National Monument, which happened to be the green of the Pakistani flag, and which matched the sherwani, a traditional long coat, by the Pakistani designer Naushemian, worn by her husband”.

CMYK

I didn’t get a good team, which is why I haven’t performed well. The words of the Kaptaan, speaking at, of all places, an internal party meeting!

Well, what exactly does he himself bring to the table?

Because it’s certainly no the whole ‘vision’ thing.

One wonders if the recently sacked (from T20 and Tests) cricket captain Sarfraz Ahmed also used the same excuse for lacklustre performance.

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FAlse AllegAtion oF hArAssment Forces college lecturer to kill selF DECEASED LECTURER HAD APPEALED COLLEGE AUTHORITIES TO ISSUE HIM A FORMAL EXONERATION LETTER LAHORE

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ABDULLAH FARRUKH

lecturer of MAO College allegedly committed suicide after being accused of harassment by one of his female students.

Muhammad Afzal Mehmood, a lecturer of English Literature, was accused of harassment by a student of BS (bachelor of science) Mass Communication; a claim which the late teacher refuted and which turned out to be unfounded by the college harassment committee assigned to probe into the matter.

However, college authorities failed to formally clear Afzal’s name by not issuing him a letter of exoneration.

Afzal left a suicide note on Oct 9 (the day on which he reportedly died by consuming poison) wherein he said that he had left the matter in the court of Allah and that he did not want the police to investigate into his death and “bother anybody” over it.

A day before his death, Afzal had also written to the harassment committee’s enquiry officer, Dr Aalia Rehman claiming that he was suffering from extreme stress and that he wanted the administration to

officially clear his name.

In the letter, Afzal lamented the unfairness with which he was treated, saying that his reputation had been tainted beyond repair and that his wife had left him as a result.

College authorities confirmed that Afzal was asked to appear before the harassment committee when allegations against him first emerged on July 8, 2019.

Talking to Pakistan Today, enquiry officer Dr Aalia Rehman said that the nature of the allegations were “flimsy to say the least” and did not warrant official proceedings. She said that a small-scale enquiry was conducted which resulted in vindicating Afzal.

“A Mass Com student submitted an application against Afzal which stated that his conduct with female students was inappropriate. The student said that the professor was in the habit of making suggestive remarks and gestures which made female students uncomfortable,” she said, adding that no physical harassment on part of the late lecturer was reported.

“We found that Afzal had turned down the girl’s request to improve her marks which led her to write an application accusing him of harassment,” she revealed. According to the enquiry officer,

Pilot safely crash lands army trainer aircraft near Wazirabad GUJRANWALA STAFF REPORT

A Mushshak trainer aircraft belonging to the Army Aviation crash-landed in a paddy field near Wazirabad in Gujranwala district on Saturday. The two-seater aircraft had taken off from Rahwali Cantt for a training mission, with Capt Ahmad and an instructor on board. Luckily, both pilots remained safe during the forced crash landing which was prompted due to a technical fault while flying over Dilawar Cheema near river Chenab. The plane was crash-landed in a paddy field. Security officials and Rescue 1122 personnel reached the site soon after the incident. The Mushshak basic trainer is a light-weight, single-engine aircraft. It can operate from any short unprepared strip and is ideal for basic flight training, instrument flying, aerobatics, stalls and deliberate spins, night flying, navigation flying and formation flying. The aircraft, which has a structured life of 9,500 hours, was developed keeping flexibility in mind ─ it covers both army cooperation and primary flying training.

man arrested for thrashing minors

OKARA INP

A man was arrested on Saturday for torturing three minors after a video of the incident surfaced on social media. The suspect, Yaqoob – who is a close relative of the minors — is seen in the video as tying the children upside down and thrashing them repeatedly with a shoe. Police said that the man beat up the minors as they requested him to take them to their mother. After the video of the incident surfaced on social media, police arrested the culprit from his home while the incident also attracted the attention Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar who took notice of the incident and ordered the district administration to submit a report in this regard. Police have said that the accused has admitted to physically assaulting the children.

COLLEGE AUTHORITIES CLAIM LECTURER WAS CLEARED OF THE CHARGE ‘VERBALLY’ proceedings were completed on July 13 and a report was submitted to the principal’s office subsequently, following which Afzal had been ‘verbally’ informed that he had been cleared of the charge.

“However, Afzal insisted that he be issued a written letter of exoneration since he had absolutely nothing to show for his innocence,” she said.

Dr Rehman revealed that Afzal feared that he would be retried and charged under the Provincial Efficiency and Disciplinary Act (PEDA) since he believed that the proceedings had not been formally concluded.

“He felt that he had been maligned by the accusations and therefore kept on asking for an official notification. I told him that he should contact the principal since he is the one who has the authority to issue such a notification,” she added. Dr Rehman said that she isn’t aware whether Prof Afzal had contacted the college principal, Professor Farhan Ebadat Khan.

PRINCIPAL DENIES INVOLVEMENT: Commenting on the issue, MAO College Principal Farhan Ebadat told Pakistan Today that Afzal’s case was dealt entirely by the harassment committee and the decision to issue a written clarification had to be made by the en-

quiry officer heading the probe.

He claimed that he didn’t have any involvement in the committee’s affairs and that at no point during and after the enquiry was he approached by the deceased lecturer.

“I understand the sort of troubles my colleague Afzal had to face but I assure you that I, in my capacity as principal, only wished him well.”

He said that a smear campaign had been launched against him by certain quarters of the press who were looking to malign him by directly holding him responsible for Afzal’s death.

When asked what action had been taken against the female student for levelling a false accusation against her teacher, Prof Khan said no action had yet been taken against the student.

“The enquiry committee is responsible to punish the false accuser. However, no such suggestion has reached my office till date,” he said.

METOO MOVEMENT IN SPOTLIGHT: Afzal’s death has sparked huge outcry in the social media as people have started questioning the methods of determining whether a person has in fact committed harassment. People have pointed out that the #MeToo movement which

has gained huge popularity across the world is increasingly being used to malign and slander innocent people for personal gain. Singer and actor Ali Zafar, who was recently accused by singer Meesha Shafi of sexual harassment expressed solidarity with the late lecturer, raising the increasing misuse of the #MeToo movement. Television personality, Hamid Mir in a tweet said that fake allegations could ruin a person’s life and career.

Speaking to Pakistan Today, women’s rights activist and lawyer Nighat Dad said, “This painful event reminds us to make the inquiry committees stronger at the workplace. If the allegations against lecturer were false, the committee was supposed to do the needful.

“However to any of the alleged harasser and whoever may want to use this unfortunate event to discredit the #MeToo movement, we want to inform them that several women have also committed suicide after society and the judicial system failed them “Before questioning women’s right to come forward and report cases of harassment we should recall the case of Haleema Rafeeq, a Pakistani cricketer who was sexually harassed and eventually committed suicide in the face of defamation suit by the alleged harasser.

Victims have little choice in a country where patriarchy runs deep while women who speak up often face severe backlash,” she concluded.

Life, property of citizens to be protected: CM LAHORE STAFF REPORT

Every possible step will be taken for safeguarding the life and property of the citizens and all necessary measures will be taken for maintaining the peace besides protecting the life and property of the citizens. This was stated by Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar while chairing a high-level meeting held in Chief Minister’s Office on Saturday.

Federal Interior Minister Brig. (R) Ijaz Shah also participated in the meeting. The meeting reviewed in detail the law & order situation of the province and agreed upon the comprehensive liaison between Punjab and federal governments for the betterment of peace.

Sardar Usman Buzdar while addressing the meeting said that action will be taken against law breaking elements without any discrimination. He directed that police

should discharge their duties with honestly and wholeheartedly for coping with anti-social elements as maintaining law & order situation for safeguarding the life and property of the people is top responsibility of the state.

He said, “Law breakers will be dealt with an iron hand. No one will be allowed to violate the law. Supremacy of law will be ensured in the province at every cost. There is no other priority then safeguarding

the life and property of the citizens.” Chief Minister Buzdar, while directing to carry out operation against the criminals without any discrimination, ordered to continue strict checking on the entry and exit points.

Chief Secretary, IG Police, Additional Chief Secretary Interior, high authorities of civil and military, Principal Secretary to CM and officers of concerned departments attended the meeting.

Moot discusses state of rule of law, challenges in Pakistan LAHORE SHAHAB OMER

The Asma Jahangir conference 2019 commenced here on Saturday with talks focusing on challenges to the rule of law and civil liberties.

The conference started with the address of Sulema Jahangir, who said that her mother was a life-long supporter of human rights.

“She spent her entire life campaigning for the rights of the disenfranchised. She challenged the brutal dictatorship of Gen Ziaul Haq and had to face long years of imprisonment. She raised awareness about issues such as honour killing, bonded labour, disappeared persons, blasphemy cases and violence against women.”

Pakistan Bar Council member Ahsan Bhoon in his address to the conference said, “Asma Jahangir was 18 years old when she began her struggle for democracy, justice and human rights in 1972 and witnessed severe hardships at the hands of successive governments.”

Judge Khatun Sapnara (Circuit Judge, England, and Wales) spoke about the need for academics, activists and human rights campaigners to come together and devise practical methods of supporting marginalised communities.

Pakistan Bar Council Vice-Chairman Syed Amjad Shah while addressing the conference spoke about the grave challenges faced by the judiciary. He reminded audience that Asma Jahangir was a pivotal figure in the history of human rights of the country.

The head of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) Asia programme Steven Butler participated in the conference via Skype as he was denied entry into Pakistan. He said, “Press freedom is enshrined in Pakistan’s constitution

but expulsion will not affect our reporting of Pakistan. Without human rights, no society can flourish, there can be no security.”

Justice Gulzar Ahmed spoke warmly about Asma Jahangir and her legacy. He said, “We hope that her work in defending the constitution and rights of the citizenry will be remembered and pursued by others because this is what the country needs today.”

Leading British lawyer Helena Kennedy spoke on how it was difficult for women to access justice. She said she Asma Jahangir was an institution within herself. “Her services would be written in golden letters and would be remembered forever.” Vice-Chairman Pakistan Bar Council Syed Amjad Shah said, “It is an honour for us to participate in this conference. Nothing in the world can be done without courage and today we are here to pay tribute to one of the most courageous women the country history.

She will be remembered forever for her outspoken nature.” European Union Ambassador to Pakistan Androulla Kaminara said, “In these troubled times, when human rights are under attack globally and while nationalist forces are

using toxic narratives of fear and division, people like the late Asma Jahangir who dared to make a stand against injustice and defend human rights need not only to be defended but also celebrated and remembered. This is what the EU does in many countries of the world. This is what this conference is about.”

UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Pakistan Knut Ostby was also present at the conference and said, “She was a great woman and raised voice for all sections of society,” he said. While starting the second session, titled ‘Electronic and Print Media in Pakistan’ discussion centred on restrictions imposed on media freedom. While speaking to the session ‘Upholding the rule of Law’ HRCP president I.A Rehman said, “People have no equal access to law in Pakistan. No one accused of blasphemy can have a fair trial in the country especially if he belongs to a minority community.”

Renowned lawyer Salman A Raja said, “We are victims of national neurosis and may fall apart if we do not cultivate constitutions.” Senator Musaddaq Malik and PTI MNA Maleeka Bukhari also addressed to the conference.

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

Dengue cases soar Past 5,500 In KP t

HE number of dengue cases reported in the province has soared past the 5,500 mark, however, health officials maintained that despite a large number of cases, no fatalities as a result of the viral fever have been reported thus far.

However, a daily dengue case report prepared by the Provincial Dengue Response Unit and the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) showed that 85 dengue cases had been reported in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) over the past 24 hours with the total number of cases rising to 5,789.

The provincial government has officially released figures for dengue cases reported in the province over the past three months — the main dengue transmission season.

Focal Person for Dengue Dr Ahmed said that Peshawar leads the number of dengue cases reported in the province, accounting for nearly half of all cases reported in the province with some 2,266 cases.

The city is followed by Swat — the home district of K-P Chief Minister Mahmood Khan — with 457 cases. It is followed by Swabi with 368 cases, Mansehra with 325 cases, Kohat with 297, Mardan with 247, Haripur with

209, Khyber Tribal District with 182, Nowshera with 177, Shangla with 174, Battagram with 147, Abbottabad with 137, Lower Dir with 133, Bajaur Tribal District with 91, Bunner with 81, Dera Ismail Khan with 78, Charsadda with 45, Lakki Marwat with 34, Bannu with 24, Hangu with 11 and Kohistan with seven cases.

Malakand and Upper Dir reported six cases each, three from Karak, while Tank and the Mohmand Tribal District reported one case each.

The only districts not to report any

case thus far were Chitral, Torghar, Orakzai Tribal District and the North and South Waziristan Tribal Districts.

Dr Ahmed added that since August 2019, some 5,330 dengue patients have been discharged after treating them at various hospitals, while 179 new patients have arrived in hospitals.

He dismissed media reports of patients allegedly dying of dengue infection, maintaining that not even a single patient has died of the disease, unlike in other parts of the country.

The K-P government official

NEWS

claimed that the deaths took place due to other health complications or pre-existing conditions and that media reports had incorrectly linked them to the virus.

Dr Ahmed stated that the government was actively running an antidengue campaign in the province, including a fumigation campaign along with awareness drives about the disease.

“Special dengue wards have also been set up at main hospitals to provide timely treatment to dengue patients,” Dr Ahmed said.

Meanwhile, the IDSR report for Friday read that as many as 24 new cases of dengue virus were reported over the past 24 hours. A further 15 cases were reported from Mardan and 14 cases from Kohat.

It added that some 177 dengue patients are currently admitted in hospitals across the province of which 56 were admitted in the past 24 hours. This included 48 patients who remain admitted to hospitals in Peshawar — 11 of which were admitted in the past 24 hours.

The report further said that a total of 5,612 patients have been discharged so far, including 28 in the past 24 hours. News Desk

Kashmiris will have their freedom from Indian occupation: AJK president MIRPUR APP

Azad Jammu Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan has said that the Kashmiri people will have their freedom from Indian oppression and they will not be intimidated by torture and repression. “We will fight this war imposed on us”, the AJK President made these remarks while addressing a Kashmir Conference organized by the Pakistan Association Bristol and the Bristol Kashmir Foundation in United Kingdom on Saturday, says an official message released to the media here on Saturday evening.

The event was attended by Abdul Rashid Turabi, Member of the Public Accounts Committee of the AJK Legislative Assembly, Tim Bowles, Mayor of the West of England, Fahim Kiani, President Tehreek-e-Kashmir UK, Councillors, local notables, civil soci-

ety members and journalists.

The President on the occasion, also thanked Fahim Kiani for organizing a conference on Kashmir at the House of Commons which was attended by numerous MPs, MEPs, journalists, student leaders, academics and human rights activists.

President Masood Khan informed his audience of the recent human rights situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). He said that after the 05 August siege imposed in IOK, the occupation forces have unleashed a new wave of tyranny. Indian occupation forces, he said, have illegally detained thousands of Kashmiri youth and are subjecting them to torture, The Kashmiris are being killed in extra-judicial encounters, protestors are blinded with pellet-firing shotguns and the women are molested and these measures are taken by the Indian occupation forces in a systematic and pre-meditated manner, he said.

The President while appreciating the role of the international media, international civil society and the human rights organizations, said that despite India’s imposition of a communication blackout in IOK, reports have been coming out of IOK about the human rights abuses taking place at the hands of Indian occupation forces. Indian government’s efforts to quell the peaceful protests of the Kashmiris were not successful and they were unable to hide the humanitarian crisis in the territory. He also appreciated parliamentarians and lawmakers of UK, European Parliament, France, Norway and other leading countries for raising their voice in support of the Kashmiris. “This space given to us is a breakthrough”, he said.

On the other side, he said, global capitals have been ambivalent in their stance towards Kashmir and have instead tried to maintain an artificial balance between Pakistan and India. He

urged that humanity must prevail instead of valuing strategic and economic ties that various countries have with India.

The AJK President said that we the people of IOK and Azad Kashmir will fight tooth and nail to oppose the illegal occupation, colonization and bifurcation of the Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir territory.

He also highlighted the growing ideology of Hindutva – an extremist Hindu Ideology which is purely based on Hindu religious supremacy. He said that we will have to unite and fight of this extremist doctrine rooted in hatred, xenophobia and fascism as this policy of exclusionism is pure evil, satanic and dark and we must take every measure to thwart it from engulfing our region and world.

“In the previous century, democratic powers of the world defeated Nazi Hitler and Fascist Mussolini. This century, we will have to defeat Hindutva”, he said.

