World
As Women’s Marches Gain Steam in Pakistan, Conservatives Grow Alarmed
KARACHI, Pakistan — The response to Pakistan’s first girls’s march was comparatively gentle: criticism and condemnation from Islamist events and conservatives, who known as the contributors “anti-religion” and “vulgar.”
That didn’t deter the organizers of the 2018 march in Karachi, the importance of which reverberates to today.
What began as a single demonstration to look at Worldwide Girls’s Day has change into an annual lightning rod for spiritual conservatives throughout Pakistan, who’ve been adopting harsher attitudes towards feminine activists. Now, as girls put together to march on Tuesday in Karachi and different cities, highly effective figures in Pakistan need the occasion banned altogether.
Girls planning to hitch the Aurat Marches, as they’re known as — Urdu for “girls’s march” — have confronted numerous threats of homicide and rape, together with accusations that they obtain Western funding as a part of a plot to advertise obscenity in Pakistan.
“The rising uneasiness surrounding Aurat March yearly reveals that the marketing campaign for ladies’s rights has been making an affect,” mentioned Sheema Kermani, one of many march’s founders.
Final 12 months, opposition peaked when Islamist teams demonstrated in main cities, accusing the marchers of utilizing blasphemous slogans — against the law punishable by loss of life in Pakistan, accusations of which have provoked lynchings and murders. The Pakistani Taliban have ominously warned the marchers to “repair their methods.”
The primary Aurat March was organized by a small group of girls within the port metropolis of Karachi, who hoped to attract consideration to the violence, inequality and different challenges confronted by girls throughout the nation.
“We had held discussions and mobilized girls in numerous communities, collected funds by small contributions from people, and wrote a manifesto to articulate calls for associated to girls’s bodily rights to the federal government and Pakistani society,” Ms. Kermani mentioned.
It labored. On March 8, 2018, the march drew 1000’s to the grassy grounds of Frere Corridor, an imposing monument in Karachi relationship from the British colonial period.
It additionally impressed girls in different Pakistani cities, like Lahore and Islamabad. Since then, Aurat Marches have been held yearly in main city facilities.
Analysts mentioned the success of the primary march made it a polarizing occasion in Pakistan, even because it superior the chances of girls’s activism within the Muslim-majority nation.
“Youthful feminists who had been impressed by a sequence of worldwide girls’s marches took their rage in opposition to violence, ethical policing and lack of bodily or sexual selections for ladies and marginalized genders to the streets,” mentioned Afiya Shehrbano Zia, the writer of a e book on feminism and Islam in Pakistan.
Ladies introduced placards proclaiming, “My physique, my selection,” and carried out an Urdu model of a Chilean protest tune, “A Rapist in Your Path,” that assails rape tradition and victim-shaming.
“There was nothing delicate about their slogans and banners from the primary march,” Ms. Zia mentioned, noting that the protesters had even highlighted L.G.B.T.Q. rights, a daring transfer in Pakistan.
Because the occasion grew greater through the years, marchers began elevating much more delicate points, together with abortion rights. Pakistan’s abortion charge is among the many highest on the earth; girls who finish their pregnancies usually achieve this themselves, as a result of many docs refuse to carry out the process on spiritual and cultural grounds.
Some Islamist events responded to the marches’ rising reputation by organizing their very own “modesty march.” In 2020, conservatives filed court docket petitions in an unsuccessful try and cease the Aurat Marches. That very same 12 months, a gaggle of scholars and supporters of the Lal Masjid, the mosque on the middle of a bloody 2007 conflict between militant Islamists and the military, assaulted marchers in Islamabad.
After final 12 months’s march, opponents doctored footage to make it seem that marchers had used blasphemous slogans, then circulated the faked movies on social media. A newspaper printed a front-page story that referred to the marchers as prostitutes.
Pakistan’s minister for spiritual affairs, Noorul Haq Qadri, has spoken out in opposition to the Aurat March, claiming it violates the rules of Islam. He just lately requested Prime Minister Imran Khan to declare March 8 to be Worldwide Hijab Day.
And a few Islamist events have threatened additional violence. “The marchers unfold obscenity within the identify of girls’s rights,” mentioned Abdul Majeed Hazarvi, a pacesetter of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam-Fazl occasion in Islamabad. “If the federal government permits the march, we’ll use a baton to cease it.”
Kiran Masih, 46, a Christian nurse with two daughters, has joined an Aurat March for the previous two years, bringing a placard that reads, “Save our daughters.”
“As a minority, we really feel more and more insecure,” Mrs. Masih mentioned. “On the office, we worry anybody can hurt us on the false allegations of blasphemy, and at our properties, we worry that our daughters may very well be kidnapped and transformed to Islam.”
Final 12 months, at the least 84 folks had been accused of breaking Pakistan’s blasphemy legal guidelines, and three folks suspected of doing so had been killed by mobs, in line with the Middle for Social Justice, a Lahore-based group that campaigns for the rights of minority teams.
The Aurat marchers have claimed victories. They campaigned in opposition to the bodily intrusive “virginity checks” usually inflicted on girls who carry accusations of rape, and a court docket within the northern metropolis of Lahore banned them final 12 months. The federal government has additionally handed a measure permitting the chemical castration of convicted rapists, one other demand of the marchers.
However the more and more aggressive opposition has left some march organizers fearing for his or her lives. Many have deactivated their social media accounts. Nonetheless, they’re undaunted.
