Left-wing political parties, trade unions, social activists and student groups at a press conference in the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) office invited people to join them in an Occupy Lahore anti-capitalist camp at Nasir Bagh in the city centre. The camp will continue for at least two days. A program for the camp will be announced soon.
The camp is being set up in solidarity with the worldwide Occupy movement and the growing unrest among peoples caused by the global economic recession.
Pakistan
The statement below is a call for solidarity with jailed Pakistani activists, including the Labor Party Pakistan’s Baba Jan. It was released on September 22. To add your support to the statement email politic.ofthepoor@gmail.com.
* * *
On August 11, Pakistani police used live bullets against people demanding payment of compensation allowances following a devastating landslide which had happened a year before in the valley of Hunza, on July 4, 2010.
Baba Jan, a federal committee member of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), surrendered himself to an "anti-terrorist court" in Gilgit Baltestan in early September.
He had been on the run after police opened fire on a demonstration demanding compensation for those affected by the Atta Abad Lake floods last year, killing two
Jan has since been taken from jail and the LPP fears the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is torturing him.
Jan’s “crime” was to organise rallies and demonstrations against the police killings.
Last year's floods were the worst in Pakistan's history. Twenty million people were affected and about 2000 lost their lives.
Now there is record flooding for the second year in a row.
“This is not a natural disaster”, Farooq Tariq , the national spokesperson for the Labour Party Pakistan, told Green Left Weekly. He was referring to widespread and unprecedented monsoonal flooding that has hit Pakistan over the last few days, already killing hundreds of people and making nearly a million homeless.
And this is just the beginning of the monsoon season.
Farooq Tariq, a spokesperson for the Labour Party Pakistan, released this article on July 24. It is reprinted from Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.
Media outlets from the Dawn Media Group, Pakistans leading media house, published the first set of WikiLeaks files relating to Pakistan on May 20.
The leaked US cables revealed that the Pakistani military is complicit in US drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas, bordering Afghanistan.
Each set of cables published by the group has had a ripple effect, with the leaked US cables widely reproduced.
At first, embarrassed military spokespeople and politicians exposed by the leaks denied the contents. Later, they tried to ignore them.
In the first four days after Osama bin Laden’s assassination by US forces, the mass reaction in Pakistan is very mixed.
In Punjab there is a general sympathy towards bin Laden, but not many are expressing it openly. In Sindh, the responses differ in different cities. For example, in Karachi there is more active commiseration for bin Laden and condemnation of the US attack.
Surprisingly, not much happened in Khaiber Pakhtoonkhawa, where bin Laden was killed. Similarly, Baluchistan responded meekly against the killings.
Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States that killed about 3000 people, will not be mourned by many people around the world. But his killers used Bin Laden’s crimes to justify wars on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq that have killed many thousands more. These wars are continuing. The May 3 US Socialist Worker article abridged below says bin Laden’s death should not be used to justify further killings in the name of the “war on terror”.
* * *
A billionaire, mass murdering criminal is dead, but the symbiotic processes of empire and terrorism that breed inequality, war, occupation, torture and dispossession are alive and well.
“Pakistan has demanded an apology and explanation from the United States over a drone strike in a tribal region, which officials said killed 35 people,” ABC.net.au said on March 18.
It said it was the seventh US drone strike in nine days. The article said it was the most lethal drone strike North Waziristan region since the US military escalated its bombing of Pakistani areas near the Afghan border in 2008.
A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Tehmina Janjua said: “The government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strike which has resulted in a large number of casualties …
Sadaullah Wazir, a 17-year-old Pakistani man, is suing the CIA over an alleged US drone strike on his village of Machi Khe in September 2009, in which he lost his legs. Three of his relatives were killed in the attack, CBSNews.com said on December 23.
The article reported that Wazir said the drone strike hit a group of men chatting outdoors in the Wazir family compound as the day’s fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan came to an end.
The recent devastating floods in Pakistan, which affected the lives of more than 20 million people, has once again revealed the severe poverty its people are facing.
The only property that many hundreds of thousands were left with after fleeing their mud homes was just a trunk, a few clothes, pottery and maybe a donkey, cow or buffalo.
- Previous page
- Page 9
- Next page