Dialogue with a journalist: From 9/11 to no student unions and democracy vs dictatorship

Kuch Khaas hosts evening with Beena Sarwar and a Dutch journalist.

ISLAMABAD:

Kuch Khaas hosted an intimate evening with filmmaker and human rights activist Beena Sarwar and Dutch journalist Babette Niemel.

Sarwar initiated the dialogue by telling the audience about Niemel’s longstanding love affair with Pakistan. The two ladies have created documentaries and conducted interviews right after the atrocious incidents that took place in New York and the rest of the US on September 11, 2001.

“Pakistan is a country you have to learn to love,” said Neimel. The informal conversation turned into more of drawing room talk rather than anything informative. Sarwar and Neimel aired parts of their documentaries highlighting the situation at the time and the views of the common man. “[Some] very educated people in Pakistan still believe that 4,000 Jews didn’t go to the World Trade Centre on 9/11 on purpose.”

Highlighting issues that Benazir Bhutto faced during her terms as prime minister, the conversation morphed from 9/11 to the lack of existence of student unions in Pakistan. “Nowadays, student unions don’t exist and, instead each party has student wings,” commented Sarwar. “These students do not represent the student body and therefore it is hard for true leaders to come out.”

The conversation steered towards lack of education in the country and democracy vs dictatorship, which roused up the audience. Conversations that you would normally hear bureaucrats and businessmen have over a glass of Scotland’s finest turned into a heated debate.

The discussion wrapped up with a stimulating conversation regarding the lack of questioning among the Muslim world. “Nations and societies that are urged to question always prosper; however, in the Muslim world people are severely discouraged from questioning.”



Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2011.