KARACHI: The chief of prisons for Sindh province said on Friday that 896, or a quarter, of Karachi Central Jail’s 3,500 prisoners had tested positive for the coronavirus, but a major prisoner rights group put the number at several hundred more than the official count.
COVID-19, the disease caused by a new coronavirus, has spread rapidly behind bars in Pakistan and across the nation, rights groups say. But scant testing and inconsistent reporting from authorities is frustrating efforts to track or contain its spread, particularly in local jails. Figures compiled by police appear to undercount the number of infections dramatically, experts say.
Uneven testing in prisons and erratic reporting of confirmed infections have profound implications for health officials tracking the spread of the disease, because epidemiologists see jails as key pathways of transmission.
On Friday, the rights group Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) said 1,293 prisoners, or about 37 percent, of Karachi Central Jail’s total inmates had the coronavirus. The group uses media reports to track infections in Pakistan.
In an interview with Arab News late on Friday night, Kazi Nazir Ahmed, the inspector general of prisons’ police in Sindh, dismissed JPP’s figures and said “896, which makes 25 percent of total inmates, have tested positive for coronavirus.”
Karachi’s Central Jail has the capacity to hold 2,400 prisoners but around 3,500 inmates were housed there, making it “badly overcrowded,” Ahmed admitted.
However, to create more space and enforce safety rules, he said 320 convicted prisoners had been moved to other prisons in the province and a team from the district health department was regularly testing inmates.
“Thirty cells and nine barracks have been converted into a quarantine center where the affected prisoners have been kept,” Ahmed said, adding that one isolation ward has also been set up for patients in critical condition.
Soap, sanitisers and surgical and washable masks had been distributed among all the prisoners and staff, while infrared thermometers were used regularly to check their temperature, the jail chief said. Doctors were available round the clock, he said, and old and sick prisoners had been segregated from healthy inmates.
The official said no new prisoners were allowed to enter the jail until they had been tested for the coronavirus.
Many of Pakistan’s jails keep inmates for short stays: arrestees awaiting trial or people serving short sentences. The churn of these inmates raises the risk of infections among both the inmates themselves and jail staff, who can carry the virus to and from the community.
Prisons, which hold convicted criminals on longer sentences, are also fertile ground for the virus. While inmates come and go far less frequently, the virus can be carried in from the community by a single contagious staffer, spread quickly in crowded cell blocks, and re-introduced to the community by other, newly infected workers.
The Justice Project Pakistan, which has compiled data from 114 prisons across the country, says only 25,456 of Pakistan’s total 77,275 inmates, a little over 30 percent, housed in 114 prisons have been convicted for crimes, while 48,008 are under trial, with many being held for minor offenses.
At present, JPP says 1,624 inmates in Pakistan have Covid-19, with Sindh province recording the highest number of positive cases at 1,475, of which almost 80 percent are at Karachi’s Central Jail.
Sindh province is followed by Punjab with 118 infected prisoners, Balochistan with 26 and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with five, according to JPP figures. As of Friday, three inmates with the infection had died, of which two belonged to Sindh, JPP said.
The Sindh government adviser for prisons, Aijaz Jakhrani, said only one inmate, a man in his eighties, had died of the virus, telling Arab News that the government had taken immediate steps to ensure the safety of prisoners when the first case was reported in Karachi’s Central Jail in May.
“As a first step, the population of overcrowded Karachi central jail was brought down by sending inmates to other prisons of the province,” he said, creating space to quarantine infected inmates “whose number has also decreased with the recovery of over 300 prisoners.”
Rights groups are skeptical these efforts are working.
“The emergence of cases in Karachi Central Jail and other prisons of Sindh is alarming but not surprising: how can we expect prisoners to be holed up in tiny cells together and not contract the virus,” JPP spokesman Ali Haider Habib said. “Two thirds of Pakistan’s prison population hasn’t even been convicted. Many among them are sick and elderly. They will die in prison.”
He said overcrowding not only left prisoners more vulnerable but made it harder for prison officials and prisoners to observe safety guidelines.
On May 21, former inspector general of prisons in Sindh, Nusrat Hussain Mangan, wrote a letter to the home department recommending the release of four patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus. The prisoners were not released and one of them, a convict named Bahawal Khan, had died in jail.
