News on Sumi Khan 2001-2005 -The Daily Star

 The Daily Star, 2006

 Justice, Bangladesh style

In an in-depth investigative report, Tasneem Khalil uncovers the shocking truth about RAB operations that have tortured and killed more than 900 to date

Ahmedul Haq Chowdhury Ahmudya was one of the most feared Jamaat-e-Islam cadres in Chitagong. For him, leaving the party and joining the BNP with 1,000 Jamaat members on July, 2004 signed his death warrant. On September 10, 2004, Ahmudya and his deputy, Minhaz, died in "crossfire" in Satkania, Chitagong.
"Jamaat is a one-way ticket, you may join but never leave," award-winning investigative reporter Sumi Khan, best known for her fearless reporting on Jamaat and Islamic militancy in Chittagong, told me. Sumi believed herself to be somewhat responsible for Ahmudya's death: he had given her an exclusive interview that disclosed the name of his godfather, Jamaat MP Shahjahan Chowdhury. "By disclosing sensitive information about Shahjahan Chowdhury and Jamaat's terror network in Chittagong, Ahmudya invited death," Sumi told me. "It is very interesting, how BNP and AL cadres get killed in crossfire while Jamaat cadres roam around free." According to one of Sumi's sources, Jamaat bribed a top RAB official 10 lakh taka to get rid of Ahmudya.
In August, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) appealed to Jean-Marie Guehenno, Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations, to expel Bangladeshi peacekeepers from UN peacekeeping missions until the Bangladesh government disbands RAB.
"We intend to begin a campaign on the role of Bangladesh in UN peacekeeping operations vis-a-vis atrocities committed by its security personnel at home, notably the RAB, until such a time as the RAB is disbanded and conditions in the country enable effective redress for victims of abuses there," read the AHRC appeal.
International pressure on Bangladesh to bring an end to extra-judicial executions has been mounting in the past few months. Back home, human rights advocates and the media are fiercely critical of the regime of terror the state has unleashed on its populace, but, to their chagrin, RAB to this day patrols the streets of Bangladesh with unchallenged and unabated impunity. We are yet to see a single case where a RAB member has faced trial for his involvement in extra-judicial murders, though time and again the government promised justice for any human rights violations by RAB.
More than 900 are dead, and their families still waiting for a proper investigation of their murders. Awaiting justice where the state itself has turned into a monster -- life, liberty, and fundamental human rights became the first casualties of "crossfire." To quote Jahanara Begum Rubi, sister of the slain BCL leader Mohimuddin: "I am still waiting for the answer that I never received."
Photos: Star
Tasneem Khalil is a writer and editor, Forum. For more information on his investigation, please go to: www.tasneemkhalil.com
http://archive.thedailystar.net/forum/2006/december/justice.htm

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18309.htm

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The plan to assassinate Bangladesh Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina Wajed:

How LTTE deal was blocked, suicide bombers failed to explode

It was the arrest of Nepal-based Manoj Srivastav at the Kolkata airport that exploded the veil off a sinister plot to assassinate Hasina Wajed.
(@THE NEWSPAPER TODAY)
When 34-year-old Nepal-based Manoj Srivastav, an agent of the Pakistani secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was arrested en route Kathmandu from Mumbai at the Kolkata airport on May 18, the police did not even know what it had in its net.