05

'Pakistan' village in India's Bihar wants to change name As bilateral relations between India and Pakistan deteriorate further, residents from “Pakistan” village in Bihar want to get their identity changed as soon as possible. Annoyed villagers have petitioned the government official to change the name of their village soon saying they feel ashamed to be addressed as “Pakistanis”, Gulf News said in a news report.Curiously, the Pakistan village located in Srinagar block of Purnia district, more than 300 km east of capital city of Bihar, don’t have any Muslim villager nor it has any mosque located there. The village, home to some 1200 people, has mainly tribal population.“We are caught in an awkward situation. None want to marry their daughters with youths from our village. We too feel ashamed of being called Pakistanis while we have nothing to do with Pakistan,” a local resident Anup Lal Tuddu told the local media on Friday.Another villager Ganga Tuddu said Pakistan is refusing to mend its ways despite all efforts by the Indian government. “The way Pakistan has been spitting fire against India and sponsoring terrorism, our patience has run short. The name is also disturbing our relation with our neighbours. We don’t want to be identified as a resident of Pakistan,” explained a visibly irritated Tuddu.Local officials said they share the sentiments of the villagers and would try their best to change the name of this village. “The local villagers have handed us a petition demanding for change in name of their village.

We are forwarding the petition to senior officials for necessary actions,” local circle official Nandan Kumar said. Purnia district magistrate Rahul Kumar said he had not received the petition so far.

“Though I have not received the petition but would act in accordance with the established procedures to get the name changed,” the district magistrate said.

Local parliamentarian Santosh Kushwaha too supported the move of the villagers saying he would be doing everything in this regard. Villagers say at one point of time Pakistan village was a symbol of love and affinity between citizens from two countries but at presently they are being treated with disdain and viewed with suspicion for having the very name of their village. According to villagers, the village, then in Islampur district of Bengal, was named “Pakistan” in memory of Muslim villagers who migrated in 1947 to what was then known as East Pakistan. This part is now known as Bangladesh. Reports said before leaving the village, the Muslim residents had handed over their property to Hindu neighbours and the Hindu villagers reciprocated the love by naming their village as “Pakistan”. But now this historic village look set to be obliterated from people’ memory soon. News Desk

Dengue: Punjab battles another spike year

By DR yasMIn RashID The year 2019 was a spike year for dengue according to the epidemiological patterns of the last 10 years. The first spike was seen in 2011 when we lost 350 patients to this deadly virus, with total number of patients crossing 20,000 mark.

A huge exercise was undertaken for management and prevention of dengue virus.

The next spike came in 2015 when 4213 patients were confirmed in the province.

Given this four-year cycle, the year 2019 thus was the next spike year and so far we have seen 6919 cases in Punjab out of whom majority received treatment at public sector hospitals in Punjab.

As the disease has no vaccine, prevention becomes much more important.

The key to prevention is strengthening Vector Surveillance and the environmental management of the mosquito population. Given the scale of the problem, Punjab has learned over a period of time that prevention of dengue is as much a social problem as an epidemiological one. Therefore, political commitment and oversight comes from the

highest level for an effective response to dengue control. Hence the Central Emergency Response Committee headed by the Chief Minister is the apex body followed by Cabinet Committee led by the Minister and then implementation committees across all tiers to ensure implementation of SOPs with micro plans in all districts.

The Cabinet Committee meetings earlier this year strongly reminded the district bodies, which are headed by Deputy Commissioners, to intensify surveillance in vulnerable localities. From March onwards the government constantly advised that this was spike year and surveillance as well larvicidal activities must be scaled up in all areas. Tragically, a few localities in Rawalpindi in general and Potohar Town in particular, were neglected and missed by surveillance teams and this revelation was made during the June Cabinet Committee meeting. Even though punitive action was initiated against the responsible staff in the district, yet the larva continued to grow into the mosquito and the epidemic started in Rawalpindi.

A vigorous Case Response in Punjab has managed to plateau the epidemic. The administrative and technical team of the Primary Healthcare Department led by Secretary PSH Capt (retd) Mohammad Usman is currently based in Rawalpindi to ensure personal oversight and monitoring to the case response whereas I have also been personally visiting the City once a week to monitor the working of District Emergency Response Committee. I regularly visit the hospitals, take feedback from patients and I also monitor the surveillance activities there. A noteworthy point is that since the epidemic began, the Chief Minister has personally chaired the DERC meetings in Rawalpindi, Sargodha and Faisalabad many times to continuously monitor the progress regarding prevention and treatment. As far as treatment is concerned, more than 1200 beds are allocated in Rawalpindi alone as emergency was declared there.

A 15 Minute Protocol has been devised for dengue patients visiting public sector hospitals. Further, not just dengue tests and medicines are provided free of

CMYK

cost in all government hospitals, all other tests i.e. LFTs, are also provided completely free to the patients. During the last six weeks, no complaint has been received regarding treatment and prevention. Five mobile health units were mobilized and sent to Rawalpindi to manage and screen people in the affected areas. Due to effective Case Response, we have been able to reduce the number of new cases by a significant margin. For example, on 30th September 2019, as many as 186 cases were reported. As on 16 October, 119 cases were reported and they are declining day by day.

In order to ensure an effective response to dengue control, we have hired dedicated 7235 staff that will help boost the surveillance at locations vulnerable for mosquito breeding. Besides good quality training, we are also devising a stringent monitoring system for this staff.

It is important to note that dengue has emerged as a global pandemic taking Asia by surprise. Philippines have been worst hit in Asia. The number of cases has reached 322,694 in 2019 from 149,849 in 2018. Thailand reported 37,000 cases in

2018, but in 2019, the number has soared up to 136,000. In Malaysia cases have risen from 53,800 in 2018 to 102,734 in 2019. In Cambodia, the number has taken a giant leap from just 6000 to 38,000 in last one year. In Vietnam, the cases have witnessed an increase from 37,200 in 2018 to 124,751 in 2019. In terms of scale, it is now prevalent in 110 countries spreading fast into the neighboring sub tropical regions like ours. However, the point of concern is that even countries renowned for advanced research facilities have struggled to control the disease. Singapore, which recorded a rise in cases from 2000 to 12840 in one year, is still looking for panacea for controlling the disease.

Research is underway globally for effective treatment and vaccination for dengue virus. On our part, we must revise our strategies and improve the SOPs based on lessons learnt. However, one thing is certain: awareness in the community resulting in community participation will eventually help us to control dengue through structured preventive interventions.

The writer is the provincial minister for health Punjab

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

06 WORLD VIEW

I don’t blame the lebanese rIoters settIng beIrut alIght Independent

I

RobeRt Fisk

thought the days when I kicked burning tyres off roads had ended. I used to clear the road in Belfast in 1972. Then, often, I did the same in Beirut.

But there I was, as my faithful driver Selim (and all our drivers are faithful, please God) waited patiently for me to shake hands with the local militiaman and explain why I wanted to get to Damour (about 12 miles south of

Beirut) and wave my little Lebanese press card in his face, slowly using my best brown shoes to push his burning tyres off the highway. They were hot. Just to look at the flames made my eyes hurt. That’s what burning tyres are supposed to do, of course. And the Lebanese drivers backed up behind us like rabbits and turned round and went home.

Well, we got through. And drove and drove and drove, and laughed that we had done so. But this was a very serious matter.

The army stayed away; the police advised motorists to go home.

Law and order – you remember those old words? – were less important than the lawful right of

way. But, for several hours, Robert and Selim exercised our own right of way.

For the most part, the men lighting these fires belonged to the Amal Movement, the Shia group controlled by Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese parliament. Or so they told me, and I did not argue about it.

This tells it own story. Some were very poor, and looked it, and I don’t really blame them for their actions. Lebanon has never been a very rich nation – save for their Sunni merchants and Christian bankers – and these were the people who did not have enough to eat. For days, they had been protesting their fate. The

Lebanese pound had fallen, the price of food had rocketed – all true, I promise you – and they protested.

I was not surprised, yet there was something new and surprising about this. All this week, the mountains of Lebanon have burned. Their great glory of pine trees and wonderful mountainsides have blossomed with flames. The government’s three anti-fire helicopters lay rotting at Beirut international airport – the government did not maintain them – and it needed Greece and Cyprus and Jordan to send its aircraft to quench the burning hills. My own apartment on the Beirut seafront stank of smoke.

THE ONGOING PROTEST WAS SPARKED BY THE SPANISH SUPREME COURT’S RULING SENTENCING NINE PRO-INDEPENDENCE LEADERS TO LENGTHY JAIL TERMS A general strike has been called in Catalonia, marking the end of a week of protests following the ruling of Spain’s Supreme Court on Monday. The court sentenced nine Catalan pro-independence leaders to jail for sedition.

Thousands of people have joined a series of “marches for freedom.”

FLAMING BARRICADES Mass protests continue to rage in Catalonia, as people took to the streets for the fourth consecutive night to condemn harsh prison sentences handed to the pro-independence leaders by the Spain’s Supreme Court. Protesters have been clashing with the police and setting fires in the streets of Barcelona. At the heart of the mobilization are the Catalan youth. Demonstrators were detained in Barcelona, Lleida, Tarragona and Girona on Wednesday night as the protests spread across Spain’s northeast region.

Protests gripped the Catalan capital on Thursday, continuing the week’s unrest. During the day, striking students hit the streets, and in the evening, crowds of protesters gathered in central Barcelona. In most places, the crowds were peaceful, even turning the demonstration into a giant game of volleyball. However, more hardcore pro-independence protesters soon began erecting barricades in the streets and setting things on fire. Tensions rose even higher where groups of unionists counter-protesters, some covering their faces or draped in the Spanish flag, began shouting slogans and making Nazi salutes. There were reports from Catalan sympathizers on social media of nationalist gangs beating up pro-independence demonstrators, some claiming the police were turning a blind eye to the violence.

So far, the unrest has not reached the levels seen on Wednesday night, when some 100 people were injured in clashes between pro-independence activists and police. According to official figures, some 400 dumpsters were burned on Wednesday alone and the city has already sustained property damage of more than €1 million. The ongoing protest was sparked by the Spanish Supreme Court’s ruling sentencing nine pro-independence leaders to lengthy jail terms – ranging from nine to 13 years – over their roles in the failed 2017 independence bid.

Furthermore, Spain issued a new European arrest warrant for the former Catalan President Carlos Puigdemont, who managed to slip through Madrid’s hands back in 2017 and is now living in exile in Belgium.

Catalan regional leader Quim Torra condemned the unrest but called for a new vote for independence within two years in a speech to Parliament on Thursday, promising “We’ll return to the ballot box again on self-determination.” Defying Madrid’s demand to “firmly” keep order, supporters of jailed Catalan pro-independence leaders launched a fresh rally in Barcelona. The protest later turned into scuffles with police and barricades were also set ablaze.

The unrest is gripping the Catalan capital, as well as other cities. On Wednesday, the demonstrators were seen throwing hundreds of white paper toilet rolls into the air during the gathering in central Barcelona. The bizarre performance meant “there is a lot that needs cleaning

up,” according to the protest organizers.

Riot police were also dispatched to the scene en-masse. Law enforcement officers have been pelted with projectiles, and scuffles between protesters and police have erupted multiple times. Venting their anger and trying to draw attention to their cause, the protesters also destroyed road signs and set improvised barricades alight. The police repeatedly charged at the protesters with batons drawn, and were seen shooting at the crowds and in the air with pump-action shotguns and larger-caliber devices. The latter resembled the notorious ‘Flash-Ball’ launchers that left many maimed during the Yellow Vests protests in France. It was not immediately clear what ammunition the law enforcement used. Several protesters were apparently injured and were seen being led away by their comrades while visibly limping.

More than 200 people have been reported injured over the first two days in Barcelona and other cities throughout Catalonia.

On Tuesday, protesters occupied and later clashed with police at Barcelona’s El Prat airport, which led to the cancellation of multiple flights.

The Spanish government blamed “coordinated groups” of protesters for the violence on the streets. Madrid said it “doesn’t rule out any scenario” and vowed to keep the order in Catalonia by any means it sees fit, yet with “firmness and proportionality.” Such statements might signal that the central government is readying for a widespread crackdown on pro-independence Catalan protesters. The 2017 failed independence referendum was met with an overwhelming police response that left hundreds of people injured.

Chaotic scenes with the police smashing into polling stations, snatching ballot boxes and plainly beating up people partaking in the vote, drew widespread condemnation from international humanitarian groups at the time.

REGION’S PRESIDENT PUSHES FOR SECOND VOTE The president of Spain’s Catalonia region has said he will push for a new independence referendum. Quim Torra said another independence vote should go ahead within two years. Speaking in the Catalan parliament, Torra said that the sentences handed down to Catalan leaders would not stop a second vote from going ahead. “We’ll return to the ballot box again on self-determination.

If all parties and groups make it possible, we have to be able to finish this legislative term by validating independence,” he said. He has condemned violence, which saw protesters clash with riot police. The Spanish authorities say they are investigating who is coordinating the disruption.

Torra blamed “infiltrators” but government spokesperson Isabel Celaá described those instigating the violence as “coordinated young Catalans” whose actions were not improvised. Police released footage of a firework fired at one of their helicopters flying over demonstrators in Barcelona. The Catalan parliament’s term ends in December 2021. Spain’s Constitutional Court has warned Catalan officials of the legal consequences if they break the law by pursuing independence. Torra also called for an end to the violence. He said: “We will not permit incidents like those we are seeing in the streets. This has to stop right now. There is no reason nor justification for burning cars, nor any other vandalism.”

Paris, as the French mandate decided it should be called in the 1920s – almost every apartment block is empty. Save for those who share the small bloc where I live, there is nothing but darkness.

You can drive downtown from here, for miles to the centre of Beirut, and you will not find a light. These buildings are owned as investments – by Iraqis, for the most part, but also by Syrians and Saudis – and no one lives there.

In a country where the poor of the Beqaa Valley and the refugees from Syria and the Palestinian refugees (of whom of course we no longer speak, since they are the wreckage of the Israeli state) exist in shacks, these mighty sentinels of cash stand triumphant: empty, rich and shameful.

So I fear we shall have more burning tyres on the road.

Crunch time for secularism in India

Barcelona is burning CounterCurrents

On Wednesday night, God visited Lebanon – he does come here occasionally, I have decided – and drenched the country in rain and tempest. On Thursday morning, my balcony was covered in sand and ash.

But there is something far more serious going on here. The physical rage of Lebanese people is not just a militia outburst. It’s not because ordinary people are hungry – and they are – but because an unjust system (ever more taxes, ever higher prices) is making it impossible to work to bring home money and food.

Let me ask just one small question. On the corniche seafront where I live – the Avenue de

THEY ARE HUNGRY, POOR AND FURIOUS

CONGRESS AMBIVALENCE HAS ALLOWED BJP TO WALK AWAY WITH LIBERAL AGENDAS IndIan express PRataP bhanu Mehta

The next few months may turn out to be crunch time for the institutional formation of Indian secularism. The Ayodhya judgment is expected. The government is also likely going to move on three other issues that go to the core of secularism: The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAB) and the possible extension of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) itself; the introduction of a Common Civil Code Bill; and a possible national legislation to regulate conversion. These issues have been simmering for 70 years, and one way or the other a dénouement looks likely now. But the monumental irony of the moment is these issues are also a reminder that the Congress’s cardinal sin was not letting the BJP walk away with nationalism; it was letting BJP walk away with liberalism.

Since Independence, the Congress dealt with these issues as a kind of modus vivendi, relying on deferring them issue, or fudging along with messy compromises that were often unprincipled. Both Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao did that on Ayodhya by facilitating access to the site and laying the ground work for a criminal act of destruction that took place with the demolition of Babri Masjid. They also, in effect, conceded the legitimacy of the principle that any wrong that might have been committed in the 16th century needs to be rectified in the 21st and that the importance of Ram requires worship on that site.

Ram bhakti requires no such diminution of Ram. The Left also unwittingly played into the BJP’s hands, by constructing a historiography that denied or underplayed the fact that temples might have been destroyed. Both, in a sense, were arguing on the same ground that current rights depend on ascertaining the facts somewhere around circa 1526.

Depending on the way the judgment goes, the biggest danger of the Supreme Court order will be to create a precedent that a large number of current titles to sites, from Mathura to Kashi now depend on arcane historiography.

As you can see from the gathering momentum, this is a recipe for a nation in permanent contest over monuments of the past, and permanently in the grip of communal tension. The Congress

closed the path to the future, it did not uphold rule of law, and legitimised the idea that Ram bhakti requires a temple on that site.

Similarly on the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), the Congress crafted a modus vivendi at Independence.

Its shameful abdication on Shah Bano gave the BJP the political opening. What variation in civil codes is possible in a manner compatible with the freedom and equality of persons is an intricate philosophical issue. But from a liberal democratic standpoint, any civil code would have to pass three tests: Reflect freedom and equality, especially on gender; acknowledge that Parliament has symmetric authority over the laws of all religions; and that common citizenship requires we all be able to speak on each other’s laws that are upheld by the state in our name.

