Human Right to Live

Journalism Practices and the Flawed Understanding of Pakistan

2010-08-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

In the British media, portraits of Pakistan are at best ignorant and at worst unsympathetic.

DAWN, KARACHI - 12 AUGUST 2010

Flawed grasp of Pakistan

By Catriona Luke

THE last couple of weeks or so have been a bewildering swirl of heavy-handed press coverage, real attempts to grapple with the character of the new British government’s prime minister, David Cameron, and the pain of witnessing Pakistan in crisis with a natural disaster.

There is a problem in the British media. Few if any newspaper editors have visited Pakistan, and British journalists dispatched suddenly to Islamabad to find stories when political or natural disaster news breaks find themselves jet-lagged, adjusting to unfamiliar technical equipment and desperate to produce hard-hitting stories.

And with exceptions the same can be true of television coverage. I watched Channel 4 News last Thursday as a key international reporter described conditions south of the Kalabagh bridge. He spoke authoritatively about how Multan was in for heavy rain and flooding, but did not point out to viewers that Multan was not on the Indus at all but on the Chenab. Next up was a series of interviewers with villagers. “Has the army been here?” he asked. “Have the aid agencies been here?” The elderly villager he spoke to said no.

But the reporter, aiming to make a point, pressed on. “Has anybody been here?” With admirable restraint and not suggesting that the journalist was deaf, the villager simply replied: “I have said, nobody has been here.” Within minutes the report had moved on to the British media’s favoured theme, showing footage, possibly available on the wires, that members of the banned Lashkari-i-Taiba had been in the area providing medicine and water.

This is dismal and misplaced journalism. Pakistan is a vast country and the scale of the flooding means that only a tiny fraction of areas can be reached until the water subsides and journalists, whether covering Katrina in New Orleans or flooding in the northern British town of Carlisle, are not hard-pressed to find stories of citizens who have not been visited, aid vehicles not seen and government solicitude not felt.

Ten years after coverage of Pakistan took a downturn in the British media, this is not helpful to the understanding of a country. Portraits of Pakistan are at best ignorant and at worst unsympathetic. The country’s leaders — whether civilian or military — are invariably painted as unreliable autocrats working towards their own agendas. Shading and nuancing is lost. Pakistan’s sophisticated infrastructure — roads, bridges, hospitals, universities — as well as its IT capacities, creative industries, intellectual life, humour, arts, music, cinema and culture are completely unknown to British audiences.

The BBC’s South Asia online news is a case in point. While coverage of India is lightened with features and good news stories, the coverage for Pakistan is an unremittingly grim portrait of violence and disaster. The Guardian has an excellent correspondent in Declan Walsh, but his empathetic understanding and good knowledge of Pakistan has been without precedent. The Independent’s Andrew Buncombe, made of the same stuff and with much to offer a British readership, is mainly confined to India.

To be fair to the British press, it is also having to make rapid sense of David Cameron’s prime ministerly character, across a whole range of issues, domestic and foreign. The significance of Cameron’s remarks in Bangalore about Pakistan are still not clear: they had a purpose in acting as an emollient in diplomatic and trade relations, but whether they were designed to shore up or disrupt Pakistan’s civilian government in its relationship with the army and ISI is not clear.The subtleties of diplomatic relations are occasionally picked up — it was reported that Asif Ali Zardari had met British opposition politicians in Britain, notably Gordon Brown and former Foreign Secretary David Miliband. This was a small challenge to Downing Street. But no one had taken the time to find out what had happened on a British governmental visit to Pakistan at the end of June. In a round of slightly tense audiences (the pictures are on the Foreign Office website in Islamabad) Foreign Secretary William Hague met Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Yousuf Raza Gilani. But he also met Nawaz Sharif.

Larger questions simply escape attention completely. It is assumed that India is the pained elder cousin in its relationship with Pakistan, thereby escaping criticism. But if the key is regional stability across the subcontinent from the Iranian to the Burmese border, India could take a more responsible and proactive role in shouldering weight to sort problems out.

Even if the time frames are long and up to mid-century. Even if relations from time to time get strained. Even if it means grasping that the cataclysmic problems facing the subcontinent over the next century will not come, south of the Himalayas, from people but from climate change, movements in the earth’s crust and unpredictable weather systems.

The writer is an editor in London and was a staff member at the Independent and the Evening Standard.

