Justce For Rinkel, Justice For SINDH

A Sindhi Saga: The Abduction of Our Daughters

By: Viju Sidhwani

Hindus have remained a minority in Pakistan since the creation of the country in 1947 when India was partitioned into two separate countries: a new India and Pakistan. Since its inception Pakistan has struggled with supporting a democratic government from being overtaken by a military dictatorship, sectarian violence, and harsh treatment of its minorities including Hindus, Shias, Christians, Sikhs, and several other communities.

In particular Hindus in Pakistan have experienced harsh and severely inhumane living conditions. Kidnappings, physical and psychological torture, rapes, forced conversions to Islam, forced marriages of young Hindu girls to Muslim men, lack of police protection, bonded labor, and religious-based discrimination have become the norm for Hindus who involuntarily became citizens of the newly created Islamic Republic in 1947. Of late the rise in Islamic fundamentalism throughout Pakistan has created a viciously hostile environment, choking Hindus and other minorities of their basic rights to live in the land of their forefathers.

The Patience Runs Out – The United States has put up with Pakistan’s insidious double game for a decade now. Not anymore.

BY SHAMILA N. CHAUDHARY

Divorces don’t happen overnight, but there’s always that one moment, that one comment when — perhaps only in retrospect — you can see the split coming. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s recent trip to Afghanistan may have been unannounced, but he wasn’t shy when it came to speaking about Pakistan. Panetta said quite openly that the United States is losing patience with Pakistan, especially when it comes to Islamabad’s failure — or unwillingness — to act against the Haqqani Network, a Taliban- and al Qaeda-affiliated group known to target Americans in Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistan.

The remarks came as a surprise, as their timing coincides with U.S. negotiations with Pakistan to re-open NATO routes, but what Panetta said is hardly new. In fact, as he sat in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last September, he listened to Adm. Mike Mullen convey a similar message when the outgoing Joint Chief of Staff chairmen let loose, calling the Haqqani Network a veritable arm of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Congress, the State Department, and the White House have also become more publicly forthcoming on this issue in the past year. So, instead of being shocked at Panetta’s words, we should be shocked by their consistency. For once, the United States is on message when it comes to our “friend” and “ally” in South Asia. …..

Read more »ForeignPolicy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/06/12/the_patience_runs_out

Brown Pundits – Pakistan; the sausage factory is getting exposed

Pakistan: the sausage factory is becoming dangerously transparent

By Omar

The latest scandal in Pakistan involves the leading business tycoon of the country spending (he claims) 340 million rupees on the son of the chief justice of Pakistan. Said tycoon Riaz Malik used to be a struggling contractor who hit paydirt with high-end housing colonies named “Bahria colony” (the name means “navy”…and some admirals are said to have sold him access to that name and the authority of Pakistan’s smallest armed force). Now one of the richest men in the country, Malik Riaz has been profiled in this documentary by TV anchor Sohail Warraich.

Suggested names for this scandal include “bahriagate”, “familygate” and, more originally (from lawyer Feisal Naqvi) “liti-gate”! Conspiracy theorists are busy trying to figure out if this whole thing was orchestrated by the army (unhappy over the chief justice’s asking questions about missing persons in Balochistan) or by Zardari or by the CIA and Mossad and RAW.

But whatever the details, one thing is clear to an outside observer. The walls of the sausage factory are becoming dangerously transparent. 11 retired generals work for Malik Riaz. Many admirals and generals smoothed his path to wealth. Many journalists are being accused of being on his payroll. And its not just this scandal. The son of the prime minister is accused of smuggling controlled substances. The brother of the almighty army chief is being targeted in a whispering campaign. Secret agencies, hidden camera videos, trips to Monte Carlo with mysterious women…its all out in the open or threatening to come out. All this has happened in other countries (well, maybe some of it has). but times are tough, the economy may tank, the security establishment has got itself into a fight with its traditional American patrons. There was never a real national ideology behind the claptrap taught in 6th grade. What will hold the center? These things can get out of hand.

Registrar SC confirms, ‘CJ met Malik Riaz’

Islamabad: Registrar Supreme Court Dr Faqeer Hussain has said in response to Malik Riaz press conference that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry met him at least three times ….

Read more » Saach

http://saach.tv/2012/06/12/registrar-sc-confirms-cjs-meetings-with-riaz/

‘Pakistan on the Brink’ by Ahmed Rashid

By: Suhasini Haidar, CNN-IBN

They say you should build your first house to sell, the second one to rent, and the third one to live in. With most trilogies, the sequence is almost always in reverse- simply because authors tend to give their best to the first book, what’s left to their second, and only write the third to complete the trilogy. Author Ahmed Rashid’s Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan and Afghanistan is an exception, as he manages to make the sequel to the ‘Taliban’, (the bestseller that sold 1.5 million copies, and transformed Rashid into ‘global sage’), and to his second, Descent into Chaos, an equally important volume.