There are tricky issues. There is a false communal discourse that paints majority’s laws as practices uniquely progressive and minority laws as regressive. There is the vital question of who gets to set the content of the UCC, the principles that guide it, and what variations it should allow to respect diversity.

There is a real risk that our current answers to these questions will have not just a majoritarian slant, but will be designed to humiliate minorities. But in public eyes, all that the Congress offered was an evasive status quo. It let the BJP formally walk away with the plank of gender justice and the liberal idea that rights should, as far as possible, not depend on membership in particular religious communities.

On conversion, again, the Congress wrote the playbook in states including Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. Whatever may be the theological pros and cons of conversion, the idea that the state is in the business of saving anyone’s soul should be an abomination for liberals. Yes, it has no right to intervene even if someone converts for inducement: That someone sells their soul, out of necessity or convenience, is their business.

Often the legislation was one sided: Coming “back” to Hinduism is not conversion, but exiting is.

The entire conversion discourse is built around the insecurities of Hinduism. We were complacent because we could always count on Congress governments not to enforce their own laws. But the idea of the state having any role in regulating religious beliefs should

be anathema. But the Congress wrote the playbook.

The NRC process, as it is turning out, is an abomination; a recipe for human rights violations and the creation of insecurity all around. Formally, of course, every state can claim the legal right to want to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. In Assam, there was a political issue about apportioning power between religious and cultural communities.

The CAB is one discriminatory response to that quagmire. But instead of finding creative solutions consistent with practical realities, non-discriminatory constitutional ideals and humane values, all parties are now engaged in whipping up anxieties, whose logical conclusion will be more power to the state to harass ordinary citizens, especially minorities. We are risking consigning hundreds of thousands of people to that institution that is the 20th century’s most ominous symbol of oppression, the camp. The NRC will add another dimension to the politics of secularism.

In the aftermath of Partition, creating a modus vivendi that threw cold water on these issues was understandable. But the Congress not only refused to move on and think anew; it has never adequately distanced itself from its mistakes and betrayals. It cannot articulate a position that is both progressive and anti-majoritarian.

Instead, it will go for status quo and soft majoritarianism. On many of these issues, particularly on UCC, there has been a lot of sophisticated thinking. But the Congress’s tainted record drowns out all other positions. Amit Shah will stand up and announce that the BJP is realising all the dreams the Congress did not have the courage to fulfil. The Congress will again be like a deer caught in headlights.

What will it say? It will draw the erroneous conclusion that it lost credibility because it was soft on nationalism. No, it lost credibility because it betrayed liberalism. In this crunch moment for Indian secularism, which will be a crucial test for the Opposition, the Congress will be the cross we all have to bear. Fighting for secularism against the BJP is hard enough; being tarred with the legacy of Congress makes it even harder.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express.

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

FOREIGN NEWS 07

Ex-US VP BidEn ExPandS lEad in US dEmocratic nomination racE: nEw Poll NEW YORK

f

Agencies

ORMER Vice President Joe Biden’s support jumped five points this month in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this month, slightly extending his lead over Senator Bernie Sanders, a liberal candidate.

The Hill-HarrisX poll showed that 34 percent of likely Democratic primary voters back Biden, marking a 14-point lead over Sanders, as more than a dozen vie for the part’s nomination to challenge President Donal Trump, a Republican, in 2020 presidential race . It also found rising support for senators Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the only other two candidates in double figures in the poll.

Sanders jumped by four percent to 20 percent and Warren by three percent to 12 percent.

Senator Kamala Harris is in fourth place with nine percent support, but her numbers have dropped by two percent since the last poll conducted two weeks ago. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg rounded out the top five with five percent, a four percent

jump over two weeks.

Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, meanwhile, dropped to sixth place with four percent support. The new poll also suggests that a growing number of Democratic voters are starting to make up their minds about which can-

Chile president declares state of emergency after violent protests SANTIAGO Agencies

Chile’s president declared a state of emergency in Santiago Friday night and gave the military responsibility for security after a day of violent protests over increases in the price of metro tickets.

“I have declared a state of emergency and, to that end, I have appointed Major General Javier Iturriaga del Campo as head of national defense, in accordance with the provisions of our state of emergency legislation,” President Sebastian Pinera said.

Throughout Friday, protestors clashed with riot police in several parts of the city and the subway system was shut after attacks on several stations. Violent clashes escalated as night fell, and the ENEL power company building and a Banco Chile branch, both in the city center, were set on fire and several metro stations hit with Molotov cocktails.

The unrest started as a fare-dodging protest against the hike in metro ticket prices, which increased from 800 to 830 peso ($1.17) for peak hour travel, following a 20 peso rise in January. Attacks on metro sta-

tions forced the closure of the entire subway system, which is the key form of public transport in the congested and polluted capital, carrying three million passengers a day.

“The entire network is closed due to riots and destruction that prevent the minimum security conditions for passengers and workers,” the metro operator said on Twitter, after attacks against nearly all the 164 stations where many gates and turnstiles were destroyed. The Santiago Metro, at 140 kilometers (90 miles) the largest and most modern in South America, is expected to remain closed this weekend and could reopen gradually next week. Closure of the metro forced many Santiago residents to walk home, sometimes long distances, resulting in scenes of chaos. Protestors erected barricades in various parts of the city and clashed with police, who used water cannon and tear gas in the most violent street battle seen in the Chilean capital for a long time. Pinera slammed the protesters as criminals. “This desire to break everything is not a protest, it’s criminal,” he said in a radio interview. On Thursday, 133 people had been arrested for causing damage to metro stations, estimated at up to 500 million pesos ($700,000).

McConnell slams Syria withdrawal as scattered fighting flares FRANKLIN COUNTY Agencies

US Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has attacked President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria as “a strategic nightmare” as scattered fighting flared in the north of the country despite a ceasefire deal. Turkey had agreed to suspend its Syria offensive for five days but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Friday he would resume a full-scale operation against Kurdish forces if they do not withdraw from a border “safe zone.” Trump said Erdogan told him there had been “minor sniper and mortar fire” in the region “that was quickly eliminated” and the Turkish leader assured him in a call that “he very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work.” Mustefa Bali, a spokesman for the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), accused Turkey, however, of violating the ceasefire deal reached during a visit to Ankara on Thursday by US Vice President Mike Pence. “Despite the agreement to halt the fighting, air and artillery attacks continue to target the positions of fighters, civilian settlements and the hospital” in the border town of Ras al-Ain in northeastern Syria, he said. McConnell on Friday said Trump’s decision to withdraw

US troops would help Washington’s foes and hurt its allies. “Withdrawing US forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake,” McConnell, the top Republican in Congress, wrote in The Washington Post. “It will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances.” The deal brokered by Pence was meant to provide a pause for the evacuation of Kurdish fighters from a “safe zone” Turkey wants to control along its border with Syria. Ankara considers the Kurdish forces to be “terrorists” linked to Kurdish rebels inside Turkey. “If the promises are kept until Tuesday evening, the safe zone issue will be resolved,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul. “If it fails, the operation… will start the minute 120 hours are over.” The suspension of hostilities looked designed to help Turkey achieve its main territorial goals without fighting, but its Syrian proxies continued to clash with Kurdish fighters on Friday. Fourteen civilians were killed in Turkish air strikes and mortar fire by allied Syrian fighters in and around the village of Bab al-Kheir, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Britainbased war monitor said eight fighters of the SDF — the de facto army of the embattled Kurdish autonomous region — also died.

didate to back.

The survey showed that the number of undecided voters dropped to eight percent from 17 percent.

The latest poll can be viewed as welcome news for Sanders, Biden and Warren going into the second round of primary debates. Earlier this month, Biden’s support slipped below 30 percent, his lowest mark in the Hill-HarrisX survey to date.

The Democrats are poised to face-off again in two debates this week in Detroit.

Ms. Warren and Sanders are set to headline the first of debates on Tuesday, while Biden will take center stage along with Harris the following night.

This marks the first time Ms. Warren and Sanders will have shared the debate stage.

Both liberal heavyweights have largely avoided criticizing each other but could look

to set themselves apart as the top progressive candidate.

The lineup also marks a potential rematch for Biden and Ms. Harris, who clashed during the last debate over civil rights issues.

Leading up to the debate, Ms. Harris unveiled her health care plan, which seeks to expand coverage without getting rid of private insurance.

The plan has already drawn fire from both Sanders and Biden alike. While Biden accused Ms. Harris of backtracking on her pledge to support “Medicare fo All,” Sanders slammed the plan for what he characterized as relying too heavily on private insurance.

The Hill-HarrisX survey was conducted online among 1,000 registered voters. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

aUStralia PolicE arrESt iraqi man oVEr dEathS of oVEr 350 aSylUm SEEkErS in MELBOURNE: The Australian Federal Police said on Saturday it had charged a 43-year-old Iraqi man for his part in allegedly organizing a people-smuggling venture that led to the deaths of more than 350 asylum seekers when their boat sank in 2001. The man was taken into custody at Brisbane Airport late on Friday following his extradition from New Zealand and has been charged with “organizing groups of non-citizens to Australia,” the police said in a statement.

The suspect, if convicted, faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. The police claim he was a part of a syndicate that organized people smuggling, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Australia.

He is the third suspect to face court in the case. “Let’s not lose sight of the fact that more than 350 people died in this tragedy,” the police cited Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw as saying in the statement. “They are owed justice and we remain committed to deterring those who profit from this trade.” Agencies

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

08 COMMENT

Thwarting the ‘Azadi March’

Put on notice Reprieved for four months

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N yet another display of sheer inefficiency, the PTI government is likely to have Pakistan painted into a corner while exposing its economy to hazards never faced before. Without mincing words, the FATF’s Chinese President Xiangmin Liu has warned that if by February 2020 the country has not made significant progress, FATF would consider further actions, which potentially will include placing the country on the blacklist. As the mutual evaluation report shows, of the 40 recommendations of the FATF on curbing money laundering and combating terror financing, Pakistan was fully compliant only on one. It was “largely compliant” on nine, “partially compliant” on 26 and “non-compliant” on four recommendations.

To overcome the deficiencies, the PTI’s less than competent administration will have to undertake a Houdini act. With Prime Minister Imran Khan fully focused on political vendetta more than anything else, it is doubtful if his government would be able to perform in four months what it failed to accomplish in 15. The government, it appears, has reconciled with the grey status. Despite inclusion in black list looming ahead, the PM still remains focused on stoking political tensions by inciting the opposition with snide remarks and challenging it to hold a sit-in longer than a week.

Pakistan was put on the grey list a second time on June 29, 2018. It was given 15 months for implementation of the 27-point action plan with a warning that in case of failure the country would be added to the blacklist comprising countries branded as uncooperative and tax havens for terror funding. The inclusion in the black list will seriously undermine Pakistan’s prospects for attracting investments. Transaction with other countries will be subject to more levels of scrutiny by banks, both time consuming and expensive. This can discourage companies from doing business with Pakistan.

Railways Minister sh. Rashid feels solace in the idea of the COAs and the PM acting in unison like two wheels in a vehicle, presumably a bike. Claims of the sort are likely to create the perception of both being equally responsible for the problems facing the country, created in fact by the PTI administration. There is a dire need for the ruling party’s guardians to be seen as neutral.

Censorship concerns Senate’s concerns need to be addressed

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T has become somewhat of an open secret that an abnormal amount of pressure is being put on the media, both print and electronic, to adhere to a set of instructions that trample upon its fundamental and constitutional right to free speech. The practice has evolved into a standard operating procedure executed through mostly direct and some indirect strict instructions about what can and cannot be broadcast or printed on a daily basis. Any failure to comply is dealt with consequences ranging from curtailment of advertisements to restrictions on circulation/broadcasting.

Hard to ignore; the senate Functional Committee on Human Rights on Friday formed a sub-panel to fix responsibility for this ‘undeclared censorship’ imposed on Pakistan’s media. The committee is to investigate whether or not the media regulatory authority PEMRA is to blame for the censorship- a charge the latter completely denies. That a private TV channel ran an opposition party leader’s presser without audio claiming it had been instructed by PEMRA to censor it begs the question: if not the regulator, then who is responsible?

The senate sub-committee has been mandated to seek the FIA’s help in conducting forensics of PEMRA’s phone records. An official of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) who was meant to speak at a Human Rights talk in Lahore was denied entry despite having a valid visa as he was on an Interior Ministry ‘stop list’.

The same Interior Ministry runs the FIA, so the latter carrying out any meaningful investigation or ‘forensics’ of PEMRA is highly doubtful.

In the age of the Internet it is close to impossible to restrict the flow of information and genuine impactful reporting and journalism; it finds a way to get disseminated. so no matter how many column inches are trimmed off, news bulletins’ audio cut and talk shows or anchors banned, the information-hungry general public will get access. Indian atrocities in Kashmir were reported extensively by various media outlets despite the curfew because the world wanted and deserved to know about it.

Whether or not senate finds the answers it is looking for is unknown, but its concern and action certainly highlight how an active erosion of basic democratic norms is underway as the Fourth Estate is chipped away at.

Dedicated to the legacy of the late Hameed Nizami

Arif Nizami Editor Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad

Umar Aziz

Asher John

Joint Editor

Executive Editor

Deputy Editor

Lahore – Ph: 042-36300938, 042-36375965

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By gagging the media?

arif Nizami

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s the deadline for Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s March fast approaches, battle lines are being clearly drawn. Despite Prime Minister Imran Khan forming a committee headed by defence minister Pervez Khattak to address “reasonable demands” of the intransigent cleric, no breakthrough is in sight.

With hardly any common ground what is there to talk about? Khan launching his ‘Kamyab Youth Programme’ on Thursday clearly threw down a gauntlet to the beleaguered opposition. Amongst chants of ‘diesel, diesel’ by an overtly partisan crowd the prime minister remarked tongue in cheek, “that this was the first assembly running without diesel.”

His opponents refer to Maulana as ‘Maulana diesel’ for allegedly benefitting from smuggling diesel fuel to neighbouring Afghanistan during various PPP (Pakistan Peoples Party) and PMLN (Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz) tenures.

The prime minister’s acerbic remarks amply demonstrate his seriousness about engaging the opposition. Critics contend that the very choice of Pervez Khattak betrays a clear lack of interest of the government in engaging the Maulana and his cohorts in any serious or meaningful dialogue.

The defence minister in the previous stint of the PTI government in KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) was chief minister of the province. Although he overtly coveted the exalted post after being re-elected as MPA, his boss in the new dispensation chose to ignore him. since then he is perceived to be under a cloud. Even Khattak’s defence portfolio hardly matters where the military chief directly interacts with the prime minister.

Initially Jahangir Tareen, close confidant of the prime minster, was reportedly to be tasked to talk to the opposition. But Khan shelved the proposal just before his departure for Tehran on his reconciliation mission between Iran and saudi Arabia.

Despite inducting heavyweights in the committee, Khan is still sticking to his line that the Maulana will be unable to last more than a week if his ‘Azadi March’ turns into a dharna. suddenly it was revived on his return from Riyadh. But even in the core committee meeting where it was decided to form a negotiating com-

UREAUCRACY is the hand of any government.

Without an efficient and effective bureaucracy, no government can convert its vision into reality. Unfortunately, Pakistan has completely failed to develop a robust bureaucratic system to ensure good governance and sustainable development. since before and after the general elections of 2018, we have been hearing lofty promises and assertions regarding civil service reforms from the ruling party. But no tangible steps have been taken yet. The committee founded under the chairmanship of Doctor Ishrat Hussain seems to be paralysed by interdepartmental tug of war. The recommendations of the committee are mainly focused on recruitment and selection side.

Wherein the current 12 groups would be merged into four, and only specialised candidates would appear in the exam for a particular post. It would be a good step if implemented in letter and spirit, as the job of many groups especially commerce, trade, finance, audit, tax, and police require specialised people.

Apparently, the government is giving the impression that it is serious to get this nation rid of the anachronistic bureaucratic system and replace it with an efficient and responsive one. But, in reality, now, after a bitter experience with the bureaucracy, it wants to maintain the status quo. The real problem doesn’t reside on inducKarachi – Ph: 021-35381208-9

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Arif Nizami is Editor, Pakistan Today. He can be contacted at arifn51@hotmail.com

Where the problem resides

Syed USama Shirazi

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mittee; the prime minister was quite dismissive of the idea.

Predictably the Maulana has rejected any talks with the government. According to JUI-F the prime minister should resign from his post and subsequently negotiations could be held for modalities of holding fresh elections.

It is highly unlikely that the PTI government would even consider Maulana’s quixotic demands.

The opposition itself, although keen to see Khan’s back, is divided on holding of fresh elections.

Understandably the PPP in power in sindh is not interested in another electoral stress test.

The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) candidate defeating the PPP nominee in a provincial by-election for Bhutto’s home ground seat, Larkana, is a case in point. so far as shahbaz sharif is concerned he has remained in sharp disagreement with his incarcerated brother over the objectives of the long march.

