Last year in 2015, in a similar incident a Pakistani woman was 'set on fire for refusing marriage proposal' and died in Multan, Pakistan.
18 year-old school teacher based in Punjab province of Pakistan died of burn injuries
On June 1, police arrested three people in Islamabad in connection with the killing
The provincial government has set up a three-member team to investigate the case
ISLAMABAD- Police reported on Thursday, June 2 that an 18 year-old school teacher based in Punjab province of Pakistan died of burn injuries after she was set on fire for refusing a marriage proposal.
Her family members told that the perpetrators beat Maria Abbasi, then drenched her in petrol and set her ablaze before leaving her for dead, reported CNN.
Maria Abbasi was baby-sitting a younger sister near Murree, Pakistan. Image source: CNN
“Maria was at her home in Murree town baby-sitting her five-year-old sister while her family had gone to attend a funeral in a nearby town,” said Rafaqat Abbasi, her uncle.
“At the funeral, her family was alerted that she ‘was on fire’. Initially they thought there had been some accident, perhaps a pipe had burst or something.”
Violence on women: A Pakistani teenager Aamna Bibi, seen here as she is taken to hospital on Thursday, has died from her injuries after setting herself on fire when police set free her alleged rapists in 2014. Image source: Reuters
When the family returned home, they saw Maria lying on the floor, with 85 per cent of her body covered in burns, the uncle said. Maria was taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad, where she later succumbed on Wednesday.
Nabeela Ghazafar, Punjab Police spokesman said, three people were arrested on Wednesday, June 1 in Islamabad in connection with the killing. An arrest warrant is out for a fourth individual, she added. The provincial government has set up a three-member team to investigate the case.
According to the report from independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there have been 76 cases of women being set on fire. Commission also said that violence against women remains rampant in the country.
-prepared by Bhaskar Raghavendran (with inputs from VOA), a reporter at NewsGram. Twitter: bhaskar_ragha
Surely not accepted by anybody. Pakistan needs to look into women safety issues
Pashchiema Bhatia
Why these people cannot absorb a rejection? .. Women aren’t any object… They have the right to make their own decisions.. People generally argue that these sort of things happen on the spur of the moment.. This is nuisance.. In India also, people talk about women empowerment on one side and on the other side cases of acid attacks show up ruining the lives of innocent girls.. This is too much to bear
Shubhi Mangla
This is shameful!! Just because she didn’t want to marry that person she was set ablaze..pathetic! The police should punish the culprits ASAP. I hope the authorities don’t take this matter casually just like the many other crimes that go unattended.
devika todi
it is shameful that such things still happen in the world. don’t we have a say in matters that concern us and our entire life? should anyone be harmed, if their decision goes against our wishes?
this is barbaric.
sahil nandwani
It is very dissapointing! The women’s should not be harmed like this the police should take strict actions agaist such kind of persons.
Who is more dominant, Chinese government or US government?. Pixabay
By N.S. Venkataraman
Chinese government has not left anybody in doubt, about it’s ambitious target of dominating the world at any cost. Chinese government has been suppressing freedom of speech in China, taking away the rights of citizens of Hong Kong in authoritarian manner and aggressively occupying the territory of neighbours such as Tibet and part of Indian territory, which it occupied after 1962 Indo Chinese war. China is now claiming Indian province Arunachal Pradesh as it’s own and aggressively claiming territorial right in South China Sea and Senkaku island. Chinese government says that Taiwan is part of it’s territory and objects to any recognition given to Taiwan by any other country.
Further, China is trying to enforce it’s domination over small and weak nearby countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and others, by extending loans, which these countries cannot afford to repay in the foreseeable future.
Viewing China’s methods and targets, one does not find much of difference between today’s Chinese government and Hitler’s Germany. Several countries in the world are gradually realizing that checking China’s ambition is as necessary, as checking Hitler’s ambition that caused World War II.
Chinese government has been suppressing freedom of speech in China. Pixabay
However, the supporters of China claim that US government too should be accused of trying to dominate the world and it has sent troops to several countries such as Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and others to enforce it’s domination. There is an element of truth in this, as American government seem to think that it has the duty to police the world.
In any case, on careful analysis of the scenario and judiciously comparing the domination desire of China and USA, one cannot but see a subtle difference between both these countries.
While China believes in ruthless elimination of opponents both inside and outside China (just like the way Hitler did) and wants to occupy territories of other countries by coercion or force , US does not indulge in such acts of suppression of human rights or occupying territory of other countries.
US has not concealed it’s desire that freedom of speech and democratic procedures should prevail in all regions in the world. On many occasions , US has fought against totalitarian regimes, religious extremists and terrorist groups and has paid a high price by losing American lives.
USA desires to dominate the world. Pixabay
USA may have the ambition to dominate the world and ensure it’s authority as super power, but it has no ambition of territorial expansions that China has.