“We had been and are scared, however we all know that with out placing ourselves in such a harmful scenario we can’t carry change,” Ms. Kermani mentioned.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb emailed a letter to Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam on Monday threatening legal action via Ohio Revised Code 9.67—more popularly known as the “Art Modell law”—unless the Browns provide “the City or others with the opportunity to purchase the team, as required by law.”
Bibb wrote the Browns have until Jan. 9 to respond or face unspecified legal action. One potential action would be Cleveland petitioning a court for an injunction to stop the NFL franchise from taking relocation-related steps. The Browns could contest that petition and argue the city lacks the legal justification for an injunction.
The mayor’s letter is the latest development in an escalating feud pitting Cleveland and the publicly owned Huntington Bank Field (HBF) against the Browns, which are exploring a stadium project in Brook Park, a city about 15 miles from Cleveland. The Browns are bound by a lease agreement to play at HBF until after the 2028 season but could move thereafter.
In October, the Browns sued Cleveland in an Ohio federal court. The lawsuit contends that the Modell Law violates several provisions of the U.S. Constitution and that, even if the law is found to comply with the Constitution, the Browns have followed it. The case is before U.S. District Judge David A. Ruiz.
The Modell Law came into force after then-Browns owner Art Modell relocated the franchise to Baltimore in 1995. Ohio, spurned by Modell, wanted to make it more difficult for other pro sports owners to relocate a team from the Buckeye State. The law forbids Ohio-based pro teams that use a “tax-supported facility for most of its home games” and that “receive financial assistance” from playing home games “elsewhere.”
The word “elsewhere” is unclarified as to whether it could refer to an intrastate move or is intended to only cover out-of-state relocations.
Should a team wish to move, the Modell Law says it must provide the government with six months’ notice and offer the team for sale to the city or local buyers. Bibb’s letter complains the Browns haven’t provided the city or others with the opportunity to buy the franchise. He demands that if the Browns “intend to begin the six-month window during which the team must be offered for purchase,” the team must provide dates to meet scheduling benchmarks.
For instance, Bibb says he needs “a day and time” to send over city representatives so they can “begin inspection and evaluation of the Browns’ records.”
Whether the Modell Law could actually block the Browns from relocating to Brook Park is an untested legal concept. Although the law was cited in court filings when the Columbus Crew planned to move to Austin, Texas, seven years ago, that legal dispute was resolved via settlement. It also concerned an out-of-state relocation, whereas the Browns seek a comparatively local move.
As Sportico detailed in October, the Browns contend the law is impermissibly vague because it: (1) doesn’t clarify how far a team must move for it to apply; (2) doesn’t explain what triggers six months’ advance notice; (3) violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from excessively interfering with other states’ economies, by giving Ohio residents “preferential treatment” to buy the team; (4) violates the Constitution’s Contract Clause by impairing the Browns and NFL’s contractual obligations to one another concerning league approval of franchise relocation; and (5) violates the Constitution’s Privileges and Immunities Clause by discriminating against citizens of other states (at least those who want to buy an NFL team).
Peter John-Baptiste, the chief communications officer of Haslam Sports Group, the Browns’ parent company, told Sportico in a statement that “we received and are reviewing the correspondence from Mayor Bibb.” He added, “As we stated months ago when we filed our lawsuit seeking clarity on the ‘Modell Law,’ the statute and the City’s actions create uncertainty and do not serve the interest of Greater Cleveland.”
John-Baptiste also mentioned the team intends to meet all lease obligations while exploring ways to address longer-term stadium issues.
“As the City knows, after the 2028 season, we will have fulfilled our lease obligations at the current stadium. We are determined to create a project to solve our long-term stadium planning by building a new enclosed Huntington Bank Field and adjacent mix-used development, resulting in a substantial increase in premier large-scale events and economic activity for our region that will generate significant revenue for the City, County, and State. We intend to respond directly in due course to Mayor Bibb’s letter and have no further comment at this time.”
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A South Korean court on Tuesday approved an arrest warrant for President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been impeached and suspended from power over his decision to impose martial law on Dec. 3, investigating authorities said.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials confirmed the Seoul Western District Court approved the warrant.
SOUTH KOREA DEADLY PLANE CRASH: US SENDS INVESTIGATORS TO COUNTRY STILL REELING FROM DISASTER THAT KILLED 179
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol waves as he arrives to address a joint meeting of Congress, Thursday, April 27, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
This is the first ever arrest warrant issued for an incumbent president in South Korea, according to local media.
On Monday, South Korean investigators sought an arrest warrant for Yoon over this month’s short-lived imposition of martial law.
Yoon is facing a criminal investigation into possible insurrection charges.
The court declined to comment.
BREAKINGBREAKING,
Court’s issuance of warrant marks first time South Korean authorities have sought to detain a sitting president.
A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant for impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived declaration of martial law in a historic first.
Seoul Western District Court on Tuesday approved the warrant following an earlier request by the Joint Investigation Headquarters, which is investigating the embattled South Korean leader for insurrection and abuse of power.
The move marks the first time authorities have sought to detain a sitting South Korean president.
Yoon has been suspended from his duties since December 14, when the National Assembly voted for his impeachment in a 204-85 vote.
The conservative leader faces possible life imprisonment or the death penalty over his brief imposition of martial law on December 3, which has plunged the East Asian nation into its biggest political crisis in decades.
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