He has finally relented. The elder sharif would like the government to go, come what may, whereas the younger is more in favour of an in-house change.

For him shah Mehmood Qureshi getting the coveted top slot in a proposed national government is an acceptable choice. Qureshi is a staunch loyalist of Khan.

But at the same time, he is extremely ambitious. His heart is not really in the foreign ministry that he currently heads.

He is still bitter about the fact that he lost the seat in the Punjab Assembly in the 2018 elections. Otherwise he reckons that he would have been the chief minister of the province.

After much procrastinating, the PML-N president has finally announced “complete support” for the JUI-F’s ‘Azadi March’. Post meeting the Maulana at his residence in Lahore, sharif announced that on October 31 the PML-N would hold a massive rally in Islamabad to voice its demands.

The PML-N chief in a clear departure from his previous stance said the government should go home demanding fresh elections. Nonetheless the level of participation in Maulana’s putsch was perhaps deliberately left vague. sharif has also announced that any future course of action will be decided after October 31.

Khan’s best bet should be to exploit perceived chinks in the armour of the opposition.

But right now, he is relying upon his mentors in the deep state to do the job for him. Perhaps that is why he says rather arrogantly that he does not give a fig about the dharna.

Behind the charade of difference of opinion about the modalities, the protagonists are hectically planning for D-day. The government however wants to thwart the march by all means.

Khan is mostly relying on largely administrative measures to nip the opposition in the bud. He knows

that the establishment is firmly standing with him.

Hence, he does not seem to be too bothered to engage the opposition. But at the same time all 22 police stations of Islamabad have issued notices to caterers and Motels/Hotels to refuse food and lodging to the JUI-F protestors.

The first casualty is the already beleaguered media. Live coverage of Maulana is being blatantly censored on the electronic media on the instructions of PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority).

The media watchdog that as its name suggests is mandated to be a regulatory authority has assumed the role of becoming a willing henchman of the powers that be by virtually assuming the role of a censor office.

GEO news had the gumption to expose these third-degree tactics by showing live the muted footage of Maulana’s presser the other day. Unfortunately, most media owners have become compliant spectators in this charade by not making any attempts whatsoever to thwart such undemocratic moves.

Ironically the PTI while in the opposition was the main beneficiary of a free media. Its 126 days dharna was shown live 24/7 in 2014 by the electronic media, much to the obvious discomfiture of the sharif government. But now the shoe on the other foot is hurting.

Immigration authorities at Lahore airport barred entry of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) official and a renowned journalist steven Butler despite having a valid visa, claiming that his name is on the ‘stop list’ of the interior ministry.

The Asia programme coordinator was scheduled to attend the Asma Jahangir conference in Lahore.

This brazen act betrays a pervasive sense of nervousness on behalf of the government. Obviously, it knows that its record on media freedom is dismal.

The CPJ in its country reports has been quite critical of the dismal state of press freedom in Pakistan.

But the media watchdog has been far more critical of censorship in Indian occupied Kashmir since the August 5 clampdown. It has issued five extremely critical reports since then, and the official media in Pakistan has been copiously quoting them. some analysts, albeit mistakenly, have claimed that Maulana’s dharna has some tailwinds from the deep state. But it is becoming clearer by the day that Khan’s backers have not quite abandoned him.

Hence pure hubris on his part is not without reason. But the PTI chief should rely on his party and its allies rather than just leaning on his powerful backers.

Good war-gamers always have a plan B. Instead of waiting for the day when he becomes a political liability Khan should be taking political initiatives instead of just driving the opposition to the wall where they have no option but to retaliate.

The old CSP wants to control the police tion side. No doubt that there are many loopholes in recruitment and selection side that can be fixed, but still those who come through this system are competent enough to perform their duties if they are provided with a feasible working environment. secondly, elections promises of Imran Khan to reform Punjab police are yet to be fulfilled. since the death of salahuddin in police custody, the mounting public pressure has left the current government with very little room to manoeuvre. The presentation given by the IG Punjab shows that police want full operational and administrative autonomy. But, the problem doesn’t end here. The spinal card of the bureaucracy, the Pakistan Administrative service, the erstwhile DMG (District Management Group), is trying to resuscitate and regain its lost prestige, power, and glory. The bigwigs of this group are trying to place the police under the command of district administration. They are of the view that the incompetence of police creates many security and law and order problems that severely affect the performance of the district administration. By doing so, the accountability of police could be possible as the deputy commissioners and commissioners would hear the public complaints directly.

The deputy commissioners would act as representatives of the

Islamabad – Ph: 051-2204545

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provincial government. This shows that the purpose is not to reform the service, but rather to gain more power in the administration. On the other hand, police officers in Punjab threatened to resign from the service if such steps are taken to make them subservient to a specific group. Police officials have always been weeping over resource constraints. According to them, the real issues are lacking adequate budget for investigation, fragile infrastructure, meagre salaries, harsh working environment, political pressure, and inadequate reward system. They are right up to some extent that equipping them with resources would make system efficient and responsive. But what about the police accountability which top police officials have always eschewed and that should be the linchpin of the reforms?

On the pretext of accountability, the bigwigs of PAs are trying to bridle the police. Through the devolution plan of 2002, many powers were taken from the deputy commissioners and handed to the local governments, including the police. Though de facto still real power resides with deputy commissioners, since then the subsequent governments and even President Musharraf didn’t try to transfer power to local governments in real terms. In fact, Musharraf’s devolution plan was not intended to redesign the administrative structure, but to gain

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political purposes. He tried to create a new breed of politicians to curtail the power of his political opponents and secondly, to make the civil bureaucracy subservient to him by snatching its de jure powers.

Is there any rocket science required to reform the civil service?

Unfortunately, our ruling elite deliberately presents this task as Herculean so that it could not lose its grip on power. Every department wants more power, prestige, and authority, but no accountability, and the general populace has been bearing the brunt of their lust for power for last 70 years. same is the case with our political elite that doesn’t want to see an autonomous civil bureaucracy and an empowered local government. The current government seems a little bit more serious than the previous ones.

There is the introduction of Punjab Local Government Act 2019, which in many respects is better than that introduced by the PML-N government in 2013. Through this act 30 per cent of provincial budget would be transferred to local governments, which is commendable, but again if implemented in real terms. The only way forward to reform the civil service for good governance and better service delivery is to empower local governments and place district administration and police under the district Nazim, both de facto and de jure. That would be the real manifestation of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Usama Shirazi can be reached at usamasherazi129@gmail.com

Email: editorial@pakistantoday.com.pk

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

COMMENT 09 Editor’s mail

Send your letters to: Letters to Editor, Pakistan Today, 4-Shaarey Fatima Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan.

E-mail: letters@pakistantoday.com.pk Letters should be addressed to Pakistan Today exclusively

Changing weather in twins cities sINCE last week the weather has become colder in Islamabad/Rawalpindi, which results in an increase in the number of patients with flu in hospitals. People haven’t started wearing warm clothes yet but the early mornings are cold enough to wear them, parents often don’t wear their school going kids cold cloths and they are waiting for their school van in an open-air at early morning become ill. We as parents need to act fast with the changing weather of twins cities.

MUHAMMAD HASSAN AMIN Islamabad

India’s terror links

The dialectics of the baton charge False, fabricated and delusional narratives riding the waves

Candid Corner raoof haSaN “Possibly the most debilitating deception of all is to create a god of my own making, fool myself into believing that this limp god of mine is the true God, and then construct the entirety of my life on this flamboyantly fictional character.

Possibly the most devastating realisation of all is when the real God shows up, and in the showing up, all of this come crashing down.”

– Craig D Lounsbrough

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N the general environs around us, there lives a mullah going by the name of Fazlur Rehman. He inherited a political party from his father, Mufti Mahmood– the one notorious for launching a movement in the name of religion to oust the then Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and, subsequently, pushing him to the gallows.

As a member of the Indian National Congress before partition, Mufti Mahmood vehemently opposed the creation of Pakistan and dubbed the leader of the movement, Quaid-eAzam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a Kafir (non-believer). Left with few options after partition, he became one of the founding members of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), vigorously promoting the religion card from its very inception.

Through the dubious efforts of the Mufti clan, religion has since been reduced to becoming saleable merchandise with no one learning the tricks of business better than his errant son– Fazlur Rehman. There is not a place where he would not contrive a role in the name of this commodity that he has belittled incessantly since he took over the reins of the party after the demise of his father in 1980, suffixing it with ‘F’, thus declaring it as his personal property.

On account of his consuming obsession as a leading merchant of religion, he was able to orchestrate a place for himself in every concoction pieced together by a dictator, or a so-called ‘democratic’ ruler. During possibly the longest uninterrupted stint of remaining in the echelons of power, stretching to over a decade, he served the interests of all who came to rule with unmatched devotion and servility– General Musharraf, Asif Zardari and Nawaz sharif. My bet is that he would have ardently agreed to serve Imran Khan also if the latter had left even a small crevice for him to crawl through. The

problem arose when Khan insisted on imple- lose. Thus, he continued to flog the mantra of menting his election manifesto, accountability agitation as his only recourse to force his way being a principal component of that. This did through. Hard-pressed on the accountability front with prison terms looming, the leaders of the mainnot suit this mullah or any of his cohorts.

When elections were held in 2018 and he stream political parties, the PML-N and the PPP, failed to win a seat in the National Assembly, decided to use the mullah’s shield to vent their own he forthwith rejected the results and called frustrations, but with a caveat: in case of the PPP, upon other political parties to do similarly. He it is only support in principle and, for the PML-N, urged their leaders not to take oath as members it still remains to be seen whether the call would of the assemblies and, instead, launch a move- actually go out for their supporters to come out and join the mullah’s charges in the planned sit-in. ment to oust the government.

Joined together in their espousal of corrupAt that juncture, the parties did not agree to it saying that they would speak from the floor tion, some trading in money and others in reliof Parliament. However, his efforts to forge an gion and money both, they have now decided alliance of the opposition parties continued un- to incite the dogma- and radicalisation-impregabated. In the process, he refrained from taking nated minds from the seminaries for an assault any steps to challenge the electoral results by on Islamabad. Having rejected the results of the the stipulations outlined in the Constitution. In- elections without providing any proof thereof, and without going through the steps outlined for stead, he persisted in the agitation mould. simultaneously, Prime Minister Khan went approaching election bodies for remedy, the ahead with launching the accountability mullah decided that he would enact his own process with full force leading to the conviction laws on the streets of the capital aka judge, jury of Nawaz sharif and members of his family, and the executioner cupped in one.

There is little support that the call has been while investigation is ongoing against shahbaz able to generate among sharif, his son Hamza the grassroots. There is shahbaz, and some othno manifestation of it ers who have now been except in the grisly declared absconders. salute of honour preCases are also being sented to the mullah by a investigated against Asif Zardari and his sister Let the mullah try it out with ragtag illegal private militia that his party Faryal Talpur who are in his baton charges. Let’s be goons have raised. custody. some other stalThe real noise is warts of the PPP, includdone with this morbid and confined to the televiing former leader of the sion screens where some opposition Khurshid Ali fantasising mindset. The agenda-driven anchors shah and the incumbent fate of the country cannot are seen going hoarse sindh Assembly speaker over the delusional milAgha siraj Durrani are be held hostage in the lions that the mullah will also incarcerated. There hands of this vile merchant lead to topple the govare others from both parernment. Every spoken ties who are under the of religion. In fact, religion word from these selfscanner and some of them anointed pontiffs is laced may even be arrested. should be freed from his with large doses of hate It is also true that stranglehold, and others and venom. It is like revcorruption having been olutions were made in so palpably exposed, like him, so that people the studios and news there has been diminishcould heave a sigh of relief rooms, not in the hearts ing support for these poand minds of people. litical leaders in the past – and the state could And what is all this few months as is amply noise about? stopping evidenced both when accelerate its upward trek the accountability they were being tried in process and letting these the courts of law and, criminals of the state later, when they were walk out of their cells to convicted. Only a handmake merry with their ful were seen coming out loot and plunder? What in their support. The recent defeat of the PPP in the Larkana by-election travesty! What absolute shame!

Let the mullah try it out with his baton provides further proof of this changed dynamic.

These leaders were thus afraid that if exhort- charges. Let’s be done with this morbid and faning their supporters to come out to protest did tasising mindset. The fate of the country cannot not bring any sizeable number to the streets, it be held hostage in the hands of this vile merwould further deplete their political relevance. chant of religion. In fact, religion should be The prospect created a problem of another kind– freed from his stranglehold, and others like him, that of division within their party ranks. While so that people could heave a sigh of relief – and shahbaz sharif has come out openly against pol- the state could accelerate its upward trek. itics of confrontation saying that it has damaged Raoof Hasan is a political and security the party in the past, there are also a large number of people within the PPP who have pleaded strategist, and heads the Regional Peace Institute – an Islamabad-based think tank. He pragmatism as opposed to agitation.

On the other hand, not commanding a main- can be reached at: raoofhasan@hotmail.com; stream political party, the mullah had little to Twitter: @RaoofHasan

INDIA mocked at Pakistan’s prime minister’s admission in General Assembly that Pakistan trained Afghan ‘mujahideen’ (fighters) that the soviets dubbed ‘terrorists’. India, too, trained Afghan Northern-Alliance shi-ite fighters. India’s ambassador Bharath Raj Muthu Kumar, with consent of then foreign minister Jaswant singh, ‘coordinated military and medical assistance that India was secretly giving to Massoud and his forces in Afghanistan (Hindu dated september 1, 2019). The support involved ‘helicopters, ordnance, mortars, small armaments, refurbished Kalashnikovs seized in Kashmir, combat and winter clothes, packaged food, medicines, and funds’. These supplied were ‘delivered circuitously with the help of other countries’ (Aeini and Farkhor air-bases in Tajikistan) or ‘through his [Masssoud’s] brother in London, Wali Massoud’.

India now calls Kashmiri freedom fighters ‘terrorists’. To refresh India’s memory, it called insurgents in erstwhile East Pakistan ‘mukti bahini’, ‘freedom fighters’. Unlike Kashmir, East Pakistan was not a disputed state. It was an integral part of Pakistan. But, India harboured, nurtured, trained and armed Bengali ‘freedom fighters’ on Indian soil. RAW’s cover officers including RK Yadav, and B. Raman (The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane) make no bones about India’s involvement in Bangladesh’s insurgency. They admitted that India’s then prime minister Indira Gandhi, parliament, RAW and armed forces acted in tandem to dismember Pakistan. Raman reminds ‘Indian parliament passed resolution on March 31, 1971 to support insurgency. Indira Gandhi had then confided with Kao that in case Mujib was prevented to rule Pakistan, she would liberate East Pakistan from the clutches of Military junta. Let India not forget that Kashmir is a disputed state as per UN resolutions and the simla accord (pacta sunt servanda, treaties are binding). India has withdrawn special status and usurped hereditary rights. A state that flouts international treaties is called a ‘rogue state’ (Noam Chomsky’s Rogue States). Doubtless India qualifies as a rogue state and should be classified as such by the UN. AMJED JAAvED Rawalpindi

Apathy towards Kashmir EIGHTY lack Muslims in Kashmir have been virtually imprisoned in their homes for over sixty days. But, neither the shia and sunni leaders, nor Muslim MPs and human rights-champions tried to visit them. sitaram Yechury, a socialist leader wanted to visit the Valley to see his party colleague Yousuf Tarigami of CPI-M. Upon government’s refusal, he obtained supreme Court’s permission to do so.

Let Pakistanis know that 18 crore Muslims in India, stratified into ajlaf, ashraf and arzal classes akin to Hindu varna caste-system, have no real leader, only sordid muckrakers. The self-styled shia and sunni leaders largely supported abrogation of special status (Article 370) and hereditary rights (Article 35-A) for petty gains. They include Arshad Madani, Barrister Asaduddin Owaisi (All India Majlise-Ittahdul Muslimeen), Moulana Mehmood Madani, general secretary of Deoband’s Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind (council of Indian Muslim theologians), and his uncle Arshad Madani, the president of the same council, Ahmad Bukhari (Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid), Azam Khan Advocate (Samajwadi Party) and Kalbe Jawad, the biggest shia- Muslim leader . Twenty-five per cent to 30% of the Kashmiri population of eight million is shia. The Muslim ‘leaders’ preferred to ally with Modi as the government had threatened to scrutinise the flow of funds from saudi Arabia, Iraq or Iran into their proxy accounts. The religious luminaries also fear inquiry into land grabbed by them and illegal sale of Waqf properties. It is eerie that secularist champions of human rights also are mum about Kashmiris plight. They include shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, saeed Naqvi, Arif Mohammad Khan.

AJ MALIK Rawalpindi

Climate change CLIMATE change is the core global issue now-a-days, we are at the decisive moment to cope with this issue. The impact of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale.

Pakistan is also being affected by climate change. Although Pakistan makes a tiny contribution to GHG emission but it is among the most vulnerable countries affected by climate change.