The World Unmoved and Angry Flood Survivors React

2010-08-13T14:14:00.001-07:00

From The Independent

August 13, 2010

Why is the world unmoved by the plight of Pakistan?

Angry flood survivors are turning to a banned Islamist charity, reports Andrew Buncombe from central Punjab

Surrounded by brown, fast-shifting water on all sides, the 40 or so families in the village-turned-island had received no food, no medicine and no news as to when they might be rescued.

"We're dying of hunger," shrieked the woman, Sughra Bibi, as volunteers on the boat handed over plastic bags of lentils and cartons of milk to the villagers who gathered around her. One of them shouted out: "We don't care if it's the chief minister or the prime minister, but no one is sending anything to us. We are only waiting for God's help."

Across a huge swathe of central Punjab, Pakistan's famously fertile agricultural belt, now besieged by unprecedented floods, such scenes are being played out a thousand times or more. While countless numbers have by now been rescued from the waters, hundreds remain cut off from dry land.

Both the rescued and the stranded are hot and angry, tired and bewildered, having seen their livelihoods destroyed and struggling now with just the barest of assistance from the authorities. Even if they had heard the news, few would have been moved by President's Asif Ali Zardari's belated return to the country and his appearance at a photo opportunity yesterday in the south, where he handed out supplies.

Here, amid the small villages west of the city of Multan, home of the country's Prime Minister, Yousaf Gilani, everyone tells the same story as to what happened four days ago: the waters came silently during the night, like a thief slipping into the village. Those who heeded warnings of the anticipated surge had gathered together what they could, and moved themselves to higher ground. Others awoke to find themselves scrambling for their lives amid a landscape of shimmering water where once there had been fields. All they could do was wait for the rescue boats.

The boat which The Independent accompanied flew the black and white banner of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the supposedly banned Islamic charity, accused by the UN Security Council of being a front for militants who allegedly planned and carried out the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai.

In this natural disaster, as in several before, the Lahore-based group has played a central role delivering aid, rescuing people and providing emergency medical help. With the army and civilian rescue teams utterly overstretched by the scale of the disaster - now estimated to affect a quarter of the country - the charity's efforts have been embraced by the public. When they deliver food or rescue somebody, they ensure that people know who is providing this help.

"We are taking out food to people who are stranded," said Navid Umar, a friendly but serious young man from Lahore, who was the group's leader. "We're doing 25 trips a day."

The journey to reach the stranded villagers cut through an unlikely landscape of flooded buildings and verdant date palms, half-submerged by the water, past houses on scraps of land where people lay on charpoy beds and waited for the water to recede.

Elsewhere, small groups struggled through the floods to try and reach help, belongings balanced on their heads, feeling their feet uncertainly in the current. At one point, a man guided his wife, who was covered in a bright white burqa, through a long stretch of water that came up to their waists. Children, oblivious to the nature of the crisis, splashed and played.

It was blisteringly hot, even by the furnace-like standards of a south Asian summer, and on one journey a young woman lifted into the boat to be transported to the "mainland" fainted from the heat. It was suggested that her family try and cool her down by fanning her, but the only thing to use was a slightly sodden Jamaat-ud-Dawa pamphlet, proclaiming the charity's good deeds. The family gladly took it and started to waft it back and forth in front of her face as she lay quietly, her head tilted back.

Aside from the heat, the rescue mission was made more difficult, said Mr Umar, by the likelihood of snakes in the water and the amount of weeds and debris that kept becoming entangled around the propeller shaft of the boat's outboard motor. He said that several times the boat had become grounded and that on one occasion they found themselves stuck on the roof of a flooded house.

In addition, yesterday was also the first day of Ramadan, the month-long fast during which Muslims are not permitted to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset. Islamic teaching makes exceptions for the ill, or else those involved in such emergencies, but the volunteers on the boat said they were observing the fast. Indeed, even though he was delivering food to those in need, Mr Umar appeared a little unsure whether they should actually be taking it.

"Are you fasting," he asked a little sternly of one man who was standing in dirty brown water up to chest.

The man, seemingly bewildered, replied: "No, not in these conditions."

Mr Umar was not convinced and demanded to know why. The man sheepishly smiled and headed off with his bag of lentils.

