LAHORE, Pakistan — “The only time I wore a burka was at a fancy-dress ball,” says Unver, a Pakistani painter hailing from an upper class Pakistani family. Speaking to a group of friends, he recounts sending his driver to the market to buy him the cheap, all-enveloping veil sealed with a face grill that many of Pakistan’s most conservative women wear on sorties outside the house. “After forty minutes of wearing that thing, I was drenched in sweat. Next time I saw my driver, I asked him how his wife can wear that thing all the time. He just looked [...]
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — It is too early to measure the social effects of tighter restrictions on alcohol sales introduced early this month by Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov’s government. However, beyond their purported social function, the laws appear politically motivated, aimed at depriving the country’s opposition from gaining funding from major alcohol producers in what, until very recently, was a largely unregulated local industry. Among other things, the new regulations ban the sale of alcohol near schools, and in health care and sports facilities, railway stations, bus stops and airports. Political analysts contend that while one motivation of Uzbek authorities may [...]
In late April, Dr. Kamal al-Labwani signed on to a letter from political and human rights activists that had been smuggled out of Damascus Central Prison. The letter urged Syria’s embattled activist community, particularly hundreds of detainees awaiting judgments, not to despair, for “they are not alone” and “there is hope for a peaceful resolution of the crisis of freedoms and human rights in Syria.” Two weeks later, on May 10, al-Labwani stood in a Damascus courtroom to hear a guilty verdict passed down upon him; three days later, two more pro-reform advocates received jail sentences. One-by-one, non-violent Syrian advocates [...]
