In this photo from January 11, 2018, a girl lights a candle during a memorial for Zainab Ansari in Islamabad, Pakistan [File: BK Bangash/AP Photo]
On January 9, 2018, the body of seven-year-old Zainab Ansari was discovered on a rubbish dump in her home town of Kasur, Pakistan.
She was not the first young girl from the city to have disappeared and protests erupted in Kasur about police inaction over a string of violent sexual attacks against small children in the city. This anger spread beyond Kasur as riots broke out across Pakistan.
Three weeks after Zainab was raped and murdered, her killer, Imran Ali, was arrested with the help of security camera footage – which was obtained not by police, but by Zainab’s relatives. He was found guilty of similar crimes against six more girls. The families of those other children had sought help from the police but had been dismissed or come under suspicion themselves, leaving the killer free to continue offending. He was executed later tha
In this January 5, 2010 file photo, relatives of forcefully disappeared people from Balochistan are seen as they demonstrate in front of Pakistan s Supreme Court, in Islamabad, Pakistan [File:Human Rights Watch]
In February 2020, Haseeba Qambrani, a young woman living in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, received chilling news: Her brother Hassan and cousin Hizbullah had gone missing. This was not the first time her family had experienced such a tragedy, just a few years earlier, in 2015, Haseeba’s other brother Salman and cousin Gazain went missing. One year later, Haseeba’s family discovered their mutilated dead bodies.
The whereabouts of Hassan and Hizbullah are still unknown a year later, and Haseeba is still trying to find them. She is not alone in her search for loved ones who have been abducted over the years in Balochistan.
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National
March 9, 2021
FAISALABAD: Speakers at a seminar have demanded equal rights for the women at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad on the International Women’s Day.
The UAF faculty and students also took out a rally and arranged a seminar to mark the International Women’s Day. The rally was taken out from Admin Block and culminated at Iqbal Auditorium, which was led by UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asif Tanveer. Addressing the participants, UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asif Tanveer said that no society make the progress without active participation of women in the socio-economic development. He said that women could play a vital role in the development and overall increase in the GDP of the country. The founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, said. Faculty of Food Nutrition and Homes Sciences Dean Prof Dr Masood Sadiq Butt said that unluckily in men’s dominant society, women were deprived of their rights. He said that the government was committed to p
In Pakistan, a college teacher was sentenced to ten years in jail for a supposed blasphemous lecture presented in class on January 8, 2021. According to Aljazeera news, judge Raja Jawad announced the decision based on the charges filed in 2017. Another anti-terrorism court sentenced three to death for social media posts deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad under Pakistan’s blasphemy law.
In June 2020, Tahar Ahmed Naseem was shot in a courtroom hearing in Peshawar for claiming he was the Prophet, Muhammad. Pakistani Blasphemy laws are known as some of the harshest blasphemy laws in the world; The Diplomat Post going as far as to label them, “bloodthirsty laws.” As shown, these laws propagate violence, discrimination, and unfortunately used as a malicious tool, to target minority groups in Pakistan, and further personal vendettas, while also not being properly enforced.