Indeed, Mr Umar appeared to relish the challenge that confronted him and felt no need in any way to dilute his religious obligations. He said that on occasions he and his team had been unable to fulfil all of the five daily prayers according to schedule - catching up the missed one later, as is permitted - but often they would steer their boat towards a piece of land, get out and pray. Asked why a merciful God would permit such deadly, devastating floods, he replied without hesitation: "It is a test for the pious. For those who are not pious, it is a punishment."

While the men from Jamaat were at the forefront of the rescue efforts, they were not the only ones helping the needy of central Punjab. Civilian rescue teams were in attendance, as were the army and, rather incongruously, a group of adult, uniformed Scouts, complete with scarves and woggles.

While followers of Lord Baden-Powell may have had the best uniforms, it was the army that had the best equipment, and a large green truck of the 9th Balouch Regiment thundered through the flood waters, carrying people and sacks of food that had been donated by the local Lions Club.

"The water on this side is going down but on the other side it may be rising," said Mohammed Arshad, a 25-year army veteran, who was also not eating or drinking. "Just two days ago the water was up to the windscreen."

Yet while the water may be slowly receding, at least here, the anger and frustration of people is not. Tens of thousands of people, who had little before the floods arrived, have been evacuated, dropped off at emergency camps in Multan and nearby Muzaffargarh, or, more likely, forced to find shelter on the side of the road leading away from the floods where countless families are camped out. Elsewhere across Pakistan, more rain is predicted and several cities in the southern province of Sindh still risk having their flood defences breached.

About five miles from the floodwater's edge, a group of 38 families from Baseera, all of them kiln-workers, had taken over a sandy hillock. There was no water, no shade, and unlike other families who had managed to save their livestock - buffalo, camels and cattle - this community had just two tethered goats.

Each family was occupying a tiny makeshift home constructed from two rope beds and a mat. "All we are left with is what you can see," said Mehboob Ahmed, one of the villagers.

Everyone agreed that they would return as soon as they could, as soon as the water that had taken their homes had gone. They also agreed that these terrible floods were like nothing anyone had ever witnessed before.

Except, perhaps, for Mallick Yaru. Across the string of besieged communities, people spoke of the elderly man who had witnessed the floods of 1929, which also devastated this area and other parts of the country. He was 85, 90 perhaps even 100 years old, they said, and he lived in a village called Chowkgodar, eight miles away, where he had built a mosque on land that he owned.

At the mosque, Mr Yaru was indeed to be found, a wispy, white-haired old man who said he was 85 and resting on a charpoy. Yes, he said, he remembered the floods of 1929. There were fewer people here back then, but the waters had torn through the villages. He was only a boy of four or five at the time, but he insisted that he remembered the floods very clearly. "Those floods that came in 1929 were nothing like this," he declared. "These are very much worse."

India Finally Offers Help in Pakistani Flood Appeal

2010-08-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

First Published: 20:35 IST(13/8/2010)

Last Updated: 20:59 IST(13/8/2010)

Krishna calls up Qureshi; offers $ 5 million aid for floods

Hindustan Times

After writing to his Pakistani counterpart last week condoling deaths in the floods, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna on Friday called up SM Qureshi and offered aid of $ 5 million in "this hour of need".

Krishna telephoned Qureshi and expressed solidarity with the people of Pakistan in handling the devastation caused by the floods - the worst in more than eight decades, claiming over 1,700 lives and affecting 14 million people.

"Government of India has offered assistance of $ 5 million (approx Rs 23 crore) for provision of relief material from India for the victims of the massive floods that have adversely affected Pakistan, causing widespread damage to life and property," a release by the ministry said.

"In a telephone conversation, Krishna conveyed to Qureshi, this gesture of solidarity with the people of Pakistan, in their hour of need," it said.

The External Affairs Minister, on behalf of the people and Government of India, also conveyed deepest sympathies and condolences to the people and Government of Pakistan, on this natural disaster, it said.

Last week, Krishna had written to his Pakistani counterpart and conveyed sincere condolences and had said that he was distressed by the devastation caused by the natural calamity.

Foreign Relief Aid to Pakistan So Far for Flood Relief

2010-08-10T02:50:00.000-07:00

Note: the following is from an email I received today

It's interesting and very sad, but not surprising, to note that India, which only last week extended a $1 billion line of credit to Bangladesh has provided zero aid to Pakistan during this terrible flood. The people affected by this terrible disaster are ordinary poor people that have lost everything and are as subcontinental as the rest of us. It is churlish and unbecoming of the Indian claim to represent an entire multi-faith, multi-ethnic civilization.