Only after Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers started interrogating Srivastav following a lead from the executive diary confiscated from the ISI agent suggested a security disaster in India and the plot to assassinate then Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed.
In what RAW officials believe to be the third plot in three years to eliminate Prime Minister Hasina, the diary seized from Srivastav features in its "Done" column that the "residence and office site maps of BDPM (Bangladesh Prime Minister) delivered."
Officials also seized an "undelivered" site map of the Saharanpur military air base in Uttar Pradesh, one of the few air bases in India that store the most modern surface-to-surface missiles.
Srivastav also said the ISI "formed a task force consisting of Pakistani military officers and absconding killers of Hasina’s father (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) to assassinate Hasina prior to the polls in Bangladesh in October this year," a senior RAW official told TheNewspaperToday.
He said Srivastav was placed under surveillance after his mobile phone conversation with his Karachi-based ISI instructor, Ziauddin, was tapped.
Meanwhile, Jawadul Karim, press secretary to Sheikh Hasina, told TheNewspaperToday over the phone from Dhaka that "there has been a growing impetus to the conspiracy to kill the Bangladesh Prime Minister after the killers of Bangabandhu were convicted in court. We have been alerted about this recent discovery by the Indian government and the security cover around our Prime Minister has been tightened after that." Sheikh Hasina's father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was popularly known as Bangabandhu.
Over and above the alleged plot to assassinate Hasina, what has sent Indian intelligence officials and the home ministry into a tizzy is the revelation that Srivastav has "already delivered to ISI the site maps of 17 Indian military air bases from Ambala to Bagdogra."
Srivastav told his interrogators that the recent fire at the Indian Army's ammunition dump at Birdhwal, 20 km from Suratgarh town near the Pakistan border in Rajasthan, is the handiwork of the ISI. "He has also confessed that the ISI was instrumental in the destruction of nearly 900 tonne of ammunition worth Rs 1,200 crore at the Central Ammunition Depot in Bharatpur in April 2000 and almost 427 tonne of armament in a military depot near Pathankot in April this year," a senior interrogating officer told TheNewspaperToday.
"Nepal is gradually becoming a hot place for anti-India and anti-Bangladesh activities by the ISI. Srivastav's interrogation has revealed this yet again. His interrogation has further revealed that the plan of killing the Bangladesh Prime Minister was originally hatched at a place called Breda  in Holland," the RAW officer said. "There, the ISI arranged a meeting of some absconding convicts in the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman murder case and hatched this new conspiracy to eliminate her. In 1999, we had passed on to the Bangladesh government reports of a similar conspiracy by the same set of people to assassinate her," he told TheNewspaperToday.
Originally from Motihari in Bihar, Srivastav, a diploma-holder from NIIT, first set his foot in Nepal in 1993 to work as an instructor at the School of Vocational Guidance in Kathmandu. Then on the advice of Ashraf, an ISI recruiter based in Nepal, Srivastav launched his own computer peripherals export company called Ziptech in 1995. Ziptech was registered in Patna. Ashraf, who runs a travel agency on Durbar Marg in Kathmandu, later guided him into exporting computer software to Pakistan and arranged his payment in what is commonly called in intelligence parlance as "over-invoicing."
He was then assigned by Ziauddin to "infiltrate" the Indian Military Engineering Service (MES) contractors and get contracts to supply computer peripherals to the MES.
"Zuber, an officer of the ISI’s operation cell, used to brief him in Nepal through the help of Qasim, an officer of the Pakistani High Commission in Kathmandu, who used to set up their meetings. We are now trying to ascertain the real name of Qasim, who seems to have worked with his pseudonym," a senior RAW officer said
The arrest of ISI agent Manoj Srivastav has blown the lid off a fresh plot to eliminate Sheikh Hasina in the   Netherlands after one meticulously drawn-up plan involving the LTTE, the militant outfit operating in Sri  Lanka, failed last year.
 The new strategy evolved at a meeting at Breda (see map), a small town in southern Holland on March 7 at a  restaurant owned by A.K.M. Mohiuddin (see Rogues' Gallery), an Army officer-turned-diplomat, who left his job in the  Bangladesh embassy in the Hague to escape arrest on the charge of taking part in the killing of Hasina's father,  Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.
 Senior Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence officials told TheNewspaperToday that a number of former  Bangladesh Army officers accused of killing Bangladesh's founder President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in a coup  in 1975 were present at the Breda meeting to finalise the plot to kill Hasina before the parliamentary elections in  Bangladesh in October this year.
 A representative of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence,  Colonel Shoaib Nasir, attended the meeting and gave final  touches to the plot that reportedly planned to get a Palestinian  hitman, Abu Hamid, to do the job.
 The new strategy became necessary after a more devious  murder plot, which involved the use of LTTE suicide bombers to  kill Hasina, fell through last year just before the "hit" was  supposed to take place.
 THE KILLERS REGROUP
 The ISI's allies in this operation were the former Army officers  (see Rogues' Gallery) responsible for assassinating Sheikh Mujib  and his entire family--18 family members, including his  10-year-old son Sheikh Russel, except for his two daughters  who were abroad at that time.
 Hasina, after taking over as Prime Minister of Bangladesh,  reopened the case files some years back and a Bangladesh  court convicted most of them for life.
 Indian intelligence agencies say the failure to secure the release of those arrested and jailed like Lt. Col. Syed  Farook Rahman and Maj. Bazlul Huda prompted those who are still absconding to plan the "hit" on Hasina.
 But Western intelligence agencies, including the Dutch and Israeli outfits, kept a watch on Mohiuddin's  restaurant at Breda and picked up details of a secret meeting at the restaurant on March 7 earlier this year. Later,  they passed on the information to the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of India.
 Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid and some of his other associates who had participated in the 1975 coup that  led to Sheikh Mujib's assassination were present at the meeting.
 Also present was the colonel of ISI -- Shoaib Nasir. The Dutch intelligence and Mossad officers tapped his  conversation with the ISI chief of operations, Brigadier Riaz, on March 9.
 The intercept suggests that Nasir attended the Breda meeting where the plan to "hit" Sheikh Hasina was  finalised. Riaz is keen on finding out whether a mercenary based in Central Europe, apparently commissioned  for the "hit," is happy with the advance payment offered. To this, Nasir says, "More money would be required
 soon."
 Riaz says, "Money will not be a problem, but the task must be fulfilled." Nasir has been instructed to  return to Pakistan and another ISI operative, Jansher Malik, has been sent to Bangladesh under cover to  do a 'recce'."
 THE HASINA OFFENSIVE

