Growing Pakistan Uzbekistan Relations

Growing Pakistan Uzbekistan Relations

Zafar Iqbal Yousafzai*

 

Pakistan-Uzbekistan relations in recent times are growing and cooperation is on the rise between the two important countries of South Asia and Central Asia. The recent visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to Uzbekistan was an indication the two states are expanding their multi-faceted mutual cooperation. During his two-days visit, Imran Khan addressed Uzbekistan-Pakistan Business Forum on ‘Central and South Asia 2021: Regional Connectivity and Opportunities’.

Mr. Khan expressed his hope for connectivity of both the states through aviation, road, and rail. “Pakistan has immense potential to connect Central Asia with the rest of the world and become a hub of trade,” Khan added. 

The recent cooperation is happening in a time where there is a change in the regional dynamics. The U.S. and China are trying to make their clout strong in Central Asia while the change in Afghanistan is going to happen once the U.S. completes its withdrawal. Islamabad sees the potential to connect with Uzbekistan through Afghanistan. In his address, Mr. Khan said, “Pakistan is keen for peace in Afghanistan and considers it vital for trade connectivity among the regional countries.” Pakistan aims to link Uzbekistan through a rail link with Pakistan via Afghanistan. 

An agreement has been signed in February this year to develop a railroad through Termez-Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar, an important connectivity project that would boost trade between the three states and get two important regions connected in addition to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan access to Pakistani Seaports. The project will take five years which is 600-kilometer-long.  Tashkent aims to diversify its Sea access option beyond its reliance on Iranian ports. On the other hand, Pakistan will also get access to Central Asia and beyond which it has sought since the independence of the Central Asian States in early The 1990s. the said railroad will decrease Pakistan’s transportation costs to Russia by 15-20 percent. 

For two major reasons, Uzbekistan prefer Mazar-i-Sharif-Kabul-Peshawar railroad: its shortest one. Secondly, it connects the Uzbekistan-Kyrghizstan-China corridor with Europe and South Asia. 

Among other reasons, the U.S.-Iran rivalry is also a factor because of that reason Uzbekistan want a safe passage and option. Tashkent has hugely invested in the transportation sector to connect the Iranian ports with Uzbekistan but it fears Tehran’s escalation with Washington can cost Tashkent of heavy price. Bandar Abbas is the main port Tashkent is using for its trade. Once these projects are materialized, it will add great value to the objectives of both states. 

Pakistan’s strategic policy vis-à-vis Central Asia has five broad objectives: trade and connectivity, strong political link, investment, and energy sector cooperation, defense and security and people-to-people contact. Islamabad has made many endeavors since the independence of the Central Asia to get access to it yet due to Afghanistan’s precarious security situation, this plan did not come true. Now at the moment when a change is going to occur in Afghanistan, Islamabad sees a ray of hope to get safe access to Central Asian states. 

On the other hand, Pakistan is the shortest, easiest and economical connectivity route to the Arabian Sea for Central Asian states and specifically for Uzbekistan. Islamabad is willing to help facilitate Central Asian states to engage in trade via its sea routes. Similarly, Uzbekistan and Pakistan can engage in various sectors including trade, tourism, education, health, and energy projects. Moreover, Pakistan’s renewed focus is geo-economics which can strengthen Pakistan-Uzbekistan relations. However, for the said purpose, peace in the region and particularly in Afghanistan is essential for any trade, investment, and connectivity initiative. Similarly, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative will further bring both countries close to each other as it has to connect Pakistan with Central Asia and beyond. 

*The author is Senior Research Associate at Strategic Vision Institute, Islamabad and author of the forthcoming book “The Troubled Triangle: US-Pakistan Relations under the Taliban’s Shadow” (Routledge). He tweets @yousafzaiZafar5 

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30072021-growing-pakistan-uzbekistan-relations-oped/

Role of Turkey In Afghanistan

 

Role of Turkey In Afghanistan

Yanis Iqbal

 

USA has been launching airstrikes across Afghanistan as part of an effort to support Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) in their offensives against the Taliban. The southern Kandahar and northern Kunduz provinces have been the focus of the military campaigns. Even as Taliban is being held up in its quest to take over the country, Turkey has been stretching its diplomatic sinews. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going ahead with his plans to take over security at the Kabul international airport after the pullout of US troops. On July 22, 2021, Mir Rahman Rahmani, the speaker of Afghanistan’s House of the People, had a phone conversation with Mustafa Şentop, Turkey’s Parliament Speaker. The former said: “We support all initiatives taken by Turkey for safeguarding Kabul airport…We believe that the Turkish Armed Forces would better assure the security of the airport than other countries.”

