When Humanitarianism Loses Its Message

May 3, 2008 – 9:29 am

I attended a silent vigil outside the Pakistani High Commission in London last week. It called for the abolishment of the death penalty in Pakistan and came just one week before the planned execution of a man held on death row for 18 years. Amnesty International expressed concern that this could be a case of mistaken identity.

Amongst the overly opulent urbanity of Lowndes Square, ten people quietly held banners. One stated: “7,000 Prisoners on Death Row” - a controversially large number.

The small group of protesters included two students, a Member of Parliament, and a spokesperson for Amnesty International.

In a handing over of letters, John McDonnell MP was invited inside the High Commission’s office to present the case for the potentially wrongly accused prisoner, and to appeal for the end of the Pakistani death penalty.

Amnesty said it was very likely that the execution of the man will be stopped in order to have his identity verified independently. Moreover, they are hopeful that the new government in Pakistan may suspend the death penalty as early as this week.

I spoke to Niall Couper, the Amnesty spokesperson, who argued that the death penalty presents a serious moral cost to the societies in which it is practiced. A government’s legal system that sponsors the killing of its citizens, he explained, sends a message that homicide is an acceptable punitive measure. This, he said, can actually increase the rate of murder rather than reduce it.

Towards the end of the vigil, as banners were packed and the demonstrators began making their way back, another moral cost emerged. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, death penalty, europe, south asia | Comments (0)

Yoni is the Wrong Damn Word: Marginalization and Exoticism

April 30, 2008 – 5:48 am

Why, oh, why does it have to be Yoni Ki Baat? Why? I’m South Asian, right? I’m solid South Asian. So why does it make my blood boil that South Asians are doing an adaptation of the Vagina Monologues called Yoni Ki Baat?

Well, I don’t have a damn yoni, for one thing. The first time I read the word yoni, it was in a Nancy Friday book of sexual fantasies and some white chick was describing her power centre being plunged or whatever and calling it a yoni.

I do not call my c*** yoni. I’m Pakistani. We don’t do Sanskrit in Pakistan, not on purpose, anyway (I take no responsibility for accidental Sanskrit). Pakistani vernacular has many words for vagina and none of them is yoni. So running into a performance of Yoni Ki Baat by South Asians in Seattle really just fries my onions all wrong.

However, I can deal. I know that in the US South Asian communities are dominated by Indianness and this is simply a reflection of the sub-continental hegemonic power structures. I don’t like it, but I’m a lazy person and that’s not a fight I’m going to pick on a 6-month quickie in Seattle.

A little bit of investigation, however, brings me the news that, no, in fact, even in Indian contexts, using yoni for vagina is extremely problematic. It’s a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is the base for north Indian languages, including, most prominently, Hindi. Using it successfully projects, once again, north India as true India and Dravidian south India as other. As incidental. As internal or private. As “ethnic.” As not-really-there.

Well done, feminism. Read More »

By Kyla Pasha | Posted in Arts & Literature, Society, feminism, sex, south asia, women | Comments (8)

The Mindless Menace of Violence in the Muslim World

December 29, 2007 – 2:18 am

One more act of senseless violence greets us in the Muslim world this week. One more suicide bomber or assassin, or whatever we can call them these days, kills others and himself in a moment of premeditated madness.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

I am outraged as I was outraged on the day I witnessed the mothers, fathers and grandfathers grieving for their loved ones in an Amman hospital after the massacres of the inverted 9/11 (in Jordan, it was 11/9 if one follows the American date method, and proof that the killers and blood suckers infesting our region have a rather bizarre and morbid sense of humour that, I guess, makes some weird sense to the lunatics in our midst).

I am as outraged as I was in the summer of 2005 when a bunch of lunatics in Sharm El Sheikh drove their bomb-laden cars into a crowd of underpaid workers who apparently were not allowed the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee at the end of a long working day.

I am outraged as I was when I heard this last summer that a Jordanian Neurosurgeon thought that the best way to make use of his years of study and research is to go and bomb the world and all that is in it outside the Tiger Tiger club in Piccadilly.

Now, some of the readers will say: “Oh, come on, that’s not totally accurate; you are comparing the murders of innocent civilians with a targeted assassination of a leader who some Pakistanis discredit … etc.” But that is not the point. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, Religion, islam, south asia, terrorism | Comments (15)