She was threatened several times by land mafias, they even wanted to occupy her office. She continued to bravely work for the poor of the Karachi slums in a chaotic city. She changed the lives of several thousand poor of Orangi by setting up sanitation facility, water connections, severage setup, building or advising on house construction and dealing with issues related to land occupation. Her actual contribution lies in the fact that she educated the local communities to solve their issues for themselves even with little or no intervention of the Government. She as an expert provided technical advice (e.g. what angle of inclination is necessary for a sewerage pipe) and encouraged the locals to build it for themselves. This self sustained, DIY method with locals funding collectively for their projects changed the lives of thousands in a city fighting for resources and land.

I was invited to speak on a special talkshow on Hidayat TV focused on Shia Genocide in Pakistan hosted by Tehsin Haider. Hidayat TV is a Birmingham based satellite TV channel. Others who spoke on the show include Raza Rumi, Ali Abbas Zaidi and Haider Zaman Qureshi of PPP. The recording of the program can be watched below and I highly recommend to circulate this to English speaking audience specially the overseas Pakistanis as this can serve as a good tool for campaigning on Shia Genocide, considering there is little on the issue in English talk shows.

Pakistan is home to 40 million Shia and 150 million moderate Sunnis. A few thousand Takfiri Deobandis have hijacked the country and Sunni identity. The silent majority should break the ice and speak on the issue. Further details of events in the future will be published later. Everyone is requested to keep raising their voice on the issue using the hash-tag #ShiaGenocide and #TakfiriDeobandi.

The rioters break in Barclays Bank on East Ham highstreet North and looted the local Western Union outlets as well in addition to several smaller retailers, primarily South Asian businesses. Other than these; Argos, Tesco, Primark and Pawnbroker Jewellers were the worst hit where the broke in and looted goods.

I recently bumped into this amazing track uth jawana by an underground Pakistani band Soch. The version I heard is the live performance of vocalist Mian Adnan, doing the guitars himself, from the GEO tv’s current affairs program Choraha hosted by Hasan Nisaar.  In these tough times, it gives hope to have young talented people like Adnan critically analysing the society they live in and more importantly, having  the courage to voice their opinion for positive change.
They have a quite active Facebook page here, while the website appears to be …

My friend Amanullah Kariapper’s account of a day spent in PP 63 (Faisalabad) for the election campaign of the Labour Party candidate.

Books don’t generate interest for the youth which has been fed emotional taka-tak of religion, nationalism, chauvinism and false history.

I am glad to have found this video on YouTube this morning.
Pakistan has been going through the current turmoil for years. Religious extremists with their suicide bombing and other modes of terror have attacked the very fabric of society and culture. Unfortunately, no artist from the mainstream had come forward to condemn them.
Abrar-ul-Haq, with his recent title Yaad Khuda Di from the unreleased album is probably the pioneer in taking on suicide bombing through music. But, he is not alone now.
Finding Heaven is a music video by a young Pakistani …

By Jareer Ahsan

Image of the stickers in use during the campaign to get the hospital shut down.

I know I may get heavily criticized for writing this, but I can’t remain silent anymore. I recognize that the grief is immense and I cannot claim to possibly comprehend it. But I severely deplore the acts of vengeance against doctors being purported as justice. There is a huge difference between manslaughter and murder, the former done without the will to do so. Yet it was indeed criminal negligence on the part of accused …

A few days back third video of LAAL was finally on-air. The track was titled ‘Umeed-e-Sehar’ and is the title song of the album as well. Here is the video:
LAAL : Umeed-e-Sehar
LAAL has put to music the revolutionary poems of Jalib and Faiz. ‘Main ne Us se ye Kaha’ and ‘Kal,Aaj aur Kal’ have already mesmerized the music lovers in the country and I am pretty sure everyone will love the complete album which is out now.
The album was launched a couple of days back when the country was going …

** This post was originally published on FASTRising Official blog on March, 19th, 2009. **

The short version, by our in-house wit: An idea whose time has come cannot be contained – nor container-ed.
The spiel:
While the nation celebrates and the most pessimistic activists are in wait-and-see mode till the 22nd of March, it behooves us to do a tally.
Some positives:

At the national level, a large number of people have finally seen a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of popular power in a democratic setup – however young and weak our …

A personal account of Youm-e-Fatah : 16th March 2009.

The Supreme Court (read Dogar Court) of Pakistan, after a prolonged hearing of the case of electoral eligibility of the Sharif brothers, had declared them ineligible for contesting the elections (which were held back in February 2008 ). This result, thus, disqualifies Shahbaz Sharif as the MPA and consequently the CM of Punjab – Pakistan’s largest and politically most influential province.
In a surprising move, the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, imposed Emergency in the province and issued orders for governor rule under his right-hand-man Salman Taseer who had earlier …

Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry reached Lahore on Saturday noon to administer the oath of newly elected members of Lahore district bar and address a convention of lawyers. His flight landed around 12 in the noon at Lahore airport where president Supreme Court Bar Ali Ahmad Kurd, Chaudhry Atizaz Ahsan, deposed judge Khalil Ramday and large number of lawyers, civil society activists, students and workers of PML-N, Jamaat-i-Islami, Tahreek-i-Insaaf and other political parties received him.

Earlier, large number of lawyers and civil society representatives see off him at Islamabad …

Zubair Torwali, a social/human rights activist from Swat writes:

The main town of Swat, Mingora, has now virtually fallen to the militants. The police are escorted by army officials and come out from their ‘hide-outs’ only for a couple of hours. One of the busiest squares, Grain chowk, was renamed by the shopkeepers as ‘Khooni chowk’ because when they come to their shops in the morning on each day they find four or five dead bodies hung over the poles or the trees. They see dead bodies scattered along the foot …