According to JPP, of 77,275 total inmates in 114 Pakistani prisons, 1,184 are women and 1,500 are elderly inmates over 60 years of age, while 2,100 prisoners have miscellaneous ailments, 2,400 have contagious diseases like HIV, TB and hepatitis and 600 have been diagnosed with mental illnesses.
In Punjab, 47,007 inmates are being kept in 42 jails with a capacity for 32,477 prisoners. There are 9,642 prisoners in 37 jails in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while Balochistan has 2,088 prisoners in 11 jails. In Sindh the overcrowding ratio is 32.23 percent, with 17,239 inmates jailed in 24 prisons which have a capacity to hold only 13,038 inmates.
There are 223 elderly inmates aged 60 and above in Sindh prisons, 208 diagnosed with hepatitis, 39 are HIV positive, 27 have tuberculosis, 235 have mental illnesses and 662 have miscellaneous ailments.
Quarter of Karachi Central Jail’s inmates have COVID-19 — Sindh prisons chief
https://arab.news/jbyw8
Quarter of Karachi Central Jail’s inmates have COVID-19 — Sindh prisons chief
- Inspector general Kazi Nazir Ahmed says 896 of 3,500 prisoners in the jail had tested positive for coronavirus, 300 have recovered says government adviser on jails
- Rights group Justice Project Pakistan put the figure at 1,293 prisoners, or about 37 percent, of Karachi Central Jail’s total inmates
Pakistan reviewing proposal for resumption of trade with India — Foreign Office
- Pakistan suspended trade with India after New Delhi’s revocation of special autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir in 2019
- The rift has since impacted businesses on both sides who previously traded in textiles, agricultural products and medical supplies
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Office said on Thursday it was reviewing a proposal from the business community to resume trade with India.
Pakistan downgraded its diplomatic relations and suspended bilateral trade with India after New Delhi’s revocation of the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
The geopolitical rift between the two countries has since impacted businesses on both sides who previously benefited from cross-border trade in textiles, agricultural products and medical supplies.
Speaking at a weekly press briefing, Foreign Office spokesperson referred to a statement by Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and said the business community had expressed in review of trade with India.
“Examination of such proposals is a regular exercise in the Government of Pakistan, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where we continue to consider all such requests and assess our policy,” she said.
Baloch, however, clarified that there was no change in Pakistan’s position at present.
The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir has been a flashpoint between Pakistan and India since their independence from the British rule in 1947.
Both countries rule parts of the Himalayan territory, but claim it in full and have fought three wars over the disputed region.
Pakistan PM says modernizing revenue collection system to revive frail economy
- Pakistan is currently making efforts to introduce economic reforms under an IMF program that helped it avert a default last year
- Islamabad has expressed interest in a new program, expected to come with fiscal tightening measures, including increase in revenue
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Thursday his government was working to modernize the country’s revenue collection system to revive the frail $350 billion South Asian economy, describing it as “top priority” of his administration.
Pakistan, which has been facing an economic meltdown, is making efforts to introduce structural reforms under a $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) program that helped it avert a sovereign default last year.
The country this month cleared second and final review of its $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) program which would pave the way for the release of $1.1 billion after helping Islamabad avert a default in last June.
Islamabad has expressed its interest in securing a new loan under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program with the IMF, which is expected to come with fiscal tightening measures, including an increase in revenue.
“A plan is underway to modernize revenue collection system,” PM Sharif was quoted as saying by the state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster.
“The Federal Board of Revenue is being fully digitized and efforts are afoot to increase the tax base.”
He said a “whole-of-government approach” was being adopted to check power theft that was worth billions of rupees, according to the report.
Privatization of government-owned enterprises, institutional reforms, internal and external investment and austerity were also the government’s priorities in this regard, he added.
‘Act of Devotion’: Pakistani artist turns worn Qur’anic pages into works of art
- 28-year-old visual artist Saad Mehmood began restoring Qur’an pages ready for ritual disposal as part of BA final-year thesis
- Renowned artists describe the effort as “positive,” say it is vital to expand ways in which we experience the holy book
LAHORE: For Saad Mehmood, it was a routine visit to a mosque in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore for Friday prayers in 2017 when the then 22-year-old stumbled upon a store room with sheaves of paper stored carefully on a shelf.