The climate change threat to Pakistan are; considerable increase in the frequency, intensity of extreme weather events, coupled with erratic monsoon rains causing frequent, intense floods and droughts. The global climate index report, 2018 states that more than 10,000 people have died in Pakistan during the past 20 years out of approximately 140 extreme weather events that also incurred losses of almost $4bn. The Government should form a comprehensive plan or commission to oversee such a core issue and its solutions. They need to act-now, least it is too late.

USAMA JAMIL Bahawalpur

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

10 NEWS

Violence escalates in Barcelona after 500,000 separatists rally BARCELONA

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Agencies

IOLeNT clashes escalated in Barcelona late Friday, as radical Catalan separatists hurled rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with teargas and rubber bullets, turning the city centre into a chaotic battleground.

The deterioration came on the fifth consecutive day of protests in the Catalan capital and elsewhere over a Spanish court’s jailing of nine separatist leaders on sedition charges over a failed independence bid two years ago.

Around half a million people rallied in Barcelona earlier on Friday, police said, in the biggest gathering since Monday’s court ruling as separatists also called a general strike in the major tourist destination.

But while most marchers appeared peaceful, hordes of young protesters went on the rampage near the police headquarters, igniting a huge blaze that sent plumes of black smoke into the air, as police fired teargas to disperse them, an AFP correspondent said.

Other fires raged near Plaza de Catalunya at the top of the tourist hotspot Las Ramblas, where hundreds of demonstrators rallied in defiance of the police, who tried to disperse them with water cannon.

“Anti-fascist Catalonia!” they roared.

“The streets will always be ours!”

Scores of police vans could be seen fanning out around the streets, their sirens screaming as the regional police warned people in a message in english on Twitter “not to approach” the city centre.

The situation later appeared calmer, according to a police spokesman. earlier, many thousands of “freedom marchers”, who had set out to walk from five regional towns on Wednesday, arrived in Barcelona wearing walking boots and carrying hiking poles.

The rally coincided with the general strike, prompting the cancellation of 57 flights, the closure of shops, business and several top tourist attractions, and slowing public transport to a trickle in a region that accounts for about a fifth of Spain’s economic output.

Activists also cut off Catalonia’s main cross-border highway with France.

‘Reaction to injustice’: In downtown Barcelona, many shops and luxury outlets were closed on the city’s Paseo de Gracia, with blackened, charred patches a testimony to the nightly clashes that have raged since Monday.

“With these demonstrations bringing this large city to a halt, we are using Barcelona like a microphone,” said 23-yearold engineering student Ramon Pararada.

“It’s all in reaction to the injustice,” he said. Retired lawyer Jaume enrich agreed, saying the court sentence was “the straw that

broke the camel’s back”. “Madrid is putting Spanish unity above everything, including basic rights,” he told AFP, wearing a badge saying “No surrender”. Nearby, a banner fluttered reading “There are not enough cages for this many birds.” clashes and closuRes: The huge turnout came after yet another night of violent clashes, which Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch said involved “fewer incidents, but more violent”.

And Barcelona city council said the first three days of clashes had cost an estimated 1.57 million euros ($1.75 million) in damage, with mob violence damaging traffic lights, street signs, trees and the city’s bikeshare service. Some 128 people have been arrested since Monday, while 207 police officers had been injured before the violence escalated on Friday, according to Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska.

The emergency services said about 500 people in the region have suffered injuries since the beginning of the week, including 60 in Barcelona on Friday.

In Barcelona, Spain’s top tourist destination, the Sagrada Familia basilica closed as protesters massed outside, and the Liceu opera house cancelled Friday night’s performance.

At the city’s famed La Boqueria market, most of the stalls were shut, although Susana Medialdea, 53, was selling olives and pickles entirely dressed in yellow.

‘Only God is with us’: A Syrian family feels betrayed by US

BARDARASH Agencies

For months, every time Turkey threatened to invade northern Syria, Salwa Hanna told her husband they should take their children and flee from the border town of Kobani. And every time, he told her not to worry, because the Americans were there.

Now the Christian family is among an estimated 160,000 Syrians who have fled

Turkey’s offensive, which began last week after President Donald Trump announced he would move U.S. forces out of the way, abandoning their Kurdish allies. The invasion transformed one of the safest parts of Syria into a war zone, leaving displaced residents with a deep sense of betrayal.

Hanna and her husband arrived Thursday at a newly reopened camp in Iraq with their children and two small bags of clothes.

They said they borrowed $200 to pay a

smuggler to lead them across the border and have nothing left. They were shown to an empty tent with a bare concrete floor.

“I left my home, and I had just started a new home, and I left it all behind,” Hanna said. “There are no emotions anymore. We live as if we are dead.”

They are originally from Afrin, a Kurdish enclave in northwestern Syria that fell to Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters in early 2018. There were no Americans in Afrin, and after the Kurds retreated there was no one to prevent the Syrian fighters — a motley crew of former rebels, Islamists, guns for hire and outright bandits — from looting and pillaging.

“They stole cars, they stole whatever they wanted. They even stole sandals,” Hanna’s husband, Abdulrahman Ali, said as he waved a flip-flop in the air. “They stole everything. All in the name of revolution or whatever.”

So the couple fled with their 10-year-old and their two-year-old, who suffers from asthma. “When they attacked Afrin it was winter, there were no doctors. I thought my son was going to die in front of me,” Hanna said. The harrowing journey brought them to Kobani.

Some worries about nuclear weapons at Turkey base WASHINGTON: Frayed U.S. relations with Turkey over its incursion in Syria raise a sensitive question rarely discussed in public: Should the United States remove the nuclear bombs it has long stored at a Turkish air base? It’s a tricky matter for several reasons, including the fact that by longstanding policy, the U.S. government does not publicly acknowledge locations of nuclear weapons overseas. Still, it is almost an open secret that the U.S. has as many as 50 B-61 bombs stored under heavy guard at Incirlik air base in southern Turkey. President Donald Trump implicitly acknowledged the stockpile this week when asked by a reporter how confident he was of the bombs’ security. “We’re confident,” he said. Turkey, a NATO ally, has reportedly hosted American nuclear weapons for 60 years.

The bombs could be dropped by U.S. planes in a nuclear war. The arrangement at Incirlik air base is part of NATO’s policy of linking Turkey and other member countries to the alliance’s aim of deterring war by having a relatively small number of nuclear weapons based in Europe. Removing them, therefore, would be a diplomatic complication. There is no known evidence that the nuclear weapons at Incirlik are at direct risk, but relations between Washington and Ankara are at perhaps a historic low and the war in Syria has grown more complex and unpredictable. Incirlik is about 150 miles from Syria by road. Thursday’s announced U.S. deal with Turkey to pause its offensive against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria may have slowed the deterioration of relations. But the overall direction has been decidedly and increasingly negative. “The arc of their behavior over the past several years has been terrible,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last Sunday, noting that Ankara defied repeated U.S. warnings not to purchase a Russian air defense system that the White House has likened to a portal for Russian spying. He added: “I mean, they are spinning out of the Western orbit, if you will.” In July, the Pentagon kicked Turkey out of its F-35 fighter jet program because Turkey refused to halt its purchase of the Russian-made air defense system. This was a major blow to U.S.-Turkey relations and raised questions in Washington about whether Turkey was a reliable ally. Eric Edelman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and senior Pentagon official, said Friday he believes the nuclear weapons are safe and secure. He sees risk in removing them. “I’m not in favor of taking any actions that would potentially accelerate Turkey’s thinking about pursuing its own independent nuclear deterrent,” he said, noting that Erdogan as recently as September mentioned this possibility. Some American arms control experts say the U.S. bombs at Incirlik would be safer in another NATO member country. Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, who has followed the issue for many years, said in an interview that a review of options for the U.S. bombs at Incirlik, near the city of Adana, is long overdue. He believes the Air Force, which is responsible for the bombs, has grown concerned about their security in recent years. “The Air Force is concerned about not only the standard physical perimeters — whether they are good enough — but also about the manpower on the base, whether they have enough to hold back an attack from someone,” Kristensen said. The conflict in northern Syria, which has only grown more complex and unpredictable with a U.S. troop withdrawal, has added a new layer of worry for American officials, he said. “They’re afraid of the spillover” inside Turkey, he said. The Pentagon has declined to comment on the matter. “It is U.S. policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific location,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Uriah Orland, a Pentagon spokesman. “The U.S. does not discuss the movement of nuclear weapons, the capability to store weapons at U.S. or foreign locations or planning for any of these activities.” Agencies

13 killed, several missing in dam collapse at Siberian gold mine At least 13 people were killed and about a dozen were missing after a dam collapsed at a gold mine in a remote Siberian settlement on Saturday, Russian authorities said.

The dam on the Seiba River in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk burst and flooded several cabins where the victims lived, Russian authorities said.

Officials said the dam had apparently been built in breach of safety rules and claimed that the authorities were not aware of its existence.

Investigators said they have opened a criminal probe into the breach of safety rules.

“As of now, there’s information about 13 dead,” the emergencies ministry said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the regional authorities in Krasnoyarsk said 12 people had died and 13 more were missing.

Fourteen people were hospitalised, and three of them were in a grave condition, the regional health ministry said. Regional governor Alexander Uss said in televised remarks that about 80 workers lived in the temporary settlement in the remote village of Shchetinkino located south of the city of Krasnoyarsk.

The settlement’s total popula-

tion is estimated at about 180.

A team of doctors including a neurosurgeon were dispatched to the scene from Krasnoyarsk, which is located some 4,000 kilometres east of Moscow. Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova was overseeing the delivery of aid to the injured.

A number of top regional officials including Uss, prosecutors and inspectors went to the scene of the tragedy. The dam was built in violation of “every single norm”, the head of the local government, Yury Lapshin, said in televised remarks.

The dam belonged to the Sib-

zoloto holding company which has not released any comment on the incident so far.

More than 270 people were involved in a search and rescue operation, the emergencies ministry said. But the operation was challenging because of the remote location.

Deadly accidents are relatively common in Russia because of lax safety rules, bad management and Soviet-era infrastructure. In 2009, 75 people were killed in a massive flood at Russia’s biggest hydroelectric plant in the Khakassia region of Siberia. Agencies

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

BUSINESS 11

Pakistan to CoMe out of fatf grey list in 2020: Minister Cement sales decline 50pc to 70,000 tonnes per day ‘MORE THAN 60PC OF CEMENT SALES IN PAKISTAN ARE CARRIED THROUGH UNREGISTERED DEALERS, WHO ARE NOT WILLING TO ABIDE BY THE FBR’S CNIC RULE’ LAHORE: The sale of cement in the country has declined by more than 50 per cent to almost 70,000 tonnes per day mainly due to the CNIC condition imposed by the Federal Board of Revenue on the sale and purchase of goods worth more than Rs50,000.

According to statement issued by the All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA), high inflation and the recent depreciation of the Pakistani Rupee versus US Dollar, along with a record rise in interest rate, have also hit the cement sector hard, enhancing its cost of production manifold. As per industry experts, more than 60pc of cement sales in the country are carried through unregistered dealers, who are not willing to abide by the FBR’s new rule. They maintained that the CNIC condition on the purchase of goods worth more than Rs50,000 has led to a significant decline in cement sales. “Owing to the CNIC condition, cement sales have plunged almost 50pc as a majority of the cement dealers are unregistered and the demand which used to stand at 145,000 tonnes per day has now dropped to around 70,000 tonnes.”

According to data, the country’s total cement despatches during the first quarter of FY20 grew by 2.56pc to 11.133 million tonnes. Out of the total sales, local despatches increased to 9.116 million tonnes from 9.063 million tonnes, while exports grew by 12.54pc to 2.017 million tonnes from 1.792 million tonnes in 1QFY19.

In September, total dispatches increased by 11.51pc to 4.270 million tonnes compared to the corresponding month last year. During the month, domestic consumption reached 3.472 million tonnes from 3.114 million tonnes. Exports rose to 0.798 million tonnes last month as compared to 0.715 million tonnes in September 2018.

Local consumption in the northern region during the month under review swelled by 22.4pc to 3.027 million tonnes from 2.47 million tonnes in September 2018. The southern region witnessed 30.48pc drop in dispatches to 0.446 million tonnes from 0.64 million tonnes in September 2018.

Industry experts said the lopsided consumption pattern has benefited plants located in the northern region while those operating in the south have entered the red zone in view of over 32pc drop in uptake during the first quarter of this fiscal year.

“The government has given tax benefits on the introduction of new technology in cement plants. At present, the interest rate in Pakistan is so high that no one is considering starting a new business.

Overall, the economic slowdown, reflected in a nine-year low economic growth rate of 3.3pc in FY19, has caused a sharp fall in cement demand,” the statement concluded. INP

ISLAMABAD

P

INP

AKISTAN has set a target to complete all items on its Financial Action Task Force (FATF) action plan and get upgraded from the grey list to the white list in 2020, said Economic Affairs Minister Muhammad Hammad Azhar.

Taking to social media site Twitter, the minister stated that a coordinated effort from all regulators, law enforcement agencies (LEAs), federal and provincial government departments was already underway in this regard. “Pakistan has targeted to complete all items on its FATF action plan and InshAllah upgrade from the grey list to the white list

of FATF in 2020. A coordinated effort from all Regulators, LEAs, Federal and Provincial Govt Depts is already underway in this regards,” he tweeted.

Azhar further informed that the FATF had noted progress already achieved by Pakistan during the last one year, particularly in the last four months.

However, he added, more work was needed to be done as the country’s action plan was perhaps the most ambitious and challenging ever handed out to any country. “FATF has noted progress already achieved by Pakistan during the last one year and especially in the last four months. However, more work needs to be done as our action plan is perhaps the most ambitious and challenging ever handed out to any country,” the minister tweeted.

It is pertinent to mention that the FATF Plenary

meeting was held from 13-18 October in Paris, where the Pakistani delegation was led by Hammad Azhar. The FATF meeting on the occasion considered Pakistan’s progress report on the FATF Action Plan and APG Mutual Evaluation report (MER).

Pakistan’s delegation had reaffirmed its political commitment to fully implement the action plan.

The FATF plenary meeting decided to maintain status quo on the FATF Action Plan and allow the usual 12 months observation period for the APG MER. The delegation had also held sideline meetings with various delegations and briefed them about the progress made by Pakistan on the FATF Action Plan and steps taken for strengthening its Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financial Terrorism regime.

LAHORE: A worker prepares batting (filling) for quilts as mercury level drops in the provincial capital. ONLINE

PSX down 605 points; rupee remains stable

PM satisfied with economic progress

money laundering – all contributed to the bearish trend in the market.

The Paris-based watchdog mentioned that Pakistan had largely addressed five of the 27 action items but expressed serious concerns with the overall lack of progress.

It cautioned the country to swiftly complete its full action plan by February 2020 to stave off the blacklist.

STABLE RUPEE: Meanwhile, the Pakistani Rupee recovered 16 paisa and closed at Rs155.90 against the US Dollar in the interbank market on Friday, a private media outlet reported. Likewise, in the open market, the rupee appreciated by 20 paisa and closed at Rs156.10 against the greenback with slight fluctuation during the outgoing week.

Prime Minister Imran Khan has lauded his finance team for “turning the national economy around within a year”. Taking to the social networking website twitter, PM Imran said that foreign direct investment witnessed an increase of 111.5 per cent while foreign private investment surged by 194 per cent in one year. He highlighted that the current account deficit fell by 80 per cent over the corresponding period while the remittances increased by 17 per cent. Similarly, he showed, exports registered an increase of 5.9 per cent over the last year while imports decreased by 18.6 per cent. Earlier on October 2nd, PM Imran Khan had chaired a meeting of his economic team in Islamabad to discuss issues pertaining to twin deficits, economic indicators, tax net, industrial reforms and eases of doing business. BUSINESS DESK

MARKET WEEKLY BUSINESS DESK The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained lacklustre in the outgoing week amid lack of market-moving triggers, following the announcement of the Financial Action Task Force to keep Pakistan in the grey list till Feb 2020.

The benchmark KSE-100 Index lost 605 points or 1.8pc to settle at 33,870 points.

The volume declined 17pc to 115 million shares from 137.9 million, whereas the traded value increased by 30pc to $31.3 million. According to stock market analysts, simmering Pak-India tensions, the current uncertain political situation in the country, and FATF’s warning to Pakistan to fully comply with its 27 recommendations to curb terror financing and

Huawei in early talks with US firms to licence 5G platform WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Blacklisted Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei is in early-stage talks with some US telecom companies about licensing its 5G network technology to them, a Huawei executive told Reuters.

Vincent Pang, senior vice president and board director at the company said some firms had expressed interest in both a long-term deal or a one-off transfer, declining to name or quantify the companies.