A Convergence of Interests 

The near simultaneity of Washington’s attacks on Taliban and Ankara’s sustained accentuation of its willingness to supervise Kabul airport brings out the prominent aspects of the emerging US strategy in Afghanistan. Ever since US President Joe Biden announced in late April 2021 that the American Empire would end its longest war by September 11 of the same year, imperial planners have been wading through the muck of geopolitics to fuse the removal of US troops with a continuing security footprint, so that the Taliban does not simply topple the Western-backed government of Ashraf Ghani. Further, American defeat in Afghanistan has necessitated a re-jigging of the outlook toward Central Asia and Caspian Sea oil. Turkey appears to have solved this conundrum by readily stationing itself on the Afghan chessboard as a subcontractor for USA’s ambitions. An alternative route for oil supply has also been found insofar Turkey enjoys increasing influence in Azerbaijan, a Caspian Sea country. 

But why has Turkey been selected for the Afghan role? Veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi situates this decision in the global panorama of regional balances. First, “This will be welcome to Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia. The last two will be dreaming of the extreme Islam of the Taleban blending with the Akhwan ul Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) of which Erdogan is now an unabashed leader. This will be expected to be a bulwark against Iran.” Second, setting Erdogan off to Kabul will “ration some of his time away from West Asia where the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood causes anxiety to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Egypt whose suppression of the Brothers cannot last eternally… Brothers in Egypt will have a huge morale booster, should Erdogan without other distractions go full throttle in his Muslim Brotherhood avatar. The revival of the Brothers in Egypt will be of considerable help to Hamas which is another name for the Brothers. This will be a thorn in the side of Israel.” 

 

As is evident, a variety of interests converge in the Ankara-Kabul nexus. What’s more, Erdogan’s pivot to Afghanistan can pay political dividends since he has staked claims for the mantle of leadership of the Turkic world stretching from the Black Sea to the steppes of Central Asia. In the words of Naqvi, a Turkish foothold in the Hindu Kush “has the potential of opening vistas across central Asia, an expansive oil rich block of Turkic speaking people.” However, this game plan is not entirely free of conflictual equations. Taliban has castigated Turkey’s offer to protect Kabul’s international airport as “ill-advised, a violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity and against our national interest”, threatening to treat it as an “occupation”. 

China and Russia

Taliban is not the only actor having troubles with Turkey’s military presence. Afghanistan is bounded by China on its northeast and Central Asian states in its north – which in turn share borders with Russia. Both the countries fear that Turkey will seek to support and foment transnational jihadi networks known to be situated in Afghanistan’s north. Turkey’s influential role in consorting with jihadi elements in Syria, facilitating their relocation to Libya and even exporting some to the Nagorno-Karabakh war has – as MK Bhadrakumar remarks – earned the country the notoriety of being “a clone of the US in its genius for manipulating “Islamist terrorists” as geopolitical tools – with the added virtue of being notionally a Muslim country. It can be trusted to navigate the jihadis in the Hindu Kush toward a higher destiny in times ahead.”

 

Russia’s concerns about its historically explosive Muslim regions will heighten as Turkish engagement in Central Asia increases. This will challenge Ankara’s relationship with Moscow, which is already under strain in Libya, Syria, Caucasus and potentially in the Black Sea and the Balkans. For China, Turkey’s inclusion in the Afghan stakes will spell the prospect of greater trouble in Xinjiang. Turkey is home to a large exiled Uighur community. Erdogan, pursuing pan-Islamist neo-Ottoman goals, has been clamoring about the Uyghur issue for some time. When China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Turkey in March 2021, more than 1000 Uighur protesters were allowed to gather in Istanbul to protest his diplomatic presence. These ideological intonations suggest that Turkey could provide support to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) – an ethnic Uighur extremist group responsible for past terror attacks in China and which seeks to transform China’s Xinjiang region into an independent Islamic state.

Thus, China is not only facing a few ETIM fighters in Afghanistan but a possibly well-organized force of jihadist armies backed by state and non-state entities with direct territorial access to Xinjiang via Afghanistan. The deputy governor of Afghanistan’s northern Badakshan province said in a media interview that the militant groups overrunning national forces in the province are largely multi-ethnic, including Tajiks, Chechens, Uyghurs and Uzbeks. In an article for Asia Times, Salman Rafi Sheikh notes: “While currently allied with the Taliban, the transitional jihadis could switch sides and become a Turkish insurgent proxy if they perceive the Taliban seeks to abandon them in exchange for China’s, Russia’s and Iran’s diplomatic recognition and potential aid for reconstruction.”