All said and done, if the world were to choose between USA and China, it would inevitably come to the conclusion that world domination by USA is a lesser evil than the world domination by China.
Unlike China, the citizens of USA have the right to criticise the decisions of the government, launch protests against human rights violation, if any and exercise their franchise once in four years to change the party in power, if it would act against the wishes of the people. By such process, the conscience of USA largely remain in tact and US government is vulnerable to the pressure of public opinion, both in USA and other parts of the world.
In China, the citizens don’t have the right to criticise the decisions of the government. Pixabay
On the other hand, China has totalitarian regime and no citizen can survive in China if he would criticise the Chinese President or question the decision of the Chinese government. To this extent, it is dictatorial regime in China, which can be termed as uncivilized form of governance.
The fact is that USA has been remaining as super power in the world for several decades now and the world has not become worse due to the dominating power of USA. Of course, there have been criticism against US government by some section of world opinion but most of such critics belong to religious extremist groups and motivated leftist (communist) forces , whose economic and administrative policies have totally failed to deliver the goods.
Achieving super power status by China and establishing it’s authority in large parts of the world with least consideration for value systems and sentiments of people, is the worst thing that can happen to the world civilization.
Afghan Refugees in Pakistan Suffer under Coronavirus Lockdown as kids are seem playing outside a refugee camp. VOA
By Ayesha Tanzeem
Nearly 2.5 million Afghans live in Pakistan as either registered or undocumented refugees. Their lives have been upended by the coronavirus lockdown, but they seem to be getting little attention. Even though this might not hold much relevance in international news amid the COVID crisis, the lives of the refugees are in a terrible state.
This Afghan refugee settlement in Islamabad doesn’t have electricity or other basic facilities.
Most people here depend on day work for their living. As the novel coronavirus spread and the country went into a partial lockdown, their livelihoods were nearly destroyed.
“These people hardly made $3-4 per day. Some of them picked up paper from the streets or trash for recycling, some worked as motorcycle mechanics. All of them are now sitting at home,” said Abdul Hameed, Afghan Refugee Representative.
An estimated 800 families, or around 5,000 individuals, live in this settlement. Many of them work at the nearby vegetable market.
“Ever since the coronavirus has spread, the authorities don’t allow us to gather inside the market. We wait along the roadside all day long, but no one gives us work,” said Abdul Khaliq, a day worker.
Afghan refugees’s lives have been upended by the coronavirus lockdown. Pixabay
On Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees announced a cash assistance program for some of them. A two-month delay in making the aid available was blamed on a lack of resources.
“We realized that we would need money that we did not have. We had to go very quickly to donors to explain the level of intervention that we wanted to do. We needed to get confident that the donors were going to support that,” said Iain Hall, Deputy Representative of UNHCR Pakistan.
The U.N. agency acknowledges that the money, while helpful, is not enough to help everyone in need. In addition, half of the nearly three million Afghans living in Pakistan don’t have official refugee status and do not fall under the agency’s mandate.
While the impacts of global warming on agricultural productivity have been studied extensively, the implications of sudden cooling for global crop growth are little understood
Nuclear weapons must be eliminated because if they exist, they can be used with tragic consequences for the world. Pixabay
A war between India and Pakistan using less than one per cent of nuclear weapons available in the world could lead to the worst global food crisis in modern history, say researchers.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that sudden global cooling from a limited nuclear war along with less precipitation and sunlight could disrupt food production and trade worldwide for about a decade — more than the impact from anthropogenic climate change by late (21st) century.
While the impacts of global warming on agricultural productivity have been studied extensively, the implications of sudden cooling for global crop growth are little understood, according to the researchers. “Our results add to the reasons that nuclear weapons must be eliminated because if they exist, they can be used with tragic consequences for the world,” said study co-author Alan Robock, Professor at Rutgers University in the US.
Robock co-authored a recent study in the journal Science Advances estimating more than 100 million people could die immediately if India and Pakistan wage a nuclear war, followed by global mass starvation.
For the new study, the research team used a scenario of five million tons of black smoke (soot) from massive fires injected into the upper atmosphere that could result from using only 100 nuclear weapons.
That would cool the Earth by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and lead to eight per cent lower precipitation and less sunlight for at least five years.
The researchers included those climate changes in computer simulations by six different crop models for four major crops that account for 90 per cent of global cereal production in terms of calories.
They found that corn calorie production would fall by 13 per cent, wheat by 11 per cent, rice by three per cent and soybeans by 17 per cent over five years. Total first-year losses of 12 per cent would be four times larger than any food shortage in history, such as those caused by historic droughts and volcanic eruptions, the study said.
A war between India and Pakistan using less than one per cent of nuclear weapons available in the world could lead to the worst global food crisis in modern history, say researchers. Pixabay
Analyses of food trade networks show that domestic reserves and global trade can largely buffer the loss of food production in the first year. But multiyear losses would reduce domestic food availability