The feelings are mutual; I have seen several Pakistani politicians and commentators express strong, sometimes virulent, anti-India feelings on Pakistani TV channels, and talk of "Pakistan won freedom from "the Hindus"" is not even controversial in Pakistan. Likewise, anti-Pakistan feelings run deep among much of India's urban middle-class, and the extremist attitudes of parties such as the Shiv Sena and some BJP leaders are well-known.

When you add the pre-partition riots, the partition genocide, four wars, three near-wars, the genuine dispute over Kashmir, India's suppression of Kashmiri aspirations and murder of thousands of innocent civilians, the Pakistani military's arming and training of Sikh militants and then murderous Wahhabi groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and then the infamous Mumbai attacks, you have a potent brew of vicious antagonism that appears to be irreversible in our lifetime.

Sarang

Data summary


Donor	Committed funding USD	% of Grand Total	Uncommitted pledges USD	Committed funding in $ per head of pop
Aid pledged and funded to Pakistan As of August 9, 2010. Click heading to sort
SOURCE: UN
United Kingdom	7,824,726	23.03	7,824,726	0.126
Kuwait	5,000,000	14.72	0	1.639
Australia	4,516,711	13.29	0	0.210
United States	3,996,000	11.76	35,000,000	0.013
Japan	3,455,000	10.17	0	0.027
Norway	3,263,557	9.60	0	0.672
Italy	1,743,119	5.13	3,276,540	0.029
China	1,479,290	4.35	0	0.001
Allocation of funds from Red Cross / Red Crescent	715,443	2.11	0	0.000
Private (individuals & organisations)	500,000	1.47	3,912,363	0.000
France	393,185	1.16	0	0.006
Turkey	279,365	0.82	0	0.004
Sweden	269,183	0.79	2,774,694	0.029
Switzerland	240,154	0.71	0	0.032
Greece	131,062	0.39	0	0.012
Germany	76,016	0.22	2,621,232	0.001
Thailand	75,000	0.22	0	0.001
United Arab Emirates	20,027	0.06	0	0.004
Belgium	0	0.00	655,308	0.000
Canada	0	0.00	1,937,984	0.000
Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)	0	0.00	10,000,000	0.000
Czech Republic	0	0.00	209,699	0.000
European Commission (ECHO)	0	0.00	25,436,616	0.000
Korea, Republic of	0	0.00	500,000	0.000
New Zealand	0	0.00	1,455,604	0.000
Others

Haiti: Struggle to Survive

2009-03-20T03:57:00.000-07:00

According to a study conducted by the Inter-American Bank, there are more than 26 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean facing ever-deep poverty if food prices remain as high as they have been lately. Between the beginning of 2006 and March 2008, worldwide food prices have increased by a staggering 68 percent. As a reaction, protests and riots have broken out in countries like Haiti, Nicaragua, and Mexico.

In Haiti, the situation could hardly be worst. One of the poorest countries in the world, Haiti is undergoing major humanitarian crisis caused by prevalent food shortage, growing population, dependency on imported food, increased worldwide prices and hence, growing poverty. The recent hurricanes and storms have only hit the country's deplorable conditions harder. Over 200 people have lost their lives in the last three weeks by the hands of the hurricanes causing severe flooding. Over 600,000 people are in need of help.

John Holmes, the U.N undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs described the situation saying, "It's clear that one of the effects of the successive storms has been to wash away a lot of the efforts that were made to restore agricultural production in Haiti itself."

Haiti has largely been dependant on imported food, and the global spike in prices along with a global food shortage has been largely responsible for the country's current state. Efforts are being made by the United Nations and other aid organizations to uplift the agricultural production in Haiti so that the dependency on foreign food can be relatively relieved. The storms have caused much of these activities a major setback.

The economic and sustenance situation is further weakening Haiti's vulnerable political scenario. Poverty has a direct correlation with public frustration and the food shortage is only aggravating this mass-level dissatisfaction. This discontentment could hardly be more justified. Most people live on simply $2 a day. With the current price level, it takes half of what they earn to buy a small container of rice. Six out of 10 people in Haiti's capital city cannot even afford one square meal a day. Unfortunately, in response to riots and public dissatisfaction, governments often resort to repression too -- thus, only further aggravating the volatile situation.