Refugees 

From March 2021 to July 2021, the number of Afghan refugees rose from around 8,000 to 26,000 people, an increase of 229%. Refugee displacement has ended up on Turkey’s eastern borders. In 2020, UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) figures showed Afghans as the largest migrant group hazarding the dangerous sea crossing in the Aegean, from Turkey into Greece. The international body put the number of Afghan asylum seekers Turkey hosts at 125,104 in a 2020 report. Yet, many analysts estimate the number of irregular immigrants of Afghan origin in the country to be more than 500,000. Turkish authorities caught more than 25,000 irregular immigrants of Afghan origin in the first half of 2021. On July 19, 2021, security forces detained nearly 1,500 migrants, most of them Afghans, near the country’s southeastern border with Iran, as well as 11 people on suspicion of human trafficking. 

 

The moral squalidity of the refugee problem created by the Afghan cauldron needs to be redressed. Yet, the world-system under which we live is not going to allow a durable resolution of this brutality. While the West and its allies build strong fortresses to keep the mass of humanity out of their national frontiers, the exploitative mechanisms of imperialism create the conditions for mass displacement. Both of these processes go hand in hand, reinforcing each other. The contemporary power politics surrounding Afghanistan exemplifies imperialist carnivoracity for endless wealth-making. Instead of paying attention to the basic needs of the Afghan people and crafting a politically negotiated settlement to the crisis in Kabul, global powers and their lackeys have devised an updated form of opportunist statecraft which plays with the wretched nature of neo-colonies to strengthen and rebalance imperialist agendas.

Yanis Iqbal

Yanis Iqbal is an independent researcher and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at yanisiqbal@gmail.com. His articles have been published by different magazines and websites such as Monthly Review Online, Tehran Times, Modern Diplomacy, ZNet, Canada Files, Anti-war, Midwestern Marx, Anticonquista, Anti-Capitalist Resistance, Challenge, Big News Network, CGTN, Quint, Federación Anarquista, Akademi, South Asia Journal, International Magz, Green Social Thought, New Age, Frontier Post, Green Left, Palestinian Media Center in Europe, Rebelion, Newsclick, Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt, Weekly Worker, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, News and Letters Weekly, Economic and Political Weekly, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Counterfire, Journal of People, Peasants and Workers, The Greanville Post, Plateforme altermondialiste, Dandelion Salad, Scribe, Arena, Eurasia Review, Coventry University Press, Culture Matters, Press TV, Global Research, Independent Australia, Dissident Voice, Axis of Logic, Marxism-Leninism Today, Scoop, United National Antiwar Coalition, Gauri Lankesh News, Kashmir Times, Good Morning Kashmir, Countercurrents, Counterview, Syria 360, Revolutionary Strategic Studies, Socialist Project, Hampton Institute, Orinoco Tribune, Intrepid Report, Ecuador Today, People’s Review, Eleventh Column, Pressenza, Karvaan India, Clarion India, OpEd News, Janata Weekly, The Iraq File, Iraq Sun, Portside and the Institute of Latin American Studies.

https://www.eurasiareview.com/29072021-turkeys-role-in-afghanistan-oped/

Sedition charges, Zafar Aafaq

 Sedition charges, Zafar Aafaq

India & Pakistan Govts United In Illegally Using Sedition Law Despite Court Warnings.      07 Jul 2021 1

 

With Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Imran Khan named among 37 ‘predators of press freedom’, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir on how the governments of India and Pakistan use the 150-yr-old sedition law to stifle dissent despite court rulings against its misuse.

New Delhi: “Sedition was designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.” Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, 54, quoted Mahatma Gandhi as he spoke to Article 14 and referred to the 150-year-old law used by both countries to stifle dissent. 

 As in India, where the Supreme Court clarified 60 years ago that section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, could only be used if there was incitement to violence, Pakistani courts have also warned about the misuse of section 124A of Pakistan Penal Code, 1860. 

 In 1954, the Pakistani courts said sedition should be applied only to “that degree of disaffection, hatred or contempt which induces people to refuse to recognise the government at all and leads them to unconstitutional methods…” In practice, authorities in both countries ignore court guidelines while using the law to go after dissenting voices: opposition politicians, human rights defenders, students, civil society leaders and journalists. This misuse comes at a time when Reporters Without Borders, a journalism think tank, on 2 July 2021, listed the prime ministers of both countries, Narendra Modi and Imran Khan, as two of 37 global “predators of press freedom”. 

