Negotiating Human Rights

jay, I knew it was a question of time before you came shuffling in with your usual gibberish.

Mary Z #46

I have the deepest regard and respect for your emotions,thoughts and your decision to migrate.

I feel sad for you and ashamed that I am the part of a society that has been unjustful to you and has spread distrust in the hearts of your family.

I assure you that, Inshallah,when your daughters grow up and are faced with a decision to settle either in the States or Pakistan,they would proudly and confidently choose the later.

I am sure of that as I feel that there is still hope to come.

As someone rightly said ``this is the beginning of the end``...the end of opression, suppression, corruption and lawlessness in Pakistan.

and when the new sun rises you shall be proud of your adopted(chosen) homeland, the Land of Pure.

MORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

MORE POWER TO YOU!

cheers,

Taimur Altaf Malik.

cheraym #52
I tend to agree with you. An incidence of domestic violence cannot implicate or be used to implicate a whole nation. But misuse of high official positions or of the state machinery to falsely implicate others and escape wrongdoing does certainly malign a country and its system.

Simply publishing an article on events which have already taken place doesnot constitute an `insult to the nation`. Thats another reason why the authenticity of reportage is important(apart from preventing against defamation of individuals)

If the report is true, here are the people who one ought to be `strongly objected to`, not those who replied to this article.

``Members of the Kazi family who were actively involved in using all available means to harass the Zehris were: Professor Ahmed Kazi (father), former advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan; Mustafa Kemal Kazi (brother), recently appointed as Ambassador of Pakistan to the Netherlands; Iqbal Kazi (brother), former Secretary Industries in Sindh; Farooq Kazi (brother), an engineer with the Sindh government; Dr. Mohammad Ahmed Kazi, Deputy National Health Coordinator with Ministry of Health; Mustafa Jamal Kazi (brother), District Magistrate in Sindh; and the infamous Farooq Amin Qureshi (brother-in-law), the former Deputy Inspector General of Karachi Police who is now the key witness in the hijacking case against Pakistan`s former Prime Minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif. ``

And it would be only fair to hear the other side of the issue.

Sadhana

cheraym you write ``Ras, TAhmed should behave upto their images, while 19 year olds can behave the way they want!``

Actually, I dont think that is true. The great thing about discussion on the internet is that it is purely that, unmixed with things like personality, position in life, and so forth. In internet discussions, our words have to stand on their own merit. And we normally dont expect to ever meet the other people in real life, so there is no ``image`` to be concerned with.

To mary,

May be you have a lot of friends, good ones in pakistan, and finally you are heart broken by the pak collective, the legal system. Befor you leave, learn something about the pak collective, actions of pakistanis to those who have done something good, to their memories. I have reproduced a news item from Frontier times in the Rahil Khan thread. Read it , visit the place of remebrance before you leave pakistan, and that should relieve you of a great burden, it will put your contribution and love of pakistan in the correct context.

Wish you the best and please leve india out of the posts.

Jay.

Ras, I do not think any rational person will implicate any nation over a single incident. But one has to admit that these kind of incidents are all too common in our part of the world. One way of helping Basma is obvioulsy to circulate her story and draw attention of more people. At least you be aware of all the evils existing around you.

Hope you did not take any offence, see we have expectations from different contributors of Chowk. Ras, TAhmed should behave upto their images, while 19 year olds can behave the way they want!

Regards

cheraym

I would not like to repeat all that I wrote
in my last reply but ``Nameless``, Cheryam and
even little ``t`` seem to feel that some kind
of wrong had been done when I wrote:

``Is this a report on domestic violence which
should be condemned to its fullest or an attempt
to malign a country?``

I welcomed the exposure of wrongdoing here and
felt very sad that Mary had to leave a land that she had obviously developed an affection for.
But too much has been written in both this article
and the replies to implicate a whole nation. That
is something that I strongly object to.

I am a very firm believer in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I had it framed once
and even took it to Pakistan with me to share
with my father as the IDEAL of mankind. But
that was during the Zia Regime. And neither
the general or the bastion of human rights
AKA the United States were reading this declaration to the Pakistanis at then.