 Investigations by TheNewspaperToday revealed that the "Netherlands plot" followed another abortive  plan triggered Hasina's crackdown--within four months of assuming power in 1996--on those  responsible for killing her father.
 Hasina's party, the Awami League, had for the first time won the elections in the country since the Army coup of  1975. During this 21-year-long rule of the Army and the Islamic fundamentalists, the coup leaders of 1975  roamed around freely in Bangladesh and floated a political party - the Freedom Party -- which even participated in  elections.
 Once in power, Hasina reopened the Sheikh Mujib assassination files and Parliament repealed the Unconstitutional and Illegal Indemnity Ordinance of 1975, which was a martial law fiat created by Khondakar Mushtaque Ahmed--who replaced Shiekh Mujib as President of Bangladesh--to protect the coup leaders. The
 decision was welcomed by the Amnesty International.
 After a thorough investigation, the Bangladesh police chargesheeted 38 former Army officers and arrested six conspirators of the 1975 coup, including Lt. Col. Syed Farook Rahman, Lt. Col. Sultan Shahriar Rashid Khan and Lt.Col. Mohiuddin Ahmad. Another key conspirator Maj. Bazlul Huda was later arrested from Bangkok.
 In a landmark judgment on December 12, 2000, the high court awarded death sentences to 15 Armymen and different terms of imprisonment, including life sentences, to many others.  Prof. Abu Sayeed, Bangladesh Minister of State for Information, told TheNewspaperToday over the telephone that "the Bangladesh government is aware of the recent conspiracy."
 "This was a conspiracy which has happened because the killers of Bangabandhu failed to kill his daughter twice in the year 2000. Our Prime Minister has been informed and our intelligence officers are doing their best to track down the links of the Bangabandhu killers with Islamic fundamentalist groups in our country," Sayeed said.
 Since most of the Mujib killers (see Rogues' Gallery)were absconding, including the prime accused, Lt.Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid, Lt. Col. Shariful Haque (alias Dalim), Lt.Col. S.H.M.B. Noor Chowdhury, Major A.K.M. Mohiuddin Ahmed and Risaldar Moslehuddin Khan, the Bangladesh government tried to extradite these accused from the different countries where they took shelter in 1997. And sensing a tough time, the killers started regrouping.
 THE HIJACK BID
 In 1997, the Mujib killers tried to get their accomplices, Lt. Col. Syed Farook Rahman and Maj. Bazlul Huda, freed by hijacking a Bangladesh Biman aircraft, with ISI support. But India's RAW got to know about the plan after they tapped a conversation between an ISI operative and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid. RAW sent an emergency note to the Bangladesh aviation ministry and the Bangladesh Biman chief in Kolkata after they found out that the plotters were planning a hijack from Kolkata.
 In early 1998, 11 Arabs were arrested from the Kolkata airport on their way to Bangladesh. These Arabs were suspected to be accomplices of the Mujib killers, but were later found to be operatives of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, which was trying to infiltrate Bagladesh fundamentalist groups lending support to their counterparts in Palestine and West Asia. This alerted the plotters and they dropped their hijack plan.
 In early 1999, the first plan to "hit" Hasina was drawn up. Investigations by TheNewspaperToday reveal that this happened on a much broader scale in a joint effort by the Mujib killers, the ISI, some serving Bangladeshi diplomats, the Islamic fundamentalist groups like the Jamait-e-Islami of Bangladesh and some leaders of the
 Opposition Bangladesh National Party.
 