 One of those against whom sedition law has been misused in Pakistan is Mir, who on 15 June 2021 wrote in The Washington Post how the government was weaponizing sedition law as “part of a well-organized war on dissent”.

 “It is deliberately vague, and broad terms enable its abuse. You can be charged with sedition for merely “liking” a Facebook post, for drawing a cartoon or for making a speech,” he wrote. Mir wrote the article in response to the attack on journalist Asad Ali Toor on 25 May 2021 by three armed men who broke into his home. Many suspected they were from Pakistan’s security agencies, and the attack triggered widespread criticism (here and here), including public protests by journalists. 

At one such protest, Mir warned the security establishment that journalists would expose them before the people by sharing “the stories that emerge from inside your homes” if the state did not stop such attacks on the press. “We will tell them whose wife shot whom inside the confines of their home. And which ‘General Rani’ was behind this. I hope you all have understood what I am saying,” he said. Shortly after his speech, Mir was replaced as the anchor of Capital Talk, a flagship programme that he had anchored for years on Geo TV, the country’s most prominent TV station. His column in Daily Jang, a leading Urdu daily, was abruptly ended.

 Applications were moved before Lahore High Court demanding sedition and treason charges against Mir. In Gujranwala, another application seeking treason wrongly accused Mir of mentioning the Chief of Pakistan Army, General Qamar Javed Bajwa in his speech. The applicant later acknowledged he might have “erred a bit” in his petition.

 A cursory glimpse into the history of sedition law in Pakistan reflects a similar picture. Famous poets Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Habib Jalib have been tried under this law on charges of treason and conspiracy. A K Fazlul Haq, who presented the Pakistan resolution on 23 March 1940 as Prime Minister of United Bengal also faced sedition charges. Three former prime ministers and a president—PM Hussain Shaheed Suharwardy, former PM Benazir Bhutto, PM Nawaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardar—have been accused of sedition.

In India, Article 14’s sedition database has revealed that since 2010, 11,000 people in India have been booked in 816 cases under sedition law. Of these 65 % were implicated since 2014, when Modi assumed power. Many were booked merely for making “critical” and/or “derogatory” remarks against governments or politicians: 96% of such cases were filed after 2014.  Even as the Modi government filed 25 sedition cases against 3,700 people for participating in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019, the Pakistani government charged hundreds of people with sedition for holding a protest march. 

 As the threat of a sedition case looms over Mir, he is advocating the revocation of the law and criticising Khan’s government for blocking attempts to repeal it. 

 Pakistan’s ranking on a global press freedom index dropped from 139 in 2018 to 145 today: over the same period, India’s ranking sank from 138 to 142. 

Khan claimed that the Pakistani media were more free than the British media but in May 2021 his government proposed a new law to establish a Pakistan Media Development Authority, which Mir said “would enforce total silence in Pakistani media” as tribunals would be established to “decide what can and cannot be said or written, without notice or a hearing”. 

Offenders would be punished by up to three years in prison and millions of rupees in fines. “This law,” said Mir, “Would enforce total silence in Pakistani media.” Excerpts from an email interview with Mir:

We frequently read reports of censorship and attacks against the media and journalists in Pakistan. You have been banned by your employer from hosting your show.  You wrote in The Guardian that you did not blame them and have offered to apologise for the remarks you made at a protest and which led to the ban. Give us your sense of the ongoing situation.

We are losing our freedom very fast. I am a living example of censorship in Pakistan. I have been a journalist for more than 30 years. Now I can't write in any Pakistani newspapers, and I was also stopped from hosting my show on Geo News just because I made a speech outside National Press Club Islamabad on 28 May.

I condemned an attack on journalist Asad Ali Toor in a very harsh tone and for a reason. Ten journalists were attacked in Islamabad in May 2021. Most of the victims never reported attacks to police because they think attackers were more powerful than police.

Federal Minister of Information Fawad Chaudhry in an interview to BBC claimed that some journalists stage drama of attacks on them just for getting asylum outside Pakistan. These remarks were painful for me because I survived many assassinations attempts in Pakistan, but I never ran away from Pakistan like General Pervez Musharraf.

My speech was not reported by any Pakistani TV channel or any newspaper. It was only viral on social media. Next day I was asked by the management of Geo News to clarify my position. I refused because I never said anything on Geo News. They said we are sending you on leave.

