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‘One who pays the piper calls the tunes’: On China in Balochistan

Have you ever thought when and why an investor needs to have armed back-up for it to continue to develop, yes that is what they say to develop, a mine a port or power-station etc. They need to do have armed security when they are doing it without the consent of the people and need…

ByMir Mohammad Ali Talpur

“Confounding the people”

A few days back Balochistan National Party (BNP-M) chief Sardar Akhtar Mengal threatened that legislators of his party will resign from assemblies if dumping of mutilated bodies of Baloch youth continues. The establishment must surely be quaking in its boots worried to death at the dire consequences of unprecedented turmoil in Balochistan if he in…

ByMir Mohammad Ali Talpur

Open Letter Demanding The Release of Baloch Missing Persons

On March18th, 2014 around 5:00pm in Quetta, Zahid Baloch chairperson of Baloch Student Organization– Azad (BSO-A), was abducted at gun point. Banuk Karima, vice chairperson of BSO-A, witnessed the abduction. She notes, 'Pakistan's secret agencies and security forces abducted Zahid Baloch, I along with three other members of BSO-A witnessed the abduction. We are deeply concerned about his safety…

Object Anxiety: Seher Shah Interviewed by Asif Akhtar

An encounter with Seher Shah's work bears an invocation to possibilities of re-enchantment in a disaffected world. Through the minutest detail of mark-making to the construction of expansive urbanscapes, Shah's work, in drawings, photographs, prints, and sculptural objects challenges preconceived notions of the spatial-visible and the temporal-historical facets of modern life. Lines burst into fractals, familiar…

POLITICS Uncategorized

“Quilts don’t warm hearts”: On the continued Repression of the Baloch

Last week the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif dispatched ten trucks loaded with quilts and shawls worth Rs9.2 million from Lahore for earthquake-stricken areas of Balochistan and talking to media he said that 30 thousand quilts and warm shawls costing Rs92.4 million as 90 more trucks laden with similar supplies would be sent to the…

ByMir Mohammad Ali Talpur

INTERVIEWS POLITICS

The Philosophy of Liberation: An Interview with Enrique Dussel (Part II)

MA: You speak of de- and re-structuring philosophy. Could you give another example of when you take existing canonical political philosophy and de-structure it? Could you give me a specific example of a thinker where you think this is necessary? ED: For example, for me, within political philosophy, ethics is the abstract foundation of all…

ByEnrique Dussel

INTERVIEWS POLITICS

Mohammad Hanif on the Media and Baloch Long March: An Interview with Asif Magsi

Below we present a transcript of an interview carried out by phone with writer and jounalist Mohammad Hanif. Asif Magsi: You have written extensively about the issue of missing persons in Balochistan, what made you write on this issue? Hanif: I haven’t written much, I think in total I have written about 08 to 10 pieces,…

ByMohammad Hanif

“Why do they fear books?”

"The Baloch should acquire what colonizers call subversive education because the education that colonizers provide can only pollute minds and blunt the will for liberty" On 13th January the Frontier Corps (FC) of Balochistan raided a book fair being held at Atta Shad Degree College Turbat dispersing students anxious to get books for reading and confiscating books…

ByMir Mohammad Ali Talpur

On Contemporary Pakistani Art – An Interview with Hammad Nasar

Below we present an interview with curator Hammad Nasar which featured in Naked Punch issue 10 . Hammad Nasar is a curator and writer, and co-founder of Green Cardamom, a not-for-profit organisation with a focus on art from South Asia and a commitment to exhibition-led enquiry. He was a Fellow of the UK’s Clore Leadership Programme and…

The State vs The People – Notes on the History of Pakistan

'Masses are known to have wrought miracles in history; nothing is beyond them'. No entity, group, nation or state whatever the basis for its creation or existence can have priority over the intrinsic rights of the people it integrates to itself for supposedly higher and noble aims. Imposition of languages, culture, ethics and values however…

ByMir Mohammad Ali Talpur