What we are seeing today in Pakistan is the product of being used to defend the free world.

Women are and have been LOSING ground since
the fall of ZAB in Pakistan. Their voice needs to
be heard and their rights restored.

Incidents like this one happen everywhere. It is good to know and act upon such information. The
best reply I have read so far was by someone who
asked how Basma could be helped.

Journalism is about reporting the news. Sometimes
due to the scarcity of all the facts news is
stretched. But you still cannot condemn a whole
country because of a shameful incident like this
one.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights still remains my ideal. The children of Kashmir and
the Basma`s of Iraq today are also waiting for
this ideal. Any suggestions?

Ras

re mary

your response is so moving. i wish there was something we could do, i could do. i wish you all the best in your court case and everything else.

regards.

re temporal

yes, sadly, you are right, t. the UDHR isnt worth more than the paper its written on.

its an elitist, western, discourse that has no teeth. mostly, its a foreign policy tool of the US...and, things are getting worse in many places for many people.

the point, though, is that we all know certain basic things like dignity, freedom from fear, freedom from want are what we are entitled to as human beings. we didnt need franklin roosevelt to ``declare`` it and the UN to tell us that now we have these rights. we have them, even if the UN doesnt affirm them. but, we have to fight for them, as mary did. and unfortunately, in many parts of the world, the price you pay for fighting is so high. maybe, too high?

Mary Zehri #46

I am proud and sad for you.

Proud that you acted. Sad at the price you had to pay for acting.

Don`t put too much faith in UDHR. It looks like things will get a lot worse, before they get any better.

rgds,

t

Re: Mary Z # 46

I second your concluding paragraph and I hope that one day, not in the too distant future, you will return to your adoptive homeland once again.

If it is any consolation, the fight is just begining and the road ahead is dark and forbidding, but we, as a nation, are fast approaching that fork in the road, where as Robert Frost once said, we will have to take the road least travled and that my friend, will God Willing, will make all the difference. The more I look at the dismay situation in this country, too numberous to be itemized, I remember what an American once said: ``I have seen the promised land; I may not reach it with you, but we as a people will one day reach the promise land``. His name was Martin Luther King, Jr.

I will be honest with you and admit that I have serious doubts about the journey ahead and the challenges and the obstacles, which will have to be confronted and mastered. Not only are the people, who will carry the banner of social and political justice in Pakistan, will be pitted against the orthodoxy of the state, but they will be fighting with the inflexibility of a dogmatic traditional mode of thinking, which does not welcome new ideas.

There are about 150 million people in Pakistan and out of this seething sea of a suffering humanity, there will emerge ray of hope and depending on your personal inclinations, we are heading, as a nation, into a world described by Charles Dickens as ``the best of the times and the worst of times`` and it not belittle the imagination an iota to realize, as a French friend once wryly remarked to me, that the present conditions in Pakistan are same as they were in France in 1789!

Out of the blood of the French Revolution came the Universial Declaration of the Rights of Man and out of the reign of terror came a republic and like that republic in 1789, Pakistan will one day slip the noose of its despotic monarchial forms of government and assume the belated personification of a republic. It will happen as surely as fire burns and water wets.

Mary, the conditions in Pakistan are awful and they are fast sliding into an even worse state, but I also think, that this decay is in many ways just the begining of the end and one day soon, we have our own Concord and Lexington to cherish!

As you slip the bounds of this country, as a fellow citizen of this poor, suffering and forsaken country, I wish you all the best and hope that one day you will be amongst friends once more and your present ordeal will be a just another bedtime story you will tell your grandchildren and mightly bored will they be!

Take care and cherish the memories!

Ciao!

Mary Zehri`s reponse here (#46) is the saddest

indictment of the state of pakistan - not

withstanding Ras`s aversions (may be that is the

after effects of the 1971 trauma he underwent

while in B`desh).

It is really sad that a person who had made

Pakistan her home for many years has been made to

run away from it.

At a different level her story is the same as

Basma`s. Basma ran from a wife beating * * * * * * *

(Bush`s expletive), Mary from a women degrading

society.