“There are some companies talking to us, but it would take a long journey to really finalize everything,” Pang explained on a visit to Washington this week. “They have shown interest,” he added, saying conversations are only a couple of weeks old and not at a detailed level yet.

The US government, fearing Huawei equipment could be used to spy on customers, has led a campaign to convince allies to bar it from their 5G networks.

Huawei has repeatedly denied the claim.

Currently there are no US 5G providers and European rivals Ericsson and Nokia are generally more expensive.

In May, Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment provider, was placed on a US blacklist over national security concerns, banning it from buying American-made parts without a special licence.

Washington also has brought criminal charges against the company, alleging bank fraud, violations of US sanctions against Iran, and theft of trade secrets, which Huawei denies.

Rules that were due out from the Commerce Department earlier this month are expected to effectively ban the company from the US telecoms supply chain.

The idea of a one-off fee in exchange for access to Huawei’s 5G patents, licences, code and know-how was first floated by CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei in interviews with the New York Times and the Economist last month. But

it was not previously clear whether there was any interest from US companies.

In an interview with Reuters last month, a State Department official expressed skepticism of Ren’s offer.

“It’s just not realistic that carriers would take on this equipment and then manage all of the software and hardware themselves,” the person said. “If there are software bugs that are built in to the initial software, there would be no way to necessarily tell that those are there and they could be activated at any point, even if the software code is turned over to the mobile operators,” the official added.

For his part, Pang declined to predict whether any deal might be signed. However, he warned that the research and development investment required by continuously improving the platform after a single-transfer from Huawei would be very costly for the companies.

Huawei has spent billions to develop its 5G technology since 2009.

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

12 BUSINESS

Pakistan briefs iMf, Wb and adb offiCials on eConoMiC reforMs

CORPORATE CORNER

ISLAMABAD

KARACHI: Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) President Sheikh Umer Rehan presents a memento to K-Electric CEO Moonis Alvi. PR

LAHORE: Pakistan State Oil Company Limited (PSO) has pledged Rs10 million to LUMS. The donation will support meritorious undergraduate students currently enrolled under the National Outreach Programme (NOP), a prestigious scholarship at LUMS offered to underprivileged students across Pakistan. PR

a

STAFF REPORT

DVISER to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, who is currently on a visit to Washington DC to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, held a series of meetings with heads of various global financial institutions and business leaders and apprised them of the overall state of Pakistan’s economy.

The meeting focused on the measures taken by the government to curtail the twin deficits and to revive the country’s economy through insti-

tutional reforms and collaborations with regional and international investment partners, a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance stated.

As per details, the Pakistani delegation, which also included State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) President Dr Reza Baqir and Finance Secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch, held an extensive meeting with Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Takehiko Nakao to exchange views on the ongoing projects sponsored by ADB in Pakistan.

The adviser apprised the ADB president of the steps being taken by the government to curtail the current and capital account deficits.

In his remarks, ADB President Nakao said that ADB is an impor-

PM’s economic team lauded for chalking out Pak-China FTA-II KARACHI INP

LAHORE: OPPO Chief Executive Officer George Long, along with renowned celebrities of the country, launches OPPO Reno 2 series in Pakistan. PR

LAHORE: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government decides to collaborate with Urban Unit to further the province’s development agenda. PR

tant financial partner of Pakistan and acknowledged the current structural reforms undertaken towards the country’s economic stabilisation. Dr Hafeez Shaikh also met with World Bank South Asian Region (SAR) Vice President Hartwig Schafer and his team. The meeting reviewed the World Bank’s portfolio in Pakistan and discussed further steps to strengthen cooperation between the two sides.

Later, the Pakistani delegation met International Monetary Fund’s Middle East and Central Asia Department Director Jihad Azour.

Both sides discussed the implementation of the ongoing IMF programme. The IMF director appreciated the progress made to-

Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) President Engr Daroo Khan Achakzai on Saturday appreciated the strenuous efforts made by the prime minister and his team in the preparation of the much-awaited China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement (CPFTA)–II. He lauded the involvement of all stakeholders in the CPFTA consultation process, saying that through the FTA-II, which will take effect from Dec 1st, the country would witness Chinese investments in all sectors.

The FPCCI chief hoped that the CPFTA-II would be instrumental in enhancing the bilateral trade volume to its optimum potential, exploring the new areas of joint ventures, transferring Chinese technology to Pakistan, broadening and protecting indigenous industries, and

improving Pakistan’s trade balance with its counterpart. He recalled that under FTA-I, Pakistan had benefitted to the tune of only 4pc whereas the rest was derived by China.

Commenting on the statement issued

by Adviser to PM on Commerce Abdul Razzaq Dawood, he clarified that FPCCI has always advocated/supported the decisions of the government so as to make Pakistan economically stable and sound.

“Being the apex body of trade and industry in Pakistan, FPCCI has all the capability and expertise to assist the government to expand all economic sectors such as manufacturing, investment, export etc.” He hailed the government for chalking out a development plan for Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under CPEC, which “will definitely eradicate their economic issues, particularly unemployment and poverty, and will bring the least developed rural areas of Balochistan and KP at par with the other parts of Pakistan”.

wards economic stabilisation as well as the government’s commitment to the reform process.

Meanwhile, the delegation members participated in the G-24 Ministers and Governors Meeting on the sidelines of the annual meetings of IMF/WB-2019. They also attended an informal meeting of the SAARC Finance Ministers that focused on trade facilitation within the SAARC region. Furthermore, Adviser Dr Hafeez Shaikh participated in the Standard Chartered Global Investors Forum, where he gave an overview of the economic situation in Pakistan and progress made with the implementation of the IMF programme. He urged the participants to invest in Pakistan.

Current account deficit contracts by massive 64 per cent Pakistan’s current account deficit (CAD) in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (FY20) declined by a huge 64pc mainly due to a 21pc reduction in the imports bill, a private media outlet reported. The central bank’s latest data showed the current account deficit for JulySeptember FY20 clocked in at $1.548 billion compared to $4.287 billion in the same period last fiscal year; a decline of $2.739 billion. According to the data, the large decline in imports was the real force behind the 64pc reduction in the deficit, whereas exports of goods and services during the quarter increased by a meagre 1.38pc or $99 million. The exports services during the quarter clocked in at $7.259 billion compared to $7.160 billion in the same period last fiscal year. Contrary to exports, the country’s imports fell by 19pc to $13.461 billion. On one hand, this massive decline has helped the government reduce the current account deficit, whereas on the other, it has also slowed down the overall economic activity in the country. Furthermore, with a lacklustre increase in exports, the government may find it difficult to meet the current account deficit. The government was successful in bringing down the deficit from a historic high of $19.897 billion in FY18 to $13.830 billion in FY19. The government has been facing major challenge in the form of controlling the huge debt servicing, which makes up for the major chunk of current account deficit. In FY19, the CAD was $13.8bn whereas the debt servicing, in the same fiscal year, was $11.588 billion. In the ongoing fiscal year, the government has borrowed additional funds from the donors, commercial banks and friendly countries, which would certainly increase the total size of debt servicing. BUSINESS DESK

China, us make ‘substantial’ trade deal progress: top official

ISLAMABAD: A vendor displays neatly-arranged fresh vegetables at a local bazaar in the federal capital. ONLINE

IMF warns of downside risks for Asian economy amid trade tensions WASHINGTON AGENCIES

Asia is expected to grow at 5pc in 2019 and 5.1pc in 2020, with risks to the projection still skewed downward, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) official said.

“In line with the slowdown of global growth, the growth in the Asia Pacific region is expected to be the slowest since the global financial crisis in our context of prolonged global uncertainty,” Changyong Rhee, director of IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, said during a press conference at the 2019 annual meetings for the IMF and the World Bank.

Noting that the global economy is experiencing a synchronized slowdown amid trade and

geopolitical tensions, Rhee said Asia is no exception to the trend and was hit hard by this trend.

“Given how open the Asian region is, how dependent on trade and investment and manufacturing and so forth, it is completely unsurprising that Asia would also experience a very significant slowdown in 2019 and 2020,” Jonathan Ostry, deputy director at the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, told Xinhua.

Ostry said trade tensions have not only caused the direct effect of tariffs, but there are also effects on confidence on financial markets, and “these effects take a toll on investment and growth.” In China, growth is expected to decline moderately to 6.1pc in 2019 and 5.8pc in 2020, according the IMF’s newly-released World Economic Outlook. “This will reflect

China’s ongoing transition to a more sustainable growth model and the negative impact on ongoing trade tensions,” Rhee said.

In Japan, the economy is projected to grow at 0.9pc in 2019 and to moderate to 0.5pc in 2020. In India, the economy is expected to grow at 6.1pc in 2019, picking up to 7pc in 2020.

Despite this slowdown of growth, Asia “remains the most dynamic region” in the world, accounting for more than 70pc of the global growth this year, Rhee said.

“A main policy priority is to address the cause of policy uncertainty and restore the lines on the multilateral trade system,” Rhee said.

“Meanwhile, near term policies should support growth where necessary but also safeguard financial and fiscal stability.”

BEIJING: Beijing and Washington have made “substantial progress” towards a partial trade deal, China’s top trade negotiator said Saturday, in his first comments since talks with US President Donald Trump last week. Trump announced a partial deal after meetings in Washington with the Chinese trade delegation led by Liu He, which ended on October 11. It included promises to increase purchases of US farm products and protections for intellectual property — but lacked specific details. “China and the US have made substantial progress in many aspects, and laid an important foundation for a phase one agreement,” the Vice Premier said at a virtual reality conference in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, on Saturday. In his first public comments about the Washington talks, Liu said an important foundation for the signing of a phased deal had been worked out. China is “willing to work together with the US to address each other’s core concerns on the basis of equality and mutual respect,” Liu said, according to a report on Taoran notes, a social media account run by the official Economic Daily. The deal announced by Trump offered a temporary reprieve from tariffs planned for mid-October. It did not, however, roll back any of the stinging import duties already imposed up to now on hundreds of billions of dollars in trade between the economic powers. Neither did it address another round of import taxes planned for December.

“Stopping the escalation of the trade war benefits China, the US and the whole world. It’s what producers and consumers alike are hoping for,” Liu said. Trump last week said he hopes to sign the agreement with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Chile next month. AGENCIES

CMYK

13

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

Rest in peace, Bloom Bardolator Brontosaurus ABdullAH NiAzi

The author is a member of staff currently studying Literature at LUMS. He also writes and edits for The Dependent.

I

N the summer of 2018, a friend who was until then still majoring in English literature alongside me at the lahore University of Management Sciences wrote to Professor Harold Bloom asking for critique on a poem he had written.

It was a long shot. Professor Bloom was a giant, and we were college sophomores. The audacity of my friend to think an 88-year-old Sterling Professor at Yale, one of the most eminent, prolific and infamous critics of our times, would read the email of a second-year Pakistani literature student and critique his poem.

I laughed and told him he was absurd.

I wasn’t laughing when Harold Bloom responded. and not only did he respond, he responded quicker than many of the professors at our own university would.

My friend in his email had waxed and waned in praise of Professor Bloom. as strange as it is to hear for outsiders, and it is strange to admit as well, but Harold Bloom was a hero to us. a New York City Jew who was born to immigrant Yiddish speaking parents that somehow rose to become the man we turned to first and foremost in our attempts to understand any text. He was the most easily accessible, even if we rarely understood him, and he was perhaps the only one that had commented on every piece of literature we were confronted with in the course of our studies. He was nothing if not prolific.

To this day my friend refuses to show me what he wrote to Professor Bloom, perhaps embarrassed at what I imagine was his excessive praise. He was, however, nice enough to show me the responses he received.

It was not an elaborate response, in fact, it was quite blunt. You have a long way to go, Professor Bloom informed my friend. But before he said this, he made sure to say that he had read the poem. This in itself was a matter of pride, the great Harold Bloom had read my friend’s poem. I felt giddy at the thought, I cannot imagine how he must have felt.

But Professor Bloom went beyond his short but valued observation, and did the most quintessentially professor thing possible – he attached a vast list of recommended readings on the study of poetry. Professor Bloom often said that they would have to carry him out of his last class in a body bag. He was true to his love for teaching, having taken his last class only three days before his passing on Monday. What his simple response showed us was that his love for teaching extended beyond the sanctity of the classroom he held so dear. It also displayed an unusual

kindness one no longer expects of strangers.

I do not believe my friend has completed reading all the recommended books even now, but emboldened, he emailed Professor Bloom again, earlier this year in July. Since last year, my friend had changed his major at lUMS from English literature to History. The frustrations of a barrage of post-colonial theory, the exodus of faculty and the evolution of English literature into Comparative literature left those of us enamoured with the aesthetic rather than the theory disappointed and embittered. He left English as his official discipline while I stayed, perhaps unwisely.

Professor Bloom had long been an advocate of the aesthetic power of literature, and has in his death been vociferously characterised as the “last defender of the Western Canon.” one of his

contentions was that English would soon be overrun by comparative literature, and accorded to the same stature as Greek and latin or the classics – relegated to being taught by a few dying men at a few universities.

“What are now called ‘departments of English’ will be renamed departments of ‘Cultural Studies,’” he wrote in his most famous work ‘The Western Canon,’ “where Batman comics, Mormon theme parks, television, movies and rock will replace Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Wallace Stevens.”

Facing such a dilemma, my now historian friend whose love for literature and poetry persists, despite the disappointment, asked Professor Bloom to recommend books on William Blake. Within a few hours, he had received his response.

“Start with the edition edited by Erdman, with commentary by me. It is too soon to judge your poetry” he wrote back. always outrageous, Harold Bloom once wrote “There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare.” He was outrageous in his writing, and strong in his beliefs. Much was said and written about him, much that us who consider him a hero might have had trouble reconciling when it first came out. What we can know for sure was that this kindly old man shared a small bit of himself and his years of learning with a literature lover emailing him from lahore. and that is a kindness not easily forgotten.

My friend, a more ardent lover of Bloom and Shakespeare than myself, captioned his social media tribute to the late Professor saying “rest in Peace, Bloom Bardolator Brontosaurus.

May you meet Shakespeare, your God, in the heavens!” May he indeed. g

Books (AN APPRAIsAL)

Harold Bloom, a prolific giant and perhaps the last of a kind The New York Times

H

By Dwight garner

arold Bloom, the imperious and convivial scholar and literary critic, the last colossus in terms of his ardour and prodigious memory, a self-described “tired, sad, humane old creature,” and a man who was increasingly isolated in his opinions about what the great books are and why they matter, was nothing if not prolific.

Bloom, who died on Monday at 89, published more than 40 books.

Sometimes two squeezed through one’s door at the same instant. a story used to go around about him back in the 1990s. a graduate student had telephoned him at home. Bloom’s wife answered and said, “I’m sorry, he’s writing a book.” The student replied: “That’s all right. I’ll wait.”

Bloom was a powerful synthesizer of texts and ideas, notably in books like “The anxiety of Influence” (1973), “The Western Canon” (1994) and “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human” (1998).

More saliently, perhaps, he was a kind of prophet of sublimity.

It was impossible to read deeply in Bloom without him flooring you with feeling. “Walt Whitman,” he wrote, “overwhelms me, possesses me, as only a few others — dante, Shakespeare, Milton — consistently flood my entire being.” In today’s world, there is competition to be more concerned than anyone else. In Bloom’s, there was competition to be the most exactingly delighted. There were more arrows in him, aesthetically, than in St. Sebastian.

He read like a man picking up crumbs with a moistened index finger. He often considered loneliness in literature. You felt he was attracted to loneliness as a theme for the same reasons that Ishmael, in

Harold Bloom at his New York City apartment in 2011. The critic and scholar died Monday at 89.

“Moby-dick,” liked to join funeral processions. It made him feel more open, invigorated and alive.

Bloom’s most important book, “The anxiety of Influence,” remains a touchstone. He wrote it quickly, after a personal crisis. He investigated the way poets and other writers struggle to create without being smothered by the work of those who made them want to write in the first place.

“The anxiety of Influence” is among those fortunate books in which thesis is embedded in title. The book’s ideas may be complicated and heavy, but there’s a simple handle with which to pick them up.

The title of another of his major books, “The Western Canon,” is also a kind of planted flag. That book examined the work of 26 writers, largely but not entirely male and white — the list included Jane austen, Emily dickinson, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jorge luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Fernando Pessoa — whom Bloom saw as particularly sublime, and pivotal to our understanding of what it means to be sentient.

It was also an attack, from a

crenelated embankment, on what he called the “School of resentment” — critics and scholars he had previously described, in a 1991 Paris review interview, as “displaced social workers” and “a rabblement of lemmings.” “literature is not an instrument of social change or an instrument of social reform,” he said in that same interview. “It is more a mode of human sensations and impressions, which do not reduce very well to societal rules or forms.”

The sound you heard on Monday, at word of Bloom’s death, was the cheering of some of his enemies. To dabble in the canon wars from anywhere near the right of centre is to see oneself fired from that canon.