When frustrated is vented out by means of violence, it obviously results in the loss of lives and breakdown of infrastructure. The poor are caught between choosing between two failed situations. They either choose to submit and remain caught in the cycle of poverty, or raise voices for the establishment to take notice further only bringing deaths to their own people.

In early April, six Haitians and a UN peacekeeper were killed in the riots. The violent disturbances caused the ouster of the prime minister of this highly indebted country. Hedi Annabi, a special representative of the U.N Secretary General was quoted as saying, "Obviously, people who are hungry have no stake in stability... And if we cannot respond to some of their basic needs, I think all of the progress we have made in the last three years will be at great risk."

Unable to afford even one square meal a day, parents are pulling their children out of schools. Poverty is hence dragging the poor into an even more vicious cycle where a compromise is being made on the future investment of the country. UNICEF and the World Food Program are falling behind in donations, unable to keep pace with the spiraling cost of rice, which has hit $950 a ton, three times what it was at the start of 2007.

Some analysts predict that the constant spike in food prices is likely to continue until after 2009. Studying the history of Haiti, it seems that when the country opened its doors to globalization allowing imported food items and removing tariffs, the local economy lost its impetus. Cheaper goods produced at subsidized prices, even food items replaced what Haiti was producing and manufacturing locally. If Haiti is to pull out of the pitiful situation it is in, it needs to work on self-sustainability. Only can the reduced dependence on imported items bring back the local economy to its feet.

Saving the Children of Ethiopia

2008-09-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on August 30, 2008 on chowraha)

The global food crisis has swerved many countries' progress towards decline. African countries are amongst the worst hit by the crisis and the development that had taken place in many of its countries is being adversely affected in recent months.

Ethiopia, ranked amongst the world's 10 least developed countries, is hit by its most severe calamity ever. Conditions prevailing from its 2003 food crisis and the ones before, have only been coupled with new challenges to present a far worst situation for the Ethiopians.

International aid organization, Oxfam, calls the current Ethiopian food situation a "a toxic cocktail." One of the world's hungriest nations, Ethiopia has always faced trouble with drought causing its entire crops to fail. This time around these have been met with spiking energy prices and global inflation.

If 10 pounds of corn flour cost 'x' amount of money three years ago, the cost is multiplied by five this time around. All Ethiopians, may it be rural settlers or dwellers of urban centres, face annual food-price inflation of more than 75 percent. Armed rebellion in the Somali region has further disrupted food delivery. Plagues and insects are not helping the given situation.

Children, as always, are amongst the most pitiful victims. 900,000 Ethiopians, one-thirds of whom are children alone are under high risk of malnutrition. Save the Children, another humanitarian aid organization, has established family clinics all over the country, where parents are constantly visiting with their starved and weak children.

These children are being given Plumpy'Nut (a vitamin-fortified peanut paste) for immediate protein provision. Some are even being kept for as long as a month for their recovery. The situation thanks to the work put together by the various organizations and government will save the children from dying but may not be enough to stop the cycle of poverty.

75,000 children are said to be malnourished according to government estimates. Some people are having to resort to eating famine foods such as cactus and roots in order to survive.

Poverty only brings out the worst in people. A staff member from Oxfam America reports that in one village he witnessed people pounding their animals' food pellets into a porridge for their children.

Ethiopians are caught in a vicious cycle where food calamity is leading them to take actions that will yield longer term harm. Their families are taking lesser intake of protein-rich food while also skipping meals. Children are being pulled out of schools and livestock, even family assets, are being sold.

This crisis is further undermining the progress in terms of school enrollment that had taken place in recent decades. In an estimate, the World Bank claims that the rise in prices may even reverse the progress made in overall poverty reduction to have taken place in the last seven years worldwide! More than a hundred million people may plunge into poverty.

At least 14 million Ethiopians are in need of assistance may it be in the form of food aid or cash. This government estimates forms 18 percent of the nation. Of these, as mentioned earlier in the article, 900,000 are in danger of malnourishment.

Hunger is said to have spread over two-thirds of the country whereas the emergency food ration has been reduced by one-third since the start of the crisis. Whereas, wealthier countries around the world have stepped up their aid to Ethiopia, there need to be made more concerted efforts to save the children and families.

Between Sept. 1 and 8, 2008, the Coordinator of U.N Emergency Relief is expected to visit Ethiopia in order to assess the situation. It is hoped, that from here onwards the report on Ethiopia will bring the world leaders to step up their efforts in order to save the humanity in need.