The worn pages were fragments from everyday copies of the Qur’an, which were awaiting ritual disposal. In Pakistan, pages of the holy book that are disposed are often called shaheed, or martyred, copies.
In Islam, widely accepted methods of disposing worn pages of the holy book are to wrap them in a cloth and bury them, ideally in a mosque, or to burn them respectfully.
But Mehmood, at the time a final year student of fine arts at the Beaconhouse National University (BNU), was inspired by the worn copies and decided to restore them as part of his thesis.
“Saad asked for some of these pages that were torn or worn out, and started to restore the ordinary, mass-printed sheets with gold paper and the finest ink — bringing that which was ‘martyred’ back to life,” the artist’s statement accompanying an ongoing exhibition of his works in Lahore reads.
The effort is “an act of artistic devotion,” Mehmood told Arab News at the exhibition last week, saying all his work now revolved around restoring the holy pages and turning them into artforms.
“This work started in 2017,” Mehmood, now a 28-year-old visual artist, said. “I collect the pages of the Qur’an that are shaheed, then there’s an entire process to their restoration, I fill in the damaged parts so that the pages are readable again.”
Mehmood said he had done extensive research on damaged Qur’anic pages and what happened to them and where they went from storerooms of mosques and homes.
“I saw that they’re buried in graveyards, or floated in clean and flowing water. Sometimes, I even saw the pages being burned and their ashes buried in some corner of a graveyard,” he explained.
This got Mehmood thinking: instead of disposing of the sacred texts, he could restore them.
The process of restoration was a difficult one, as many Qur’an pages Mehmood came across had no references.
“When we open these [Qur’anic] collections… there are [some] smaller pages which don’t have any references [which ayat, surah, what page number],” he said. “So, this was a conundrum… how do I restore them when there’s no reference to work with?“
Mehmood decided to make a collage of such pages.
“So, at least they are still visible, still accessible,” he said. “So, we don’t accidentally disrespect the words, they will remain in front of our eyes, and then turn them into art to be appreciated.”
Mehmood has also visited multiple religious scholars to present his idea and his work.
“There are a lot of organizations in Pakistan like Tahaffuz-e-Auraq [who dispose of pages in the prescribed manner],” Mehmood said. “I restored them and then I started showing people that basically this is the work I’m doing.”
The idea found wide acceptability, he said.
“GOLD LEAF”
The ongoing exhibition in Lahore, organized by the Pakistan Art Forum, includes collages of restored Qur’anic fragments, concentric circles around Islamic calligraphy, decorative additions like gold leaves, and paintings with Arabic diacritics on Vasli and white paper. And this is all by design.
Mehmood said he wants to further explore this Islamic art form and create something new, like his painting of the diacritics without any words, or of punctuation marks without any sentences.
“The Qur’an came to us from Arabia, and the diacritics were added later, so that non-native Arabic speakers [Ajmi] could understand the text,” he said. “[Helping] in how to pronounce and enunciate it, zeir, zabr, that is also something I’ve worked on, and will continue to work on.”
There is also a reason why Mehmood uses gold leaf so often.
“When you look at my work… I have used gold leaf on the shaheed [damaged] Qur’anic pages,” he said.
“I used that gold leaf specifically and consciously, because gold is considered a divine material. And where the words are missing, pages torn, I’ve also used gold leaf to show the preciousness of the lost words, using a precious material.”
“EXPAND WAYS TO EXPERIENCE QUR’AN”
The visual artist has held a number of group exhibitions at the Alhamra Arts Center in Lahore and Sanat Gallery in the southern port city of Karachi. Last week, he held his second solo show in Lahore, titled Al-Qadr, referring to the night when Muslims believe the Qur’an was first revealed.
While most of the visitors to the Lahore exhibition said they had come out of curiosity, they left with admiration for the intricate work and beautiful calligraphy or collage technique that Mehmood uses.
“Calligraphy is a part of [what I do], but this is something else [entirely],” he explained. “You can call it a collage. You can call it an installation. You can call it painting, you can call it artwork.”
Shahid Rassam, a famous Pakistani painter and sculptor, described Mehmood work as “positive,” saying he had seen other works, though rare, in which worn Qur’an pages were restored as a form of art.
