Watching qawwalis: HRCP to help look into journalist attack case

The men, punched and kicked Zainul Abedin for watching television and listening to qawwalis.

KARACHI:

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan is going to help investigate an attack on a journalist by religious extremists.

A staffer of The News, Zainul Abedin, was attacked on the night of August 27 outside his residence in Gulshan-e-Iqbal by four men belonging to his locality. The men, punched and kicked him over watching television and listening to qawwalis. They left after threatening him with worse consequences if he continued to listen to the music. The case was reported to the Gulshan-e-Iqbal police station.

In a meeting that lasted over two hours, civil society activists decided to form a fact-finding team to go into the locality to meet the men involved in the attack and clerics of a nearby madrassah. “By such incidents, it shows that extremist elements in the city are getting stronger and the government has failed to control them,” said HRCP’s Uzma Noorani.

She said that it was alarming that extremism was reaching a point where people did not have the freedom to watch programmes inside their homes.

Another representative, Mir Zulfiqar Ali, said the silence of the government was equal to patronizing extremists, who want to terrify people living in the city.

A rally is also planned for September 25 to protest growing intolerance.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th, 2012.