 The first meeting to chalk out the plan to assassinate Shiekh Hasina Wajed was held at the posh Bonani Apartments in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on February 23, 1999. It took place at the house of a former Army officer, Major Najmul Alam. And at this meeting, the seeds of a conspiracy germinated, which eventually made Kolkata the hotbed of undercover activities.
The plotters ruled out another military coup -- the usual route taken in Bangladesh for attaining political goals -- since they felt that the Bangladesh Army was not divided sharply enough and the response to a call to revolt against the political establishment may fail to evoke much interest, investigations by TheNewspaperToday revealed.
But Major Alam's brother Najml Amin came up with an idea which was immediately taken note of. Amin is married to a Tamil Muslim from Jaffna in Sri Lanka. And his mother-in-law is an active member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) women's wing. Amin proposed that LTTE suicide bombers be hired through his mother-in-law.
Meanwhile, Col. Munirul Islam Chowdhury Munna, son-in-law of Tajuddin Ahmed -- one of Shiekh Mujib's closest political aides and Prime Minister who was slain during the 1975 coup -- and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid went to Europe and got in touch with a French contract killer, Alain Deloin, who demanded $5 million for the job.
 
THE DEAL WITH TAMIL TIGERS
At a meeting on June 6, 1999 at St. James Court Hotel in London, the group finally gave shape to the assassination plan. They decided to pay $10 million for LTTE suicide bombers rather than assign the French for half the amount.
The logic was that the LTTE was more dependable and it hardly leaves any trace. What's more, Najmul Amin argued, the LTTE would be a better option because of "the sub-continental features" of its suicide bombers. They could easily pass off as Bangladeshis and, hence, could mix with the local populace.
According to a senior official of Bangladesh's National Security Intelligence (NSI), the LTTE had also "demanded some islands in Bangladesh for use as a safe haven if the plotters came to power after overpowering the Awami League government." The LTTE has, in past, used Bangladeshi islands it had got through its Bangla and Pakistani intelligence contacts. In late 1994, when Begum Khaleda Zia was Prime Minister, LTTE had used safe houses and godowns on two islands - Qutubdia and Sonadia -- for receiving consignment of weapons from Thailand and Cambodia.
The weapons would be stored on these islands for a few days and then be packed off to Sri Lanka in smaller boats, whenever it was safe. There is evidence of the LTTE selling some of these arms to the Northeast rebels.
The NSI official also informed that the meeting was attended, among others, by a famous London-based radio broadcaster of Bangladeshi origin who had taken part in the 1975 coup as an Army officer. The meeting was also attended by a former Pakistani Army officer and now a frontman for the Inter Services Intelligence, Col. R.M. Ahsan, who owns Ahsan TradEx, a Karachi-based export-import firm, and Lt. Col. Khondakar Abdur Rashid and Lt. Col. S.H.M.B. Noor Chowdhury.
The conspirators decided to use Kolkata as a transit point to reach the LTTE suicide bombers into Bangladesh and also to transfer the money to LTTE. They roped in a Kolkata-based computer firm owner as the middleman. The modus operandi was the same as used in Manoj Srivastav's case: over-invoicing. The Plotters would buy software packages from the computer firm at "very high rates" and the "extra payment" would be routed to the LTTE.
The meeting took another crucial decision. A back-up plan was formed lest the LTTE bombers failed. It decided that a huge RDX blast would be triggered in one of Hasina's public meetings. The job was assigned to Harkat-ul-Jehad, an Islamic funadamentalist organisation based in Bangladesh.
THE KOLKATA CONNECTION
To set up their Kolkata activities, according to the NSI source in Dhaka, the ISI employed a top Bangladeshi diplomat in India, who was later "called back" to Bangladesh as an inquiry against him found him "taking part in anti-national activities."
"During July-August 2000, a discrete order was passed at the Bangladesh High Commission in Calcutta to issue visas on a 'within-the-day' basis. The diplomat who ordered it cited numerous complaints of delay in issuing visas as the reason," according to Bangladeshi intelligence officials.
But the rulebook says only residents of West Bengal and the Northeast can get their visas from the Bangladesh High Commission offices in Calcutta and Agartala, while applicants from other parts of the country would have to apply to the High Commission offices in New Delhi.
The rules were manipulated to issue visas to two woman suicide bombers of the LTTE. They applied for visa as Shiekh Thaslim -- claiming to be a 22-year-old married Tamil girl with Khozikode as her permanent address -- and Subhalakshmi, also claiming to be from South India.
The third LTTE member entered into Bangladesh through the porous Northeast borders without any visa with a Bengali pseudonym -- Mahua -- for carrying out a "recce." "Explosive jackets had already reached Mahua by that time," the NSI official said.
The payment to the LTTE was routed by a former military officer, Col. Munirul Islam Chowdhury "Munna", who now runs a software company in North Virginia in the US. The deal was simple: Munna would "buy" software from the Kolkata-based computer major and pay in dollars. The owner of the Indian firm would be paid well in excess of the value of the purchase with clear instructions to pass on $10 million to the LTTE contacts through another "over-invoicing deal."
THE COUNTERMOVE
But Munna's movements were closely monitored by the Indian and Bangladeshi intelligence agencies in Kolkata where he stayed in Hotel Rutt Deen and Hotel Hindustan International (Room no. 615). When RAW discovered the plot, they had three days to decide on how to stop the money from reaching the LTTE.
Two days later, the owner of the Kolkata-based computer firm died in a road accident. The money, instead of lining the LTTE coffers, still remains frozen in Indian Bank, since no one else is authorised to withdraw it. According to Indian intelligence sources, this is the reason for the LTTE's decision to back off from the operation.
The "top" Bangladeshi diplomat, who the NSI says had given support to the plotters in Kolkata, was later summoned to Bangladesh where he was interrogated by the NSI between July and October 2000 "for maintaining links with the assassins of Sheikh Mujib" and was kept under "virtual house arrest." His role was found particularly dubious in issuing visas to highly suspicious people.
Meanwhile, Subhalakshmi was arrested at the Kolkata airport by intelligence officials. Sheikh Thaslim was caught in Khagracheri in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and Mahua was nabbed in Bangladesh's Khulna district.
When the plan failed, the ISI put the back-up plan into action. The Harkat-ul-Jehad was activated and 76 kg of RDX was planted 100 yards from a dais from which Sheikh Hasina was supposed to address a public meeting at Kotalipara in Gopalgunj district in August.
But the bomb was discovered by the public one-and-a-half hours before the meeting.
Sheikh Hasina survives. Subhalakshmi and Thaslim are both in Bangladesh jails. Mahua is off the hook.
@WWW Virtual Library Sri Lanka  http://www.lankalibrary.com/