Rassam, who has himself made contemporary forms of the Qur’an, including one in which he used metal engravings, said it was “vital to expand the ways in which we experience the sacred text, even as art installations.”
“I think what this young man [Saad Mehmood] is doing is objectively a positive thing,” the artist said. “He’s taking sacred pages and giving them their rightful respect, instead of just letting them lie in poorly-kept stores and boxes.”
Pakistan says attack on Chinese nationals won’t impact CPEC
- Five Chinese nationals were killed on Tuesday in northwestern Pakistan when a suicide bomber targeted their vehicle
- Pakistan has since then enhanced security for Chinese personnel in the country, vowed to punish culprits of the attack
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Office said on Thursday that a suicide attack that killed five Chinese nationals this week would not impact the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and other projects.
Five Chinese nationals and their Pakistan driver were killed on Tuesday in Shangla, located in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, when a bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into their vehicle.
The attack occurred in an area vital to CPEC, which encompasses various mega projects crucial for Pakistan’s economy, and the victims were en route to Dasu Dam, Pakistan’s largest hydropower project.
Speaking at a weekly briefing in Islamabad, Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Pakistan would not let anyone sabotage Pakistan-China cooperation and such attempts would never succeed.
“Pakistan and China are close friends and brothers and we will continue to work together to develop CPEC and to promote our cooperation,” she said.
Beijing is investing over $65 billion in energy and infrastructure projects in Pakistan as part of CPEC, a major segment of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which will connect China to the Arabian Sea and help Islamabad expand and modernize its economy through a network of roads, railways, pipelines and ports in Pakistan.
Hundreds of Chinese engineers and technicians have been working on these projects, primarily in Pakistan’s northwest and southwest.
Tuesday’s attack came less than a week after Pakistani security forces killed eight Balochistan Liberation Army separatists who opened fire on a convoy carrying Chinese citizens outside the Chinese-funded Gwadar port in the volatile southwestern Balochistan province.
Baloch referred to a statement of the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson in which they said that no attempts to sabotage Pakistan-China cooperation would ever succeed.
“This is a reflection of the depth of this relationship and the understanding both countries have that those entities which could be behind such a dastardly attack are attempting to sabotage CPEC and target the symbols of Pakistan-China cooperation,” she said.
“Our message to them is they will not succeed and we will work together to bring the culprits of this attack to justice and to ensure that CPEC and all projects of Pakistan-China cooperation, including the hydropower projects in Pakistan, will continue forward without hindrance.”
Also on Thursday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said his government believed Islamabad would hold accountable the perpetrators of the deadly attack, vowing that Beijing was ready to step up cooperation with the international community against militancy.
“The Pakistani side is working intensively to investigate and handle the aftermath and has taken concrete steps to enhance security for Chinese personnel, projects and institutions,” Lin told reporters during a press briefing.
“We believe Pakistan will get to the bottom of the attack and bring the perpetrators to justice as soon as possible.”
Pakistan, Iran agree to strengthen bilateral ties to tackle regional militancy
- Pakistan’s planning minister meets Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Dr. Raza Amiri Moghaddam
- Pakistan, Iran both blame each other for not doing enough to root out militancy in border areas
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal and Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Dr. Raza Amiri Moghaddam on Thursday agreed to strengthen bilateral relations between their countries to reduce militancy in the region, state-run media reported.
Pakistan and Iran are often at odds with each other over instability on their shared border. Both countries have routinely blamed each other for not rooting out militancy. Small separatist groups in Pakistan have been behind a long-running insurgency, calling for gas and oil-rich Balochistan’s independence from the central government in Islamabad.
Pakistani anti-Iran militants have also targeted the Iranian border in recent years, increasing friction between the countries.
“Pakistan and Iran have agreed to strengthen bilateral relations to reduce tendencies of terrorism and extremism in the region,” the state-run Radio Pakistan said.
Radio Pakistan said the agreement to bolster bilateral ties was reached between Moghaddam and Iqbal during a meeting in Islamabad.
“The Planning Minister emphasized the importance of enhancing connectivity through trade routes, considering the 900-kilometer shared land and maritime border,” he said.
Tensions reached a head in January between Pakistan and Iran after they exchanged airstrikes against alleged militant targets in each other’s territories. Both countries since then have made efforts to ease tensions and promote bilateral trade with each other.