Archives for June 2021

ISLAMABAD: Angry women Opposition parliamentarians in Pakistan have criticised Prime Minister Imran Khan over his controversial statement on women’s dressing, amidst growing cases of rapes in the country.

Apparently stunned by Khan’s response, interviewer Jonathan Swan rephrased his question, “But is it really going to provoke acts of sexual violence?” Maintaining his stance, the 68-year-old flamboyant cricketer-turned-politician went on to elaborate, “It depends on which society you live in.”

He added that: “If in a society people haven’t seen that sort of thing, it will have an impact [on them]. Growing up in a society like yours, maybe it won’t impact you. This cultural imperialism… Whatever is in our culture must be acceptable to everyone else.”

Criticising the Khan’s controversial remarks, Opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Sherry Rehman tweeted that, “Whether it’s our laws or even our religion, which is very clear that respect for women is the responsibility of the beholder, no man has the right to blame women or how they dress, for violence, rape and crimes against women. Shocked that our PM is doing this.”

“Does IK [Imran Khan] not know that by saying women should dress a certain way, he is giving oppressors and criminals against women a new narrative to justify their behaviour. There is NO justification for a prime minister to talk this way. Highly irresponsible and condemnable,” she said in another tweet.

Sindh Minister for Women Development Shehla Raza said Prime Minister Khan should focus on the issues being faced by the country instead of “keeping an eye on the women”.

The provincial minister said Khan should not have said this while sitting on the seat of the prime minister of the country, the Dawn newspaper reported.

“The world got an insight into a mindset of a sick, misogynistic, degenerate & derelict IK. It’s not women’s choices that lead to sexual assault rather the choices of men who choose to engage in this despicable and vile CRIME,” Pakistan Muslim League-(Nawaz) spokesperson Marriyum Aurangzeb in a tweet.

“Maybe the misogynist, degenerate can defend paedophiles and murderers, as he advocates for rapist, after all men cannot be expected to control temptation. Just FYI Mr degenerate, self-control is a little thing upon which Allah places a great premium,” she added.

Stung by the angry reaction to Khan’s controversial comments, the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) fielded prominent party women leaders to defend the prime minister.

Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul and PTI lawmakers Maleeka Ali Bokhari and Kanwal Shauzab held a press conference on Tuesday to tell everyone they misinterpreted Khan’s comments.

The PTI-led government mobilised women for the first time in Pakistan, she was quoted as saying by Geo News.

“A woman like me became a member of Parliament from a tribal area,” she said, adding that there are five women in the Cabinet for the first time.

She described Khan as a “symbol of women’s empowerment”.

“We are strong women and we have been strengthened by our leader Imran Khan,” Bokhari said.

Shauzab said she believes that if you are among those who are “fighting” against the premier’s statement in his interview, then you are “disagreeing with the orders of Allah”.

She went on to say that Prime Minister Khan explained the commands of Allah regarding women.

During the HBO interview, Khan was also asked about his earlier comments about temptation, women’s dressing and men’s “willpower” — and how he was accused of rape victim blaming.

Khan, brushing it off as nonsense, said the concept of purdah is to avoid temptation in society.

“We don’t have discos here, we don’t have nightclubs, so it is a completely different society, way of life here, so if you raise temptation in society to the point and all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences in the society,” Khan said.

There are at least 11 rape cases reported in Pakistan every day with over 22,000 rape cases reported to police across the country in the last six years, according to official statistics reported by the Pakistani media.

However, only 77 accused have been convicted which comprise 0.3 per cent of the total figure, The News International reported in November last year.

LONDON: Five years ago Wednesday, Britons voted in a referendum that was meant to bring certainty to the UK’s unsettled relationship with its European neighbors. Fat chance.

It took over four years to actually make the break and the former partners are still bickering, like many divorced couples, over money and trust.

And five years after a fractious referendum campaign that sparked family arguments and neighbourhood disputes, Britain is still as split over Europe as ever.

“Britain is still significantly divided over the merits of Brexit,” said polling expert John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde.

He says voters are split almost exactly 50-50 between “remain” and “leave” supporters, and relatively few have changed their minds since 2016.

“Over four in five people still say that they would vote exactly in the same way as they did five years ago,” Curtice said.

The country is also split on whether Brexit has been a success.

In 2016, Brexit campaigners claimed leaving the EU would not only restore British sovereignty, but save the country money.

Notoriously, campaigners emblazoned a double-decker bus with the claim that Brexit would give the U.K. an extra 350 million pounds ($486 million) a week to spend on its beloved national health service.