Whats the difference Ras?

Dear Saima:

This is Mary Zehri writing in response to the interactive discussion at your website. You must be some sort of amazing personality!!! How can you deal with all these emotional opinions coming from all different directions concerning the article about our case posted on Chowk by ``Chowk Contributor``.

Wow!!! I suppose that I am too close to the situation to be unbiased and removed enough from the situation to be objective about the article. But, I am impressed by the response that this story is getting.

I am at a certain stage in my life or mindset to know that this case is one of ``individuals versus individuals``. I do not quite understand the overall paranoia that seems to permeate through some letters published that posting this case on the web will somehow defame Islam or Pakistan and boost India politically.

I hope that the readers of Chowk will understand that I love Pakistan. Although I am a California born American of European descent, I have chosen to live in Pakistan for the last 16 years versus returning to the states. It is just the heartbreak that I feel with this incident with a few rogue public officials and the ineffective criminal justice system which has taken away the rose-colored glasses off of my eyes and made me want to embrace Pakistan with a sort of maternal pity and cry deep sobs for the majority of innocent people here that have gone through, are going through, and will go through suffering in a society that seemingly values to NOT talk about its problems and worry more about what the world thinks and how India will react.

My action oriented approach to problem solving that I was raised with led me to naively get involved into resolving a friend`s personal problems and come to Basma`s assistance each time she called me for help. Furthermore, it is culturally understood here in the Pak-Indian sub-continent, and certainly all over the world, that extending one`s hand out to help another, especially a helpless female, forgivable and understandable. I had no idea a few months ago that Ismail, Bootow and I would be in this sort of a dangerous situation that we are currently facing for simply coming to a friend`s desperate call for assistance. As a matter of fact, she is also my husband`s cousin. We were the only other family members she had here in Islamabad to call when her life was being threatened. Other family members are either living abroad or in other far away cities of Pakistan. Basma herself did not want anyone hurt ever in this situation...even her abusive husband. Somehow, she believed he would change! But, she knew well that the legal system would make matters nearly impossible to resolve. Yet, when the basic instinct to survive arose in her when her life was being threatened by her out-of-control husband, she called us.

Why us? Perhaps, because I was a foreigner. Well, Basma always said that others in the Pakistani society, due to cultural norms, would not take kindly to her need to run away from her husband`s violent behavior. It seems that some of the response that this article by ``Chowk Contributor`` is getting is from individuals who completely miss her ``catch-22`` position in the story. Neither Basma, Ismail nor myself really think that this domestic issue that happens in every country can be misconstrued into an international incident to defame one country or another. We are just simple human souls that are asking to be heard. I cannot tell you how lucky I feel that the American embassy came to assist us, otherwise only Allah knows what would have happened to my 3 daughters (after the incident, we sent our two older one`s to live with their grandparents in California), myself and Basma the night when the individual group of police officers (all male members when the Pakistani law is clear that a female police officer must be present if they are arresting a female) came to arrest me at 3:00 AM in the morning, but fled when I asked them through a screen window to wait until the American embassy representatives came. Why did they leave if not for skulking?

With the opening of the discussion of issues on Chowk this is a beginning in the right direction, I believe. We must all do a little something positive to assist the countries in which we reside or have any interest to change things if there is something that needs changing.

Writing alone will not give anyone full solace in our emotional reactions to move and respond in writing on this article in the Chowk. We must act to look at and change injustice and lack of integrity in our government institutions. People have to admit that social problems do exit universally. Each individual has a unique personal responsibility for the injustices inherent in their country`s political and judicial systems if gone unchecked.

This is the question that I pose to Chowk readers now. What actions can be taken to revolutionize countries, such as Pakistan or India, to find ways to ensure the basic UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS document ---so poignantly alluded to in the response by taimurmalik #13?

Well, I do my own social cleansing by beginning with my own home, then on a case by case basis for those relatives or friends who approach me for help. What other way is there? How can I help these cases of injustice alone without the assistance of the judicial and political system, especially when I face individuals with mindset that only worry about who is trying to sabotage who`s country or religion with what information? This paranoia only gets in the way of finding peaceful co-existence here for me in Pakistan.