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The hijab woman- Brigitte Buchinger

 

February 18, 2015 at 10:47pm

I just came home from my Physiotherapist. He is an expert in shiatsu and is good for my health.
He told me a true story that made me laugh. A story that happened to him a few years ago.

He was a teacher for physiotherapy at a University. Also taught water showers by Sebastian Kneipp. Of course, the students must exercise it all and demonstrated with eachother to learn it better and in practice.

One day a Muslim woman (Turkish) applied for a training course and to learn this profession. With a scarf, a hijab and her husband standing beside her. Of Course!

You need a good school  education to learn this profession in Germany.
This lady, educated,  was wearing the headscarf provocative and demonstratively and the director of the Institute already told the teacher: " But please be particularly sensitive to deal with this Muslima",  since he knew the sensitivities of Muslims and want to have any trouble. Just for the sake of peace. Still wondering why she wants to learn exactly  this profession.

Sure, sooner said than done.

The "hijab aunt" came to the conversation, of course, with her husband. Also very unusual for an educated, enlightened and adult German. Confident, already arrogant to call and said that during the interview: "I hope you have no animosities against my head scarf."

The German teacher said very friendly: " No, not at all! It is your decision and you can wear it whenever you want. Of course you can wear your headscarf at any time in theoretical and in practical teaching.  Hm, but are you sure it will not disturb you when the scarf is getting wet? However, if it does not interfere with your scarf in the water treatments, that are naturally performed without clothing and naked. Your scarf will become wet when you standing naked there and someone treated you with water gushes! But of course you can keep on the headscarf when you are naked and don't mind that your headscarf will be wet! "

"Naked?" she asked blushing and left speechless the school and  was never seen again!

Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany



Copyright© Brigitte Buchinger 2015 Germany

“Fear is just a line in your head ”- The Life and Death of Sabeen Mahmud-Sumi Khan

“Fear is just a line in your head,” Mahmud says. “You can choose what side of that line you want to be on.”

After her murder, the Pakistani activist Sabeen Mahmud is being remembered for her fearlessness. Her friends say that her bravery was motivated by love.
Credit Photograph by Sabir Mazhar/Anadolu/Getty

Last Friday 24th April evening in Karachi, Sabeen Mahmud, a forty-year-old Pakistani activist with close-cropped hair, a loud belly laugh, and an interest in human rights, held court at the café she owned. Mahmud opened The Second Floor, a coffee shop and community space, eight years ago, and it became both a staging ground for her activism work and a popular gathering place.

 

It was tucked next to an empty lot on a narrow street, and the moment you entered the skinny front door, you felt you were in a different world. “You’d forget you were in Pakistan,” Mahmud’s friend Sheba Najmi wrote in an e-mail. “It turned strangers into friends.” Bookshelves lined the brick walls of a cozy room, which was dotted with murals.

The staircase was painted with blue skies, black crows on telephone lines, and questions such as “Mama, should I trust the government?”

 

 

That evening, Mahmud was hosting a panel discussion about the situation in Balochistan, working with several social activists from the embattled province.

