Usama Khilji

THE recent spate of leaked audios of conversations among PML-N government leaders as well as PTI leaders is a matter of grave concern for the right to privacy, cybersecurity and civilian supremacy, and it indicates meddling in politics by undemocratic forces. Efforts seem to be on to manoeuvre the political discourse with a well-thought-out plan using private conversations between civilian politicians. While ...

TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Zarviya left her home in Rawalpindi with a couple known to her family, who said they would take her to buy a Mother’s Day gift for her mother. She never returned. Her parents later found out that she had been kidnapped, drug­ged, and married to a 35-year-old man, and she was no longer Christian — her parents’ faith — ...

TO continue to call Pakistan a functioning democracy is farcical given the politicians’ lack of control on matters they have the constitutional mandate to decide on. Though nothing new, it is tragic given the sigh of relief taken in 2013 after the first democratic transition of government. Thereafter, we saw the dismissal and disqualification of several elected politicians; first Nawaz ...

IN an effort to censor “objectionable content”, the Pakistan Telecommu­ni­ca­­tion Authority (PTA) has initiated another onslaught on the fundamentals of the internet infrastructure in Pakistan by introducing a local centralised Domain Name System and attempting to block global DNS. If fully implemented, this will significantly slow down internet speed in Pakistan, increase the cost of internet services, undermine privacy and ...

PAKISTAN’S ranking fell a further 12 places on the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index released earlier this month. This has to be a point of introspection for Pakistanis, especially those who wield power in the civil-military bureaucracy as well as political leaders in the recent merry-go-round of governments. The state of the press during the rule of the PTI was dismal, ...