My home was Pakistan and to leave this beautiful place because of a few atrocious public officials who misuse the legal system is one of the saddest moments of my life. I hope that Chowk readers know that I am leaving this country with my heart on my sleeve and will miss all of the wonderful friends that I have made here over the years. May Allah keep peace in Pakistan, give courage to her people to fight for justice, and turn the country into a livable place for all -- not just for the one`s residing in Islamabad!

Sincerely,

MZ

AVOIDING THE UNPLEASENT,

At last the teary eyed pakistanis have moved away from this thread, throwing aside the onion slices and the glycerine bottles. Take it easy, atrocities of this nature take place in your beloved country USA, which appear to set the standards for you. Story of `Hurricane` is only a tip of the iceberg, from Rodney King it is only a hop step and jump to the heavenly England of Bermingham Five. Pakistan is not all that bad.

What is deplorable is the failure of your schooling, only aspect relevant in the article is the psuedonym of the author. To pen something so ordinary, the author had to hide even in a transient medium like the chowk. It is the fear, the fear of death, that is the curse of pakistan, derived from the fatwas and jihad.

The other day a journalist based in pakistan stated here that there is no anti-blasphemy protest in pakistan because they will be killed. None of the allegedly educated on the chowk ever cared to put it so bluntly. And the response of another educated took the biscuit, `can we afford the fear of death to stop progress`.

It is the same on this thread, shed the teased out tears on the unfortunate, but deny the fear gripping the educated, the fatwafobia, the force behind the psuedonym.

In the thread on devolution, there was praise for the freedom of press in pakistan. No, there is self censorship, that is worse than overt censorship. Accepting fatwafobia in the promise land of USA is hard, shedding a few tears is a pleasent indulgence.

You are welcome Tahmed. I really, really hope we as people can remove the differences so that we have peace in sub-continent. See the myriads of problems like domestic violence, police brutality, corruption, poverty, religious bigotry.. etc are so much rampant in both the countries, it is useless to discuss who is marginally better than the other. On top of these we have to continuously drain our valuable resources for the border(I chose not to use the K word) problems!

Ras, I did not expect your comment on this article, specially when you are a journalist. You know better that this can not be a sporadic incident. When criminalization of institutions are done in a systematic way as you mentioned duly in an impoverished nation like ours, there is no justice for anybody. Who are you really ashamed of exposing the dirty laundry in Chowk? The Indians? We have our equal shares. Unless you recognize this as a problem, how are you going to solve it?

Regards

cheraym

cheraym: They say the best way to criticize is to ensure that the recipient leaves actually feeling good about himself. Your post #19 did that for me, and thanks for that. Maybe you and I should represent our respective countries and we will fix all our problems before lunch.

Best regards to you too.

re temporal #37

`` * * *Come on aakar, bashfulness? You mean you DID NOT read the article before jumping in?``

er, no. but i DID after reading saima`s post.

``what would your mentor M J Akbar would do? After a few years under the belt any half decent editor can SMELL a good story, distinguish between the wheat and the chaff, blind folded...``

mr akbar would`ve run the story eight columns on top (``let`s fly it!``)with all-caps headlines AFTER he had it verified.

``if the ediotrs at the Washington Post shared your views, there would be no Watergate. Only Woodward and Bernstein knew -- the EDITOR did not know the identity of the deep throat.``

i say what i do on the assumption that chowk editors have NOT verified the story. indeed, saima has made no mention of that. however, i now think the person may have sent in the story with an explanatory note to chowk editors on why she/he wished to remain anonymous, and offered some proof, in which case i think this should have been made clear. and in which case i apologise for kicking up this hoo-haa.

``Where would you place Asghar Ali Engineer’s efforts from your fine city?``

i do not think mr engineer sees himself as a journalist -- he is a full-time activist/rationalist, and a very ocassional columnist for that rag, the times of india, and THAT certainly does not qualify him as a journalist.

regards

aakar patel