Balochistan is largely undeveloped and one of Pakistan’s poorest regions, but it’s also the biggest and rich in natural resources. For the last decade, it’s been home to a separatist uprising, the third the province has seen since the nineteen-sixties, and Baloch nationalists have been going missing. Although the numbers are difficult to confirm, as many as twenty-one thousand people may have disappeared.

 

In October of 2013, Mama Qadeer, an activist in his seventies and one of the participants in Mahmud’s event, began marching from Quetta to Islamabad, a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, in order to draw attention to the victims, many of whom, Qadeer alleges, have been “killed and dumped.” His own son’s corpse was found in 2011, two years after he vanished.

 

But what’s happening in Balochistan is a controversial subject, and one that many Pakistanis don’t feel safe talking about. Earlier this month, Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most prestigious universities, cancelled an event called “Unsilencing Balochistan,” citing government pressure. Mahmud named her event “Unsilencing Balochistan (Take 2)” and invited several of the same speakers. An online announcement asked, “What makes it dangerous for us to talk about Pakistan’s largest province at one of our most celebrated universities?” Mahmud knew she was taking a risk by holding the event and discussed the possibility of “blowback” with a friend on Facebook. But she wrote to another friend, “I just want to leave everything and join the Baloch march for the rights of their missing. What else is life for?”

The evening began with Mahmud asking the audience to maintain a polite exchange of views, even if there was strong disagreement. She then played a short documentary on Balochistan’s missing. After several panelists spoke, there was a question-and-answer session. When the event ended around 9 P.M., Mahmud left The Second Floor with her mother, Mahenaz Mahmud. They got into a white Suzuki; Mahmud drove, her mother sat in the passenger seat, and her driver sat in the back. According to a friend, Nosheen Ali, Mahmud liked to drive, often riding a motorcycle to work even though Karachi is a city where women don’t drive motorcycles. “She did what she wanted,” Zaheer Alam Kidvai, a friend who attended the event on Friday, said.

Shortly after Mahmud pulled away, as she approached the traffic signal near the Defense Central Library, armed motorcyclists surrounded the car and opened fire. Mahmud was hit twice in her chest and once in her neck. One round went through her cheek and came out the other side, striking her mother. As Mahmud slumped over, the shooters took off.

Mahmud’s mother called out to her, but there was no response. Mahmud was likely killed instantly. Bystanders helped move her body to the back seat, and her mother was rushed to a hospital. According to the Express Tribune, police officers responding to the scene described it as a “targeted” or “seemingly targeted” killing. Mahmud had been getting threatening phone calls and e-mails, and intelligence agencies reported that her name was on a hit list that they released in January.

The first time I met Mahmud, in April of 2013, she had also recently received death threats, for staging a protest of a campaign against Valentine’s Day that was being carried out by religious political parties. She described being stuck at home, fearing for her life, when the doorbell suddenly rang four times. It turned out to be just a deliveryman. We were picking at honeyed hors d’oeuvres in the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi, at a conference on female leaders in Asia, and we both felt a little out of place in our gilded surroundings. As she recounted the story, she laughed. “Fear is a state of mind,” she said. “You can make it much bigger than it actually is.”

 

At the time, Mahmud had just put together Pakistan’s first hackathon, to address the lack of online civic resources, hosting the event with Sheba Najmi at The Second Floor. As we spoke, she told me the story of how she decided to open the café. “I wasn’t a member of any clubs growing up. I was wondering how to meet new people around shared interests, to give space to people who wouldn’t ordinarily get it otherwise,” she said. The problem was that she had no money to fund a new public space, until a London-based uncle sent $9,400 for her grandmother’s future health care. “So I told my grandmother what I was planning to do,” Mahmud later wrote, “and assured her that if she fell ill, we’d give her a triple shot of espresso that would either cure her or kill her.” With her grandmother’s blessing, she opened The Second Floor.

News of Mahmud’s death spread quickly, appearing on the Internet that same evening. A hastily organized event in her honor at the Islamabad Literature Festival on Saturday was packed with more than two hundred people. Zehra Nigah, an acclaimed Urdu poet, started by saying, “It’s hard for me to speak in the past tense about someone who I have seen as my own child.” After Nigah’s eulogy, Dr. Framji Minwalla of the Institute of Business Adminstration, told me, “I kept catching all of us switching from present to past, catching ourselves, stopping, breathing.” Mahmud’s death has already had a huge impact, Minwalla said. “It has galvanized some, others it has sent scurrying back to the shadows.” A sense of unfinished business is shared by many of her friends. “We need justice for her and for all those she was helping to un-silence,” Mahmud’s friend Nosheen Ali wrote.