Bloom could be painfully oblivious to the ways in which shifting and enlarging of the canon was not merely necessary but joy-filled work. one reduces him to a caricature at one’s peril, however. To read him closely, to get down into the grass with him, is rarely to find a padlocked mind.

He saw how the women in Saul Bellow’s work were, to use his word, absurdities. In a later interview with the writer amy Bloom (no relation),

he noted how much great american poetry came from gay or bisexual writers. an uncompromising highbrow, Bloom sought to hoist his readers up to the level of what he saw as the greatest books.

He was born in New York City, where he grew up speaking Yiddish in an orthodox Jewish household.

His father was a garment worker from odessa. He lost many relatives in the Holocaust. Bloom’s life was a bildungsroman with the bildung done quite early; he seems to have emerged from the womb a capacious reader, starting with The Bible and Hart Crane.

His abiding interest in religious thought led him to write “The Book of J” (1990), in which he asserted — without a great deal of evidence — that the first author of the Hebrew Bible was a learned woman in King Solomon’s court. He would later say, “Emerson is God,” and remark to an interviewer: “You are confusing Shakespeare with God. I don’t see why one shouldn’t, as it were.”

I met Bloom (he had hands like big damp croissants), but never studied with him. For a while he was, at the same time, the Sterling Professor of the

Harold Bloom’s home library, photographed in June.

Humanities at Yale and Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard.

To get a flavour of his teaching, turn to larissa MacFarquhar’s magnificent 2002 profile in The New Yorker.

“When Bloom teaches, he uncoils and grows even larger,” MacFarquhar wrote. “He seems to his students not quite in control of himself: He gets carried away, he throws himself around, he slips his hand inside his shirt and grasps his chest, he quivers with feeling. He is a superb spectacle.

He worships, he adores, he falls at a poet’s feet, but not deferentially — intimately. He is rabbinical, prophetic; but he is also, in his bigness and his emotion, like a giant mother. He is disarmingly feminine: His voice, emerging out of the roomy torso, is a gentle tenor. a number of his female students find the combination of these qualities overwhelmingly, destructively, seductive.”

That last line is a reminder, perhaps, that in 2004 the writer Naomi Wolf accused Bloom of sexual “encroachment” by touching her thigh when she was a student at Yale two decades earlier. It is a charge he has denied, but many more hints emerged over the years of affairs with students.

Bloom wrote too much. By the end, he was rehearsing the same material, pressing “shuffle” on the same orotund playlists, and his work lost much of its consecrating power.

Many critics turned against him. He said, memorably: “as someone sympathetic once said of my reviews, ‘It’s an invectorium.’”

“Maybe one writes to ward off death,” he commented. “I’m not sure.

But I think in some sense that’s what poets do. They write their poems to ward off dying.” For Bloom, the worst part about death was surely that he could not take a book with him. g Follow Dwight Garner on Twitter: @DwightGarner.

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

14 SPORTS

Murray IntO fIrst sEMI-fInal sInCE 2017 rOland GarrOs pariS

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Agencies

ORMER world number one Andy Murray reached his first semi-final since the 2017 French Open with a battling three-set win over Romania's Marius Copil in Antwerp on Friday.

The 32-year-old British star, steadily rebuilding his career after major hip surgery earlier this year, defeated qualifier Copil 6-3, 6-7 (7/9), 6-4.

"I feel OK, it's more how you pull up the following day," said Murray, who is two wins away from a first title since Dubai in March 2017.

"The good thing about the indoor matches is that the points are fairly short so it doesn't take as much out of you as on some of the slower courts outside."

Murray, now ranked a lowly 243 in the world, had the chance to wrap up the quarter-final when he had a match point in the second set

tiebreak.

He eventually sealed victory after more than two and a half hours on court with an ace for his third win in three meetings against the 92ndranked Copil.

Murray goes on to face France's world number 70 Ugo Humbert who

put out Argentine fifth seed Guido Pella 5-7, 6-4, 6-4.

Italian teenager Jannik Sinner became the youngest ATP semi-finalist in five years when he defeated Frances Tiafoe of the United States 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.

Sinner, 18, is the youngest to

make the last four on tour since 17year-old Borna Coric at Basel in 2014.

"I think I played good today once more. It was not easy in the end. I was shaking a little bit," said Sinner, the world number 119.

The teenager fired 10 aces past the 53rd-ranked Tiafoe, saving four of five break points as he backed up his defeat of French top seed Gael Monfils in the second round.

Sinner, who was ranked 778 this time last year, can make the world top 100 next week.

However, he faces a daunting semi-final against three-time major winner Stan Wawrinka after the former world number three got past fellow 34-year-old Gilles Simon of France 6-3, 6-7 (6/8), 6-2 in his quarter-final.

Sinner, who lost to Wawrinka at the US Open this year, will become the youngest ATP finalist since Kei Nishikori at Delray Beach in 2008 if he downs the experienced Swiss on Saturday.

Kabbadi Match to feature at opening of Kartarpur Corridor Lahore Online

Islamabad Open Polo to begin from Monday ISLAMABAD: The 8-goal Islamabad Open Polo Tournament would be held here at the Islamabad Polo Ground from October 21 to 27. Addressing a joint press conference here at Saddle Room of the Islamabad Club on Saturday, convener polo Shaukat Ali Malik, Secretary Islamabad Club Shehryar Mirza and members Hashim Asad and Asfandyar Khan said four foreign players would also participate in the four chukkas tournament.

"Four teams would be featuring in the tournament and each team would include one foreign player," they said. The told the teams featuring in the tournament included Asean BN, President Bodyguard, S&R and Kalabagh HKM. The players include Eulocio (Argentina), Hissam Ali haider (Pakistan), Antonino (Argentina), Ahmed Ali Tiwana (Pakistan), Hamza Mowaz (Pakistan), Haider Asad, Asfandyar Khan and S M Turab Rizvi, they said.

They said there were 270 registered players in Pakistan and 14 polo clubs. The Islamabad Open Tournament would be the first of its kind to be held here, they said abd addd the final of the tournament would be held on October 27. APP

Pakistan Kabaddi Federation(PKF) will organise a Kabbadi match on the occasion of opening of Kartarpur corridor as the sports is much liked by Pakistani nation as well as Sikh community .This was decided in the annual meeting of the federation , which was held under chairmanship of President Chaudhry Shafay Hussain here on Saturday.

During the meeting annual performance report of PKF was present and approval was accorded to the next to be held games and events.

The meeting was attended by representatives of all the four provinces as well as of Pakistan Army, Air Force, Navy, WAPDA, Railway and Higher education Commission.

President Kabaddi Federation Chaudhry Shafay Hussain said that kabaddi is a local game, it should be promoted to the maximum extent, so-called fake body is spoiling the players against which legal proceedings are being initiated and soon it will be banned by the government.

Chaudhry Shafay Hussain said that Pakistani and Sikh communities greatly like kabaddi for this strategy is being evolved for holding next Kabaddi World Cup

in Pakistan.

He said that Pakistan is also promoting game of kabaddi in entire Europe besides Asia.

The meeting approved new annual budget, holding of World Junior Kabaddi Tournament and South Asian Sports Team whereas complete report about 26 events held under auspices of the Federation was also presented.

Holding of international kabaddi match after inauguration of Kartarpur Corridor also came under discussion in the meeting and in this regard 7-members committee was approved in which two women will also be included while line of action about the olympic games was formulated.

PCB to retain Sarfaraz’s contract despite demotion SportS deSk Recently removed captain Sarfaraz Ahmed's central contract will not be downgraded, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) clarified on Saturday.

Sarfaraz was sacked from captaincy on Friday, which gave berth to concerns that his central contract could also see be moved lower to the current Category A he enjoys.

However, the PCB moved to dismiss those concerns today, saying that demotion of Sarfaraz's central contract is not on the agenda.

"Sarfaraz Ahmed will continue to remain in Category A," a PCB spokesperson said.

It is pertinent to mention here that Sarfaraz, Yasir Shah and Babar Azam are the three players currently in Category A of PCB's centrally con-

tracted players.

One player who has been demoted, however, is Wahab Riaz. The veteran pacer has been moved from Category B to C as he has decided to keep himself available for limited-overs cricket only.

Meanwhile, the ex-captain’s fans in Karachi have announced a protest against the Pakistan Cricket Board's (PCB) decision to remove Sarfaraz Ahmed from T20I captaincy, and to express solidarity with the wicketkeeper-batsman.

A Facebook page named “Justice for Sarfaraz” has been created with the purpose of inviting people to gather outside the sacked skipper's residence in Buffer Zone area on Sunday.

“We just want to express solidarity with Sarfaraz Ahmed,” said Zain Mustafa, who created the Facebook page.

Bulgaria's Balakov steps down days after England humiliation Sofia Agencies

Bulgaria coach Krasimir Balakov stepped down from his role on Friday, four days after home fans subjected England’s black players with racist abuse during a Euro 2020 qualifier in Sofia. The 53-year-old was in charge of the team in the 6-0 defeat by England on Monday when some of the supporters taunted the visitors with Nazi salutes and monkey chants, prompting match officials to halt the game twice. The Bulgarian Football Union (BFU), however, said in a statement that Balakov had resigned due to the team's recent run of unsatisfactory performances and that the executive committee had accepted it. "My decision to step down has nothing to do with Prime Minister (Boyko) Borissov asking for my resignation the day after the game against England. My patience is over," Balakov was quoted as saying by Sky Sports. "We did what we had to do regarding the security during the game against England. Bulgaria is not a racist country."

Balakov had said after the game he had not heard any racist abuse from the stands but apologised to the England team for the fans' behaviour in an email to reporters late on Tuesday. BFU president Borislav Mihaylov has also resigned and police in the country have made 12 arrests so far.

Champion Marquez secures his first pole at Japan MotoGP MoteGi Agencies

MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez will eye his tenth win of the season after snatching pole position Saturday in Japan. The Honda rider clocked 1min 45.763sec for his first pole start in the premier class at Twin Ring Motegi, where he won in 2016 and last year.

He will be joined in the front row by Petronas Yamaha SRT riders Franco Morbidelli and hot rookie Fabio Quartararo, who came in 0.132sec and 0.181sec later.

Marquez, who finished third in Friday practice, has already secured his sixth season win in seven years after triumphing in Thailand two weeks ago. He also finished second in five of the season´s six other races, missing the podium only once in the United States after crashing out while leading the race. But Quartararo is nipping at the Spaniard´s heels after two narrow defeats to the world champion in recent races, with victory only decided on the closing laps. Riders in Motegi had to navigate hostile conditions after heavy rains into the afternoon, leaving the track damp with thick cloud cover for the qualifying sessions. Sunny weather is expected for Sunday´s race day on the Japanese circuit.

Starting from the second row will be Maverick Vinales of Monster Energy Yamaha, Cal Crutchlow of LCR Honda and Jack Miller of Pramac Racing. They are followed by Ducati´s Andrea Dovizioso, who could seal second place in this year´s championship with Sunday´s race, while Valentino Rossi starts from the fourth row.

Everton beat West Ham to ease pressure on Marco Silva London Agencies

Everton climbed out of the Premier League relegation zone on Saturday with a well-deserved 2-0 victory against West Ham that eased the pressure on Marco Silva.

The Portuguese boss described the match at Goodison Park as a "must-win" game following four straight league defeats and a goal from Brazil forward Bernard in the 17th minute set his side on their way.

Everton dominated the match and had multiple chances to extend their lead but were forced to wait until injury time to score their second, through late substitute Gylfi Sigurdsson.

Victory in Saturday's early kick-off lifted Everton to the relative safety of 12th in the table, one place above struggling Manchester United, ahead of the

later fixtures.

"It was a fantastic performance," Sigurdsson told BT Sport. "We had a lot of chances, especially in the second half.

You never know when it's 1-0 -- you always want to get more.

"They are dangerous going forward and their goalkeeper made some spectacular saves. I was pleased to come on and give us a bit of comfort. There was a real purpose to our game today."

Bernard made the breakthrough after latching onto a fine ball from Theo Walcott. The Brazilian declined to shoot first time as Arthur Masuaku closed him down but he cleverly cut back and wrongfooted the defender before sliding the ball under Roberto.

Richarlison went close to a second from an Alex Iwobi pass but his low shot came back off a post and Iwobi then shot at Roberto from distance.

A disappointing West Ham side made it to the break trailing by just a single goal but Everton were quickly on top again in the second half.

Richarlison had the ball in the net just after the re-start following a neat buildup but his well-taken effort was ruled out for off-side.

Pablo Fornals had a golden chance to equalise minutes later but he could only steer it wide of the left post, falling to his knees in disappointment.

Yerry Mina twice headed too close to Roberto from corners and the Toffees went close again as Walcott rattled the crossbar with a ferocious half-volley before Iwobi wasted another chance, shooting straight at Roberto when clean through.

Despite being outplayed, West Ham were still in the game and earned a couple of late chances against an increasingly edgy Everton.

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Sunday, 20 October, 2019

SPORTS 15

My tarGEt Is tO IMPrOvE PakIstan’s tEst rankInG: azhar alI Lahore

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APP

AKISTAN’s newly appointed Test captain Azhar Ali said on Friday that his specific mandate was to improve the team’s international ranking and blend it into a winning combination by displaying fearless cricket.

“There are a lot of challenges our team is facing at the moment and my main target is to improve the team’s Test ranking which is number seven at the moment,” he said during a press conference.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Friday removed Sarfaraz Ahmed as Test and T20I captain and appointed Ali and Babar Azam as captains.

Speaking about his appointment, Ali said it was a big honour for him to be handed this responsibility by the PCB. “The board has reposed confidence in me by assigning me the job of Test team captain and I will take every measure to lift the team’s performance and perform to a higher level to be an inspiration for the fellow colleagues,” the batsman said.

“The coming tour of Australia in which we will be playing two Test matches will have a lot of challenges and it is going to be the first Test of my captaincy and I look forward to this series with confidence and hope that we will be able to play good quality cricket in Australia," said Ali. He continued, “I had prepared myself mentally to accept captaincy as I consulted my seniors in the game and my family members and then decided to accept this great opportunity.”

Ali said as a captain he will strive to make Pakistan a Test team who would have the potential of serving the longest format of the game for quite a long time.

Praising the leadership of the outgoing captain, Sarfaraz, Ali paid rich tributes to the former captain and said he did a lot to enhance the team’s performance and image in Test cricket.

He also extended good wishes and said Sarfaraz was a fighter player having the ability to make a comeback in the team.

Responding to a question, the 34-year-old said he enjoys greater coordination with the team’s

shakib al hasan slams mandatory-legspinners rule dhaka Agencies

head coach and chief selector Misbah-ul-Haq with whom he had played a lot of cricket in the past.

“I will enjoy working with Misbah while taking benefit from his status and expertise in cricket," he said.

He called upon the team members to play fearless cricket, setting aside pressure and display best of their abilities during the Test series in Australia.

Terming the ICC Test Championship a tough event, the opening batsman said the teams participating in it were better and superior in ranking as compared to Pakistan and urged his players to get united to showcase collective efforts for achieving desired results.

“I have not been appointed captain for a short term as leading the team for a shorter time puts the leader under pressure and PCB Chairman Ehsan Mani has assured me of his full backing and support saying that it is not a short-term assignment for me," he said.

“I don’t know about the time period of my captaincy, what I know that I have enough time to improve my team and my performance as well to

accomplish the task assigned to me," Ali added.

Responding to another question, Ali made it clear that he would be having a say in the final team selection. “Our track record in Australia is not good; we will be missing pacer Mohammad Amir and all-rounder Wahab Riaz, but at the same time it would be a new opportunity for us to prove ourselves in Australia and to get benefit from the talent of new and young players of the team," he said.

Ali said he would bat at whatever number the team needed him too.

He added he would go all out for transferring his experience of Test cricket to the young players in order to infuse confidence in them and to be a role model by putting up a good performance.

“By doing good for the team is the best way that your legacy should also be remembered,” he said adding “Test cricket is not easy but I have faith in the young talent in the ranks and I fully need their support for the team’s good performance in Australia."

Ali added that they would be finalising the squad for the Australia tour in the next two days.

Hasan Ali to miss Aus tour as back injury persists MonitorinG report Injured fast bowler Hasan Ali will need another three weeks to rid himself of the back pain that has plagued him since the off season, according to sources close to the matter.

The 25-year-old pacer picked up the injury prior to the pre-season training camp and has been sidelined ever since, although he had been training under bowling coach Waqar

Younis in limited capacity.

He was picked in the Central Punjab team for the domestic season and was hoping to represent the side in the final two matches of the ongoing National T20 Cup. However, he has been unable to shake off the back pain, with his doctor now issuing a revised time frame of three weeks.

As a result, Hasan’s chances of being picked for the tour of Australia next month are slim to none.

