Riotporn

From Alabama to Michigan to Texas, despite the isolation of prisons and a desire to cover-up news of the work stoppages by correctional departments, reports are leaking of widespread disruption at prisons.

The Women’s Movement in Pakistan:

The neo-liberal Western media loves to play with the stereotype of burqa-clad women surrounded by children when it comes to representing South-Asian Muslim (particularly Pakistani and Afghan) women. Likewise, you have people in South Asia saying that feminism is a ‘Western’ import that has no basis in South-Asian culture. Both set of people are equally unaware of the struggle of South Asian feminists and the entire history of Women’s Movement in South Asia that often does not make it to the mainstream media. One particular chapter of this often-ignored history involves Pakistani women rallying under several organizations, most notably Women’s Action Forum (WAF), and taking to the streets to protest against the state-imposed Islamization by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. A large number of women organizations held protest rallies, especially against Zina and Hudood Ordinance that incriminated any rape victims who were unable to provide four male witnesses and Qanoon-e-Shahadat, which reduced women’s testimony to count to half of male testimony. The Feb. 12, 1983 protests in Lahore saw police baton-charging these group of women protesters and using tear-gas to disperse them. These protests were a landmark development in the Women’s Movement in Pakistan since these enabled many women right’s organizations to develop a support-base and streamline their efforts for gender equality in Pakistan.

I came across some photos of these protests that portray Pakistani women in a very different light as compared to how the Western media portrays them and how the neo-imperialist audience wants to see them, and I am sharing some of the most powerful ones here. I have entered the dates, places and photographers in the caption of the photos for which I had the information.