Mahmud’s activism, however, may have received more international attention in the past few days than during her lifetime. Her death has been reported, and her work commemorated, in the Times, NPR, CNN, and the Guardian. . The problem with these eulogies is that they often obscure the thankless tasks that kept The Second Floor open, the small acts of kindness. “They talk about what The Second Floor has done” and call for more spaces like it, her friend Zaheer Alam Kidvai said, but he thinks that the community Mahmud made is unlikely to be replicated. “Who wants to run a non-governmental organization and not make tons of money, other than Sabeen?” he said. Mahmud is being remembered for her fearlessness, but her friends say that what motivated her daily bravery was love.

This winter, Mahmud enrolled in Peggy Mason’s online neurobiology course at the University of Chicago. Mahmud visited Chicago in February and asked to meet Mason to learn more about her research on empathy. Mahmud was intrigued by the idea that we have a biological urge toward caring. “It fit with her politics,” Mason said. “My work shows we are naturally inclined to help each other.”

It’s a hopeful message and one that was at the root of all Mahmud’s efforts. Her close friend Nosheen Ali wrote, “Sabeen defied categorization. Arts patron and N.G.O, worker are so bland. She was a dil phaink”—an open-hearted person. “She was a heartist like that.”

No tumor, no obvious signs of Cancer;I was Full of Happiness:Angelina Jolie Pitt

 If you remember a couple of years back, actress and director Angelina Jolie Pitt wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about her decision to get a double mastectomy to reduce her risks of cancer. Jolie said, because of a mutation in her BRCA1 gene, she had an 87% chance of breast cancer and a 50% chance of ovarian cancer. She’s also lost her mother, grandmother, and aunt to cancer.
Jolie has now written another op-ed for the paper, this time about her choice to remover her ovaries and get her fallopian tubes tied.

 Entitled Diary Of A Surgery, Jolie chronicles her test results and decisions to do this to her body, along with the expected changes and hardships she will face. You can read the full op-ed here, but some highlights are below.
She first details her phone call with her doctor, alerting her of her levels and chances of cancer.
“I got a call from my doctor with blood-test results. “Your CA-125 is normal,” he said. I breathed a sigh of relief. That test measures the amount of the protein CA-125 in the blood, and is used to monitor ovarian cancer…He went on. “There are a number of inflammatory markers that are elevated, and taken together they could be a sign of early cancer.” I took a pause. “CA-125 has a 50 to 75 percent chance of missing ovarian cancer at early stages,” he said. He wanted me to see the surgeon immediately to check my ovaries.

After much more testing, everything came back negative. No tumor, no obvious signs of cancer.
I was full of happiness, although the radioactive tracer meant I couldn’t hug my children. There was still a chance of early stage cancer, but that was minor compared with a full-blown tumor. To my relief, I still had the option of removing my ovaries and fallopian tubes and I chose to do it.
The surgery is now, of course, done, and Jolie feels good about it. She also wants her fellow women and humans to know it’s a tough decision, but sometimes a necessary one.

 It is not possible to remove all risk, and the fact is I remain prone to cancer…I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, “Mom died of ovarian cancer.”

Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in menopause. I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes.

But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared…I inquired and found out that there are options for women to remove their fallopian tubes but keep their ovaries, and so retain the ability to bear children and not go into menopause. I hope they can be aware of that.
It is not easy to make these decisions. But it is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue. You can seek advice, learn about the options and make choices that are right for you. Knowledge is power.
For me, one of the more powerful parts of the piece was where she talked about love and importance, with husband Brad Pitt flying to her side.

"I called my husband in France, who was on a plane within hours. The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity. You know what you live for and what matters. It is polarizing, and it is Peaceful. "
It takes a lot to write something so personal and so powerful, let alone publish it in a widely read resource. Our hats go off to Angelina Jolie Pitt, and hopefully her words are read by the people who need to see what she had to say.

'My father has raped me every night since I was eight'- Amina

First published Tuesday 24 February 2015 in News
Last updated 20:46 Tuesday 24 February 2015 Exclusive by Umbreen Ali, Writer and Columnist 

                                            

“I am numb each time he rapes me.

“It’s like it’s not me. I have no feelings. He uses my body but I don’t feel like I am in my body anymore. I have lost all sensation, all feeling.

“His hands touch me, he penetrates me, his smell is left all over my body.

“I wash and it’s like nothing has happened.

“I would have carried on letting him rape me, but since he said he will do the same to my younger sister I know I can’t let it happen.

“But if I tell anyone, my biggest fear is no one will believe me.” “He comes to my bedroom each night to help me with my homework but that’s just an excuse. He closes the door behind me and rapes me. He has been doing this since I was 8.”

