Pakistan thanks Bahrain king for taking 'special care' of Pakistani expats
Pakistan thanks Bahrain king for taking 'special care' of Pakistani expats/node/1902066/pakistan
Pakistan thanks Bahrain king for taking 'special care' of Pakistani expats
Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi (left), meets Bahrain Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa in Manama, Bahrain, on July 29, 2021. (Photo courtesy: APP)
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, in Manama on Thursday and thanked him for his country’s “special care” for Pakistani expats.
Qureshi is in Bahrain on a two-day visit that will conclude today, Thursday, leading Pakistan’s delegation in the second session of the Pakistan-Bahrain Joint Ministerial Commission (JMC).
“The Foreign Minister thanked the King of Bahrain for taking special care of Pakistanis living in Bahrain,” the Pakistani foreign office said in a statement. “The Foreign Minister congratulated the King of Bahrain on hosting the second meeting of the Pak-Bahrain Joint Ministerial Commission.”
It added:
“Pak-Bahrain Joint Ministerial Commission will help strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries, enhance bilateral trade, economic and multilateral cooperation.”
Qureshi also conveyed the best wishes of the Pakistani president and prime minister and invited the king of Bahrain to visit Pakistan.
Earlier in the day, Qureshi met Bahrain Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa and thanked his country for taking steps to aid Pakistani expats, saying strong defence ties between the two nations were a “source of support.”
Qureshi “appreciated the steps taken by the Bahraini government during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure that the Pakistani community in Bahrain did not face any traumatic situation,” the foreign office statement said, saying he also “lauded the steps taken by the Bahraini Ministry of Interior to facilitate the visa amnesty scheme, waiver of fines, extradition and repatriation of Pakistanis awaiting repatriation.”
“Referring to the strong defense and security ties between Pakistan and Bahrain, the Foreign Minister described them as a source of support,” the foreign office said.
On Wednesday, the second meeting of the Bahrain-Pakistan Joint Ministerial Commission was held in Manama.
“On the sidelines of JMC, an MoU between Bahrain Development Board and Board of Investment of Pakistan was also signed to promote bilateral investment between the two friendly countries,” a Pakistan foreign ministry statement said, adding that the two sides agreed in principle to hold the next JMC meeting in Islamabad in 2022.
Pakistan official says China halts work on two projects after deadly attack
The companies have demanded Pakistan authorities come up with new security plans before reopening the sites
The security of Chinese workers, who are frequently targeted by militants, is a major concern to both countries
Updated 8 sec ago
AFP
PESHAWAR: Chinese contractors have halted construction on two major dam projects in Pakistan after a suicide bomber killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver this week, a provincial official told AFP on Friday.
The companies have demanded that Pakistan authorities come up with new security plans before reopening the sites where around 1,250 Chinese nationals are working, the official said.
The security of Chinese workers is a major concern to both countries, with nationals frequently targeted by militants hostile to outside influence.
The workers were targeted on Tuesday by a suicide bomber who rammed into their vehicle on a mountainous road near one of the dam sites.
He detonated his explosives on impact, plunging their vehicle into a deep ravine.
A senior official from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa interior department told AFP on condition of anonymity that since Wednesday, China Gezhouba Group Company has halted work on the Dasu dam in the province and Power China has stopped work on Diamer Bhasha dam, which straddles two provinces.
“They have demanded new security plans from the government,” he said.
“Around 750 Chinese engineers are engaged in the Dasu Dam project, while 500 are working on the Diamer Bhasha Dam,” he added.
He said the movement of Chinese engineers has been restricted to the compounds where they live, close to the sites.
China has not commented, but this week repeatedly urged Pakistan to ensure the safety of its nationals.
Beijing is Islamabad’s closest regional ally, readily providing financial assistance to bail out its often-struggling neighbor.
China has inked more than two trillion dollars in contracts around the world under its Belt and Road investment scheme, with billions pouring into infrastructure projects in Pakistan.
But Pakistanis have long complained that they are not getting a fair share of jobs or wealth created by the projects.
Tuesday’s attack sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the foreign and interior ministers offering condolences in quick succession.
China’s foreign ministry declared the countries “iron-clad friends” but asked Pakistan to “take effective measures to ensure the safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects, and institutions.”
Tuesday’s attack came just days after militants attempted to storm offices of the Gwadar deepwater port in the southwest, considered a cornerstone of Chinese investment in Pakistan.
In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan province overlooking the flagship Chinese-backed deepwater seaport in Gwadar that gives strategic access to the Arabian Sea — killing at least eight people.
In June 2020, Baloch insurgents targeted the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which is partly owned by Chinese companies, in the commercial capital of Karachi.
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.
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.
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.”
ISLAMABAD: China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said on Thursday his government believes Islamabad will hold accountable the perpetrators of a deadly attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan this week, vowing that Beijing was ready to step up cooperation with the international community against militancy.
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 the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which encompasses various mega projects crucial for Pakistan’s economy. The victims were en route to Dasu Dam, Pakistan’s largest hydropower project, when they were targeted.
“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,” Jian 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.”
No group had claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion was likely to fall on separatists and the breakaway Gul Bahadur faction of the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, and is a separate group, but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
The TTP denied being behind the suicide bombing in a statement Wednesday, saying: “We are in no way related to the attack on the Chinese engineers.”
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.