The U.K.’s net contribution to the EU was actually about half that much.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government insists that Brexit is bringing new economic opportunities.

Britain recently signed its first full post-Brexit trade deal, with Australia, and has applied to join a trade partnership of Pacific-rim countries.

But Britain’s trade with the EU, which before Brexit accounted for about half of all imports and exports, plummeted by 20% after the U.K. made a full economic break at the end of 2020, although the disruption from the coronavirus pandemic makes it hard to tell how much of that impact is from Brexit.

Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London, said Brexit will be “a significant but not catastrophic” drag on U.K. economic growth for many years.

“Not a blowout, but a slow puncture,” he said.

The referendum ended the career of then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who had championed staying in the EU and quit soon after.

His successor, Theresa May, tried and failed to strike a divorce deal that both the EU and Britain’s Parliament would accept and resigned in 2019.

The two most prominent Brexit champions have had mixed fortunes.

Former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage arguably did more than anyone to make Brexit happen, but never won a seat in Parliament despite repeated attempts.

He founded, and then left, the Brexit Party, and remained in the public eye as Britain’s most vocal supporter of Donald Trump.

He is currently out of frontline politics.

Johnson, who led the official “Vote Leave” campaign, became prime minister in 2019 by promising to “get Brexit done” after years of wrangling.

He succeeded in leading Britain out of the EU — and straight into another crisis, the coronavirus pandemic.

He leads a nation divided over more than just Brexit.

Far from bringing the U.K. together, Brexit has frayed the bonds between the different parts of the United Kingdom.

It has increased support for independence in Scotland, which voted in 2016 to remain in the EU but had to leave the bloc when the rest of the U.K did.

It also has destabilized Northern Ireland, which borders EU member Ireland, by imposing new trade barriers between it and the rest of the U.K. that have angered Northern Ireland’s pro-British unionist community.

As for the divorced couple itself, Britain and the EU are squabbling, with Britain urging the bloc to show flexibility and the EU threatening legal action unless the U.K. sticks to the Brexit agreement.

British Brexit minister David Frost, who led negotiations for the U.K. side, said Tuesday that many Brexit supporters like him were surprised at how rocky the relationship had become.

“It’s not something that we want,” he said.

“The sooner we can move beyond the settling-down process the better.”

With the previous allocation of 25 million, the Biden-Harris Administration has so far announced to distribute 80 million doses of America’s own vaccine supply which President Joe Biden had pledged to allocate by the end of June in service of ending the pandemic globally.

“As we continue to fight the COVID-19 pandemic at home and work to end the pandemic worldwide, President Biden has promised that the United States will be an arsenal of vaccines for the world.

Part of that plan is donating vaccines from our domestic supply, and the President has pledged 80 million doses to be allocated by the end of June,” the White House said.

Earlier this month, the administration announced the plan for the first 25 million doses that the US has already begun shipping.

For these 80 million doses, the US will share 75 per cent through COVAX and 25 per cent will be targeted to help deal with surges around the world.

“Our goals are to increase global COVID-19 vaccination coverage, prepare for surges and prioritise healthcare workers and other vulnerable populations based on public health data and acknowledged best practice, and help our neighbours and other countries in need,” the White House said.

The Biden-Harris Administration will not use its vaccines to secure favours from other countries, it asserted.

Of the 41 million to be shared through COVAX, 14 million will go to Latin America and the Caribbean nations and 16 million to Asia.

Among the Asian countries include India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Maldives, Bhutan, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, Cambodia, and the Pacific Islands.

Another 10 million will be shared with African nations.

The White House said approximately 14 million – or 25 per cent of these 55 million vaccines – will be shared with regional priorities and other recipients, such as: Colombia, Argentina, Haiti, other CARICOM countries, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Cabo Verde, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Tunisia, Oman, West Bank and Gaza, Ukraine, Kosovo, Georgia, Moldova, and Bosnia.

The White House said, in addition to sharing doses from its own vaccine supply, the Biden-Harris Administration is also committed to working with US manufacturers to produce more vaccines to share with the world.

To that end, ahead of the G7, Biden announced that the US will purchase half a billion Pfizer doses and donate them to 92 low- and lower middle-income countries and members of the African Union.

In total, the G7+ agreed to provide an additional more than 1 billion doses starting summer 2021, it said.

“In addition, the US is committed to expanding local production of vaccines, and through our Quad partnership and the International Development Finance Corporation’s support for vaccine manufacturing, more than 1 billion doses will be produced in Africa and India in 2021 and 2022,” the White House said.

“This vaccine strategy is a vital component of our overall global effort to lead the world in the fight to defeat COVID-19 and to achieve global health security,” it said.