In a stinging retort to the BCB's new rule that legspinners must bowl four overs in every innings of the Bangladesh Premier League, Shakib Al Hasan has said that the T20 league cannot be expected to "make" players. He also drew attention to the poor pay structure and training facilities in the country's domestic set-up. Of late the BCB has been stressing on the importance of legspin, so much so that it even fired two National Cricket League (NCL) coaches last week for not selecting legspinners in their respective first-class teams. "I think that legspinners should bowl a lot of overs in first-class cricket to gain confidence and consistency," Shakib told the Bengali daily Samakal. "The BPL is an international-standard competitive tournament where you will face scenarios that you are likely to face in international cricket. You share the dressing room with overseas cricketers. It is not the place to make a player. "For so many years we couldn't select a legspinner for the senior team, but suddenly we made plans to include seven legspinners in the BPL. This decision does come as a bit of a surprise, but I would still state that the board has taken a decision that it thinks is good." ESPNcricinfo understands that the order about including a the legspinner - and a 140kph quick bowler - in BPL XIs had come from the Bangladesh team management. At the time of announcing the rule, Bangladesh Cricket Board director Mahbubul Anam had said: "BCB wants this BPL to be about improving Bangladesh's cricketers in T20s, so we want to make sure that our batsmen and bowlers get enough opportunities [against quicks and legspinners]." Shakib also criticised the lack of increments in the salary of domestic cricketers, calling for better communication between players and "decision-makers". He also expressed dissatisfaction about the fact that the BPL is no longer a franchise-run event, which means player payments are expected to be lower than before. The cash-rich Dhaka Premier League (DPL), which for four decades had operated with players transferred from club to club in an open market, also now has heavy caps and a draft in place to help clubs cut player payments. "[First-class match fees] is very unacceptable," Shakib said. "It is a very small amount for a cricketer to maintain the minimum standard of living in Bangladesh. Things are getting costlier.

Government officers get increments every year, but we see that it is same for us every time. It even gets reduced. BPL and DPL are big examples of this. "I always get a feeling that cricketers in our country are being suppressed. This is not right. Everyone should have equal opportunity. A player should be left to earn what he feels he deserves. If the team doesn't want to take the player at that payment, the player will deal with it.

Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane run South Africa ragged ranchi

for India against South Africa with Ajinkya Rahane, who scored his fastest half-century at home. Their partnerships It started so promisingly even though stands at 185, with the promise of much South Africa lost their tenth straight toss more on the second day.

Their dominance was built on in the subcontinent. New coin Rohit's patient start, as he tosser Temba Bavuma called STUMPS weathered the early Rabada wrong, and South Africa, storm and then cashed in with five changes, had to INDIA 224 FOR 3 against spin, Dane Piedt bowl first, again. But for (ROHIT 117*, RAHANE in particular. He scored a while, the lost spark 29 off the 21 balls he was back under cloudy 83*, RABADA 2-54, faced from the offspinskies. Kagiso Rabada's NORTJE 1-50) V ner, including a big hit for new-ball spell brought six over long-off to bring two wickets, Lungi Ngidi SOUTH AFRICA up his third century of the sekept the pressure on and Anries and sixth overall. In total, rich Nortje claimed a dream Rohit has so far hit 11 sixes off Piedt maiden scalp in Virat Kohli. Then, they ran in to Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya in this series, the most for any batsman Rahane, and by the time bad light brought against a single bowler in a series.

Piedt was not used until after the play to an early end in Ranchi, it was an lunch break, with captain Faf du Plessis advantage India again.

Rohit broke records, including the relying on long first spells from his most sixes hit by a batsman in a Test se- quicks to try and make early inroads. The ries (17) and the most struck this year. plan worked. Rabada, who adjusted his This is remarkable considering he has length from mostly short of a good length only played four Test innings, four fewer to good length, asked the toughest questhan nearest rival Ben Stokes. He also tions. With some swing on offer and a shared in the highest fourth-wicket stand hungry slip cordon waiting, Rabada Agencies

forced India's openers to play and toyed with them by beating the bat several times.

Mayank Agarwal prodded at a few and was then drawn forward by a delivery that swung away as he nicked to Dean Elgar, who took a low catch at third slip.

Two overs later, Rabada had Cheteshwar Pujara playing outside the line of an inducker that hit him on the back pad.

CMYK

South Africa reviewed and Pujara was out lbw for a duck. Rabada's opening spell of seven overs brought him returns of 2 for 15.

At the other end Nortje tricked Virat Kohli with two deliveries that nipped away, the second one in particular inducing a loose drive outside off. Then he brought one back in and hit Kohli's front pad as he played for the one that holds its

line, only to be given out immediately.

Kohli reviewed but it came back as umpire's call. South Africa were all over India, who were 39 for 3.

The only sight of spin in the morning session came when debutant George Linde was given the penultimate over, and things could've panned out so differently if the chance he created with his third ball had stuck. Rohit, on 28, worked one to short leg where Zubayr Hamza, crouching low, put it down on the move.

The rest, as they say....

Rohit took his time, but opened up after lunch. He latched on to the first hint of a short ball from Linde, but continued to give Rabada the respect he deserved, as he tested him with his variations, including the leg-cutter. While this played out, Rahane took on Rabada and flicked him disdainfully every time he erred in line - and there were plenty of occasions.

His second spell of four overs went for 30 and the momentum shifted India's way.

Rohit's fifty came up off 86 balls, but he used 55 of them to get his first 23 runs.

The tempo of innings changed dramatically and it took him just 31 balls to score the next 29.

Sunday, 20 October, 2019

NEWS

Turkey, kurds Trade accusaTions even as syria Truce Takes hold DAMASCuS

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agencieS

URKISH and Kurdish leaders accused each other of violating a US-brokered truce in northeastern Syria even as it appeared to be taking hold on its second day Saturday. The deal announced late Thursday is intended to halt a Turkish-led offensive against Kurdish forces launched on October 9, on condition they pull out of a “safe zone” on the Syrian side of the border.

The offensive has killed dozens of civilians, mainly on the Kurdish side, and prompted hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in the latest humanitarian crisis of Syria’s eight-year civil war.

On Saturday, Turkey accused Kurdish forces of violating the truce.

“The Turkish armed forces fully abide by the agreement” reached on Thursday with the United States, the defence ministry said in a statement. “Despite this, terrorists… carried out a total of 14 attacks in the last 36 hours,” it said, using its usual term for Kurdish fighters.

The ministry said 12 of the attacks came in the battleground border town of Ras al-Ain, one in Tal Abyad and another in the Tal Tamr area.

Heavy weapons fell silent in Ras alAin after sporadic clashes on Friday evening, an AFP correspondent reported.

Turkish troops and its Syrian rebel proxies seized part of the town on Thursday, hitting a hospital.

Turkey wants to push Kurdish fighters away from its southern border by establish-

ing a 30 kilometre (20 mile) deep “safe zone” on the Syrian side of the frontier.

A Britain-based war monitor said the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had yet to start pulling back on Saturday. “The SDF have not withdrawn until now from any point,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. ‘evacuate the wounDeD’: SDF commander Redur Khalil said deadly bombardments by Turkey’s forces on Friday were a major breach of the truce and called on Washington to ensure Ankara honoured its side of the deal.

On Friday, Turkish air strikes and mortar fire by allied Syrian fighters killed 14 civilians in and around the village of Bab al-Kheir, the Observatory said.

“The Turkish side is not committing to

the ceasefire and is not allowing the opening of a security corridor to evacuate the wounded and besieged civilians from Ras al-Ain,” Khalil told AFP. “The US side bears responsibility for the non-compliance as it is the guarantor and mediator of the ceasefire.” The Observatory said at least 32 wounded people in Ras al-Ain, mostly fighters, were in need of immediate treatment Saturday but an evacuation convoy could not reach them.

Six SDF fighters had died of their wounds during the morning, the monitor added. The Turkish military and its Syrian proxies — mostly Arab and Turkmen former rebels used as a ground force — have so far seized around 120 kilometres (70 miles) of territory along the SyrianTurkish border.

The defence minister sought to remind everyone that the Panama scandal had also unfolded and the PTI had “rightly demanded an inquiry into the matter but no one listened”. “Right after we launched our movement, the very next day the Supreme Court gave its verdict in the case and we accepted it and put an end to our movement,” said Khattak.

He further pointed out that despite the Panama scandal, the PTI “held talks (with the government) and discussions continued

ISLAMABAD Staff RepoRt

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said on Saturday that former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh has accepted Pakistan’s invitation to attend the Kartarpur Corridor’s opening event scheduled for November this year.

The foreign minister was addressing reporters, where he said that the opening ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor will be held as per

agencieS

and when a commission was formed, we accepted its decision”.

Khattak said that on the other hand, the opposition had never once approached the government in the Assembly or otherwise and presented its demands. He called on Maulana (Fazlur Rehman) sahib to give the government’s offer some thought. “He should think about Pakistan. If his agenda is Pakistan, it he loves his homeland and has love for Kashmiris, he will have to sit down and talk with us.”

The defence minister said that if the agenda is to create anarchy and to let Pak-

Afghans search for bodies after at least 69 killed in mosque explosions KABuL

istan slip further (into a downward economic spiral), then his choice to continue (with the march) will reflect the same.

He said that the seven-member negotiation committee formed by the government — which comprises National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, Senate Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani, Asad Umar, Shafqat Mehmood, Noorul Haq Qadri, and Punjab Assembly Speaker Pervez Elahi — has the composition it does “because the government is taking the matter very seriously and wishes for the same to be communicated”.

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Police and local people searched on Saturday for more bodies in the rubble of a mosque in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province after bomb blasts in which at least 69 people were killed during Friday prayers. The explosives were placed inside the mosque in Jawdara area of Haska Mena district. Sohrab Qaderi, a member of Nangarhar’s provincial council, said the mosque, with capacity of more than 150 worshippers at a time, was full of people when the bombs exploded. “Bodies of 69 people, including children and elders, have been handed to their relatives,” Qaderi said, adding that more bodies could be lying under the rubble. On Friday, local officials had reported the number of dead at 62 and around 50 wounded. No group has claimed responsibility but the government accused Taliban insurgents, who are fighting to reimpose strict Sharia law after they were ousted from power in 2001 by US-led forces. Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Afghan Taliban, denied the group was responsible. In a tweet, he said that witnesses to the attack said it was a mortar attack by government forces.

One of the wounded, Gulabistan, 45, said the mosque was full when the explosion happened. “Mullah already started prayers and reciting verses of the Holy Quran, when a huge boom happened, then all around me it got dark, the only thing I remember is females’ voices and then I found myself in the hospital,” Gulabistan said. He said he had been told his son was among the dead while his brother and two nephews had been wounded and were in hospital. A Reuters reporter saw 67 freshly excavated graves for the victims in Jawdara village.

In a major blow to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, UK lawmakers voted on Saturday to postpone a decision on whether to back his Brexit deal with the European Union, throwing a wrench into government plans to leave the bloc at the end of this month.

At a special session of Parliament intended to ratify the Brexit deal, lawmakers voted 322-306 to withhold their approval on the Brexit deal until legislation to implement it has been passed.

The vote aims to ensure that the UK can't crash out of the EU without a divorce deal on the scheduled Oct. 31 departure date. But it means Johnson he has to ask the EU to delay Britain's departure, since Parliament previously passed a law compelling him to do that if a Brexit divorce deal had not been passed by Saturday.The government still hopes it can pass the needed legislation by the end of the month so the UK can leave on time.

A defiant Johnson said after the vote that he was not “daunted or dismayed” by the result and would push ahead with plans to leave the EU. As lawmakers debated, tens of thousands of anti-Brexit demonstrators descended on London to march to Parliament Square, demanding a new referendum on whether Britain

should leave the EU or remain. Protesters, many wearing blue berets emblazoned with yellow stars symbolising the EU flag, poured out of subway trains and buses for the lastditch protest effort.

Bruce Nicole, a vicar from Camberley southwest of London, said the Brexit deal would harm Britain.

“I fervently believe that we should remain in the EU,” he said. “I am British but I am also European.”

In Parliament before the vote, Johnson implored legislators to ratify the deal he struck this week with the bloc's 27 other leaders.

He said members of the House of Commons should “come together as democrats to end this debilitating feud” over Brexit, which has bitterly divided the country since British voters narrowly chose in a 2016 vote to leave the EU. “Now is the time for this great House of Commons to come together... as I believe people at home are hoping and expecting,” Johnson told lawmakers.But he did not get the result he sought.

Trouble began when House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said he would first allow a vote on an amendment that puts the vote on the deal off until another day.

The amendment makes support for the deal conditional on the legislation to implement it being passed

by Parliament, something that could take several days or weeks.

Internet shutdown fuels Kashmir fake news battle in South Asia SrInAgAr

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the schedule. FM Qureshi said that there is a clear message for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “Stop us if you can.”

The foreign minister further said that even if the former Indian prime minister wants to attend the ceremony as a common man then he will still be warmly welcomed.

Qureshi further said that highquality arrangements have been done for Sikh pilgrims, adding that PM Imran will inaugurate the corridor on November 9.

UK lawmakers vote to delay final Brexit decision again LonDon

Govt urges Fazl not to march for Kashmir’s sake ContInueD froM pAge 01

Manmohan Singh confirms participation in Kartarpur event

A communications blackout in the powderkeg region of Indian-occupied Kashmir is fuelling a fake news war between internet users in India and Pakistan, as both sides unleash a deluge of disinformation to fill the vacuum and shape opinion. India cut access to occupied Kashmir’s internet and phone lines in August as it sought to contain the fallout of its decision to revoke the region’s autonomy.

While landlines and mobile phones have since been restored, internet remains cut and foreign journalists have been unable to enter.

In the absence of real news from occupied Kashmir, waves of false information have emerged online. “Both sides are stoking tensions, and both sides benefit from the information vacuum to fill the void with their own narratives and push them to domestic and international audiences,” said Jan Rydzak, who has researched related topics at Stanford University.

“Pakistan cannot afford to let (the Indian) government’s ‘business-as-usual’ narrative flood its citizens’ social media feeds; India cannot afford to let reports of mass incarceration and chaos flood theirs.” Disinformation has ranged from old photos from Gaza purportedly showing how India has turned Kashmir into a “living hell”, to old images of happy children falsely claiming all is well in “the new Kashmir”.

These have been identified by AFP‘s fact-

checking unit, which has reported on dozens of pieces of Kashmir-related disinformation from both sides since the crisis began.

From India, media outlets with millions of Twitter or Facebook followers have shared manipulated or out-of-context photos and videos to paint a rosy picture of life in the Kashmir Valley.

Eidul Azha was an early battlefront in the fake news war, occurring about a week after occupied Kashmir’s autonomy was revoked.

In the regional capital of Srinagar on that day, a curfew was in place, thousands of extra troops patrolled the streets and its main mosque was ordered shut. Online, however, images circulated widely alongside false claims they showed people praying at mosques in Srinagar.

‘Digital siege’: In Pakistan, meanwhile, old, unrelated videos have been viewed millions of times in misleading posts about occupied Kashmir shared by top politicians and journalists. In one instance, a 2016 video showing a huge crowd at a funeral was posted on Twitter by cabinet minister Ali Haider Zaidi, who claimed it showed millions of people rallying against the revoking of autonomy. Journalist Hamid Mir, with more than five million followers on Twitter, also shared a video he claimed showed the Indian army using civilians as human shields — but the footage was from 2018.

Mir deleted his tweet later after being called out on Twitter by fact-checkers. For Mumbaibased investigative journalist Rana Ayyub, the disinformation on Indian social media is part of

Published by Arif Nizami at Plot # 7, Al-Baber Centre, F/8 Markaz, Islamabad. Ph: 051-2204545. Email: newsroom@pakistantoday.com.pk

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a concerted effort by authorities to obscure a true picture of the situation in occupied Kashmir.

“The government is trying to counter this with misinformation showing misleading images to depict everything as normal,” she told AFP. Ayyub said Indian authorities went further in accusing international media outlets “of spreading fake news” when they report accurately on the situation. She referred to Indian authorities repeatedly denying there had been any major protests or violence in Srinagar, dismissing video reports by the BBC and other global news organisations as inaccurate. However, authorities eventually admitted there had been “widespread unrest” in the city.

In Pakistan, the disinformation is driven partly by practical constraints due to a misplaced desire to draw attention to the issue, according to Shahzad Ahmad, a digital rights activist at Islamabad-based NGO Bytes for All. “People are using old images and videos to highlight the plight of Kashmiris,” Ahmad told AFP, but added the strategy was backfiring.

“Fake news is not helping, rather it has clouded the actual human misery there.”

Rydzak, most recently a scholar at Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator, said there were no winners in the fake news war.

“We don’t know exactly how the circulation of information has changed as a result of this ‘digital siege’, but it has made the task of verifying and debunking rumours harder to fulfil and the overall situation harder to control,” he said.