Fourteen-year-old Amina contacted the Mental Health Speak UP Speak OUT Facebook page after being repeatedly sexually abused by her father.

Speak UP Speak OUT was developed following a piece of research by Manchester University and John Moores University in which the study looked at mental issues in the South Asian Communities.

The results highlighted a greater need for awareness and openness to talk about issues affecting this community and have a platform in which people could share their personal stories and access information.

The development of Speak Up Speak Out has resulted in a high percentage of people putting forward complex and frightening experiences which otherwise are not shared.

It allows people to share and inform people that these issues do exist and there is support and help out there.

Amina wrote,“It took a while for me to actually make contact with Speak UP Speak OUT because I was scared. I still am but I need help. I cannot cope with this anymore.

“He comes to my bedroom each night. To help me with my homework and Islamic lessons but that’s just an excuse. He closes the door behind me and rapes me. He has been doing this since I was 8.”

“I am now 14 and still being raped by my father. Nobody knows at home, not even a friend. He threatens he will kill me or take me to Pakistan and leave me there.

“I am so scared. Not for myself but for my younger sister. He is threatening to rape her too which I cannot deal with. I don’t want her to go through what I have and am doing.
“My father hurts me so bad that sometimes I bleed for days from my vagina. I became pregnant once and he gave me something to eat which aborted the baby.”

She had reported that she wanted to tell her mum so many times but she thought no-one would believe her.

“We have a large family here and my father is well respected in the family. People look up to him and I know if I said anything I would be portrayed as a liar.”

Amina admitted that after contacting Speak UP Speak Out, she was informed that she could report her father to the police and have him prosecuted, and that several support networks were available to help her.

She was afraid to take the next step. “I found it too hard to report him. Why am I letting him do this to me again and again?

“Shall I be totally honest with you? I have kind of become used to it.

Jawad Ahmed from Speak UP Speak OUT said, “Speak UP Speak OUT is a space for people to share, discuss and look at ways to address hidden issues and tackle a history of stigma and taboo. For some it is a lifeline and the first step to recovery.

“Following Amina's sharing her experience we worked with her and since then she has reported her father and she is now in a safe place with support from several local agencies.

“We strive to actively work with these agencies by delivering training on culture and religious stigma and discrimination.

“It will be long and lengthy road to recovery for her, as you can understand highlighting such issues is never easy especially when you are from a south Asian family.

“However she built the courage to stand up to the abuse and understand how wrong it was. She is on her way to rebuilding her life and is happy she could share her story with us and subsequently seek help.”
http://www.asianimage.co.uk/news/11814203._My_father_has_raped_me_every_night_since_I_was_eight_/

Finding mooonlighting proteins from genomes

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Amanda Jenkins, BIONEWS

Moonlighting proteins, proteins which have two or more independent functions, have drawn an increasing attention as more and more such examples have been discovered in recent years. However, the number of known moonlighting proteins is still not large enough to elucidate the overall landscape of their functional diversity. In this work, published on Biology Direct, Dr. Daisuke Kihara and his co-authors have developed a computational framework for finding moonlighting proteins in a genome scale.
Since the systematic study of moonlighting proteins is still in an early stage, in most of the cases they are not explicitly labeled in public databases with “moonlighting”, “dual function”, or related words, which make it difficult to collect and reuse existing knowledge of moonlighting proteins. Therefore, the researchers first analyzed the Gene Ontology (GO) terms (vocabulary for describing function of genes)  assigned to known moonlighting proteins and found that GO terms can be clearly clustered into separate groups reflecting diverse functions of these proteins. The researchers further analyzed the GO term annotations of all protein genes in the Escherichia coli K-12 genome and found 33 novel moonlighting proteins by identifying genes with clear GO term separations followed by literature survey. Next, Dr. Kihara and colleagues analyzed moonlighting proteins based on protein-protein interaction, gene expression, phylogenetic profile, and genetic interaction networks and found that they have a higher number of interacting partners of distinct functions than non-moonlighting proteins in these networks.
The characteristics of known moonlighting proteins found in this work form foundation for identifying new moonlighting proteins in a genome-scale and open up a new opportunity to investigate the multi-functional nature of proteins at a systems level.
Four undergraduate students were involved in this research.
Reference:
1. Ishita K. Khan, Yuqian Chen, Tiange Dong, Xioawei Hong, Rikiya Takeuchi, Hirotada Mori, and Daisuke Kihara “Genome-scale Identification and Characterization of Moonlighting Proteins” Biology Direct 9(1): 30 (Dec. 2014).
https://www.bio.purdue.edu/bionews/?p=2588