It only takes the events of one week to summarize the situation of human rights in Pakistan. “I went to speak and perform in Government College University Chiniot but I was not allowed on campus. I was told that intelligence agencies called Dr. Shahid Kamal (the vice-chancellor) and blocked my entry,” said Taimur Rahman, an associate professor at Lahore University of Management Scien-ces, in a Facebook post on December. 8.
“I have committed no crime. My only ‘crime’ is that I’m a progressive who stands on the side of the poor and downtro-dden. Please share my video to express solidarity and record your protest against this inex-plicable censorship of progre-ssive thought,” he appealed to netizens in a post viewed by more than 3,000 people.
The same afternoon, videos of several women being assault-ed, stripped and filmed in a market in Faisalabad, also in Punjab province, surfaced on social media. Their ordeal went on for an hour with none of the spectators attempting to inter-vene. The incident comes amid 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, an annual international campaign that kicks off on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and runs until Dec. 10, Human Rights Day.
Many netizens justified the action after the emergence of a new video showing the women stealing from a shop.