A few days back I.A. Rehman Sahib Director Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in his piece, “Of prisoners’ rights” (November 14th, Dawn) wrote about the recent Federal Judicial Academy seminar, attended by luminaries of judiciary here, on prisoners’ vulnerability. Among other problems faced by the prisoners the overcrowding of jails in Punjab and Sindh…
In 1999 when Pakistani military dictator Prevez Musharraf seized power, his first target was Balochistan. He declared a war against Baloch people across Balochistan by arresting prominent Baloch leaders and threatening others to hit them in way they would not have imagined. He threatened the Baloch that it was not the 70s forgetting the fact that…
The grueling historic long march by the relatives of Baloch missing persons and extra-judicially killed persons having started on October 27th finally reached Karachi on the 22nd of November. They spent 27 days on the road walking thirty kilometers or more daily without a break. They were no extreme sports practitioners who would easily survive the rigors…
Hugo Chavez came a long way from being a military officer attempting a coup to overthrow Venezuela’s corrupted politico-economic system to leading the “Bolivarian movement” which resulted in massive transformations and support from the Venezuelan people. His death means that his successor has huge shoes to fill, but all indications show that the political space…
The logic of “emergency” accompanying the policies of dealing with the crisis that we in Europe are currently experiencing is driving governments to adopt measures that bring them into opposition with the societies to and for which they are supposedly responsible. Austerity, neoliberal reforms, the dismantling of the welfare state, unemployment, the accumulation of wealth…
Historians of popular movements know that at some point institutional forms supercede continuous states of mobilization. The latter do not last for ever. Either new forms of routinized social reproduction are developed, or old ones are modified or return – sometimes in new and more vicious forms. Periods of heightened uncertainty surrounding major crises of…
Dr Allah Nazar is Balochistan’s most popular middle-class nationalist leader. Belonging from a modest family in Balochistan’s town of Mashkay, he started his political career from Baloch Students Organization (BSO). He founded his own faction of BSO in February 2002 that openly advocated an armed struggle for liberating Balochistan. In 2003, he went underground to…
He wondered if he did not want to take possession of what she knew, more by forgetting than by remembering. But forgetting… It was necessary that he, too, enter into forgetting.
Maurice Blanchot, Awaiting Oblivion
Some twenty years ago, I remember taking a night stroll with my favourite uncle, an anarchist ideologue. It was a…
The funeral of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela took place on International Women's Day – a fitting day of departure for "the president of the poor" who was loved by millions, especially by women, the poorest.
When Chávez was elected in 1998, the grassroots movement took a leap in power, and women in particular were empowered. Women…