Daily Jang also stopped my column and a campaign against me was started by some self-claimed lovers of the Pakistan Army on social media and on some TV channels. Some applications were filed against me to register sedition cases in different cities.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) decided to defend me. They prepared a statement in which I apologized for any inconvenience due to my tone. I also said that I respect the Army but I can't remain silent on attacks against journalists. I never changed my position...I am still banned.

The Pakistan government constantly maintains that journalists and media enjoy freedom and there are no curbs. Prime Minister Imran Khan has said Pakistan media is freer than British media.  How would you respond to such claims?

His claim is a joke. When he became PM in 2018, Pakistan ranked number 139 in World Press Freedom Index. Today Pakistan ranked at 145. All international human rights groups are crying against censorship in Pakistan. The whole world knows what's happening to us but our PM is not aware. I feel pity for him. Maybe he is helpless.

You have survived a bomb under you car, an assassination attempt, face regular trolling, had your column stopped and now your TV station has banned you from doing your show. Has the situation worsened?

I lost my job for the first time in 1994 due to a column about the submarine scandal. Late Benazir Bhutto was PM. She called me and clarified that she is not responsible for my termination from Daily Jang. She offered me a government job but I rejected it. I was forced to resign from the position of Editor Daily Pakistan in 1997 by the then PM Nawaz Sharif. Then I was banned on TV by General Pervez Musharraf in 2007 but Daily Jang never stopped my columns. 

There was no threat to life till 2012 when a bomb was planted under my car. In the last one decade I have survived assassination attempts, faced fake murder and kidnapping charges and also faced a blasphemy charge over a column written against honour killing. 

The situation is getting worse. Musharraf banned me only on TV, not in the newspaper. Now my friend Imran Khan is PM and I am banned from TV as well as in newspapers. I must say thanks to my enemy Musharraf because he never banned me in the newspaper.

Your critics accuse you of being partisan in your reporting and commentary on Pakistani politics. How would you respond to them?

If I am partisan, then why did Imran Khan call me as a witness in the inquiry commission against rigging in the 2013 elections? I told you I lost jobs when Bhutto and Sharif were in power, I was banned when Musharraf was in power and I am banned when Imran Khan is now in power. I believe in objectivity not neutrality. 

A journalist in Pakistan cannot remain neutral between democracy and dictatorship. We have to stand by democracy. We cannot remain neutral between law and lawlessness. If someone is breaking the law and attacking journalists we have to criticise him. We can't remain silent in the name of national interest or neutrality.

Some observers say Pakistani media is more critical of the state than Indian media. How much would you agree with this assessment and what role do you think the media plays in nation building?

There are many similarities and there are differences between the situation in India and Pakistan. Modi and Imran Khan were the beneficiaries of free media when they were in opposition. Now the media is under pressure when they are in power. Pakistani journalists are more aggressive because we have faced four dictatorships. Journalists were part of the movements for the restoration of democracy. Our current secretary general of PFUJ Nasir Zaidi was flogged by General Zia in 1978. He is a source of inspiration for young journalists. We still respect him due to his struggle for democracy.

India faced only one emergency and the late Kuldeep Nayyer once told me that when he was arrested the Indian journalist community never stood by him. Pakistan is different. Here the majority of my colleagues and human rights bodies are standing with me and want to fight for me. The general public is showing solidarity with me. Wherever I go people start selfies and they show anger against Imran Khan and security agencies. It's a matter of pride as well as a matter of great concern.

 Other than curbs and threats by state, what are the other challenges for journalists and media in Pakistan?

More than 8,000 journalists lost jobs in Pakistan in the last five years due to the economic crunch. We need to think about our economic models as well as professional competence. Good journalism is good business. If you will open a TV channel or newspaper to protect your business interest then you will destroy journalism. We need to get rid of non-professionals.

India and Pakistan are free countries now and yet both still carry the colonial legacy of the sedition law—124-A of the penal code—and observers say it is used to crack down on free speech. How would you draw the comparisons between how the two countries deal with dissent? 

Look at section 124-A of the penal code in India and Pakistan. It was introduced by the British colonial raj in united India. Now we are divided in three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. All these three South Asian countries claimed to be democracies but in all 124-A is being used to suppress dissent. British parliament abolished this colonial law in 2009 but we are making laws  worse than 124-A. We need to resist the colonial mindset ruling us in the name of democracy. 

I am very optimistic. A national lawyers convention on 17 June in Islamabad gave me a lot of hope. Then I was called by the Human Rights Committee of the National Assembly which is headed by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. Asad Ali Toor and many other journalists were also there to tell our painful stories to the committee. Parliamentarians from government and opposition expressed solidarity with us. At least they listened to us. Imran Khan is not listening but someone somewhere is listening to us. I am sure we will defeat colonial mindset like Gandhi and like Muhammad Ali Jinnah did.

Can you give us a picture of the history of how authorities have used  sedition law in Pakistan. 

Sedition law was used against famous poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Habib Jalib. It was used against A K Fazlul Haq who presented the Pakistan resolution on 23 March 1940 as PM of United Bengal. Sedition law was used against former PMs Hussain Shaheed Suharwardy, Bhutto, Sharif and former President Asid Ali Zardari. These days the same law is being used against many journalists and academics in Pakistan. 

You write in your WaPo piece, "And in Pakistan, an attempt to finally rid us of the law was defeated last year by Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government in Parliament." Can you elaborate? What explains why this government wants sedition law to continue when rights activists say it has no place in a free country?

Last year former Chairman Senate and former minister Senator Raza Rabbani from Pakistan People’s Party tabled a bill in the upper house of the Parliament to get rid of section 124-A. Minister for parliamentary affairs Ali Muhammad Khan of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf opposed that bill. There was no debate in the Parliament after that. Few days later two members of the lower house namely Ali Wazir and Mian Javed Latif were booked under the same law and they were arrested. Mian Javed Latif was released on bail but Ali Wazir is still behind bars. Both were from opposition. 

It was proved that the government of Imran Khan is consciously using this colonial law against its political opponents. This law is a sword in the hands of powerful people and they try to use this sword ruthlessly to silence the voices of dissent.

We often get to hear one term 'hybrid regime' which is used to explain the current rule in Pakistan. Why does this term come up  when you have a democratically elected government? Since 2009 the country has regularly seen elections. How much has Pakistan's democracy progressed since then and what does the future hold for Pakistan?

According to the Democracy Index compiled by the Economic Intelligence Unit, Pakistan is a hybrid regime and India is included in flawed democracies. Hybrid regimes combine autocratic features in the name of democracy. I am living evidence of a hybrid regime. Wazir is sitting behind bars in a sedition case. He only delivered a speech like me. He is evidence of a hybrid regime. Khawaja Asif and Khurshid Shah are former federal ministers, they are sitting members of parliament thrown in jails but the speaker of national assembly will not issue orders for their participation in assembly proceedings because we are living in a hybrid regime. 

Thank God we are not authoritarian regimes but we are moving towards authoritarianism very fast. We need to stop all those who are pushing our countries towards authoritarianism.

 

(Zafar Aafaq is a journalist based in New Delhi.)

https://article-14.com/post/india-pakistan-govts-united-in-illegally-using-sedition-law-despite-court-warnings-60e51a3784627

My intervention made in the UN Human Rights Council June 2021 Session in Geneva.

My intervention made in the UN Human Rights Council June 2021 Session in Geneva.

Intervention June 2021

 

CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND PEACE ADVOCACY

 

Chair, I come from a region that is occupied by Pakistan. It is known as Azad Kashmir, meaning an independent Kashmir.

 

In this region people are not even allowed to think independently or read anything that can help them to understand fundamental rights, human dignity and independence.

 

I want to draw attention of this august Assembly to the sham elections which Pakistan wants to hold on 25 of July 2021.

 

Politics of this region is controlled by secret agencies and politicians of Pakistan. Local leaders of so-called Azad Kashmir cannot even select a candidate. Who will contest at these elections, decision is taken by Imran Khan, Chairman of PTI, Leaders of Muslim League N and Pakistan People’s Party?

 

All these candidates must openly declare that they will be loyal to Pakistan; and do what the Pakistani leaders will tell them to do. Apart from that, it is widely believed that the party tickets are issued to the highest bidders, and merit is loyalty to Pakistan and financial muscle.

 

Those who oppose the Pakistani narrative are castigated as ‘traitors’ and ‘Indian agents’; and are not allowed to contest elections. All the books and booklets that oppose the Pakistani narrative on Jammu and Kashmir, and condemn extremism, terrorism and religious hatred is banned and authors face treason charges.

 

I request the UN Human Rights Council to take appropriate actions to help the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan.

 

Dr Shabir Choudhry

Email: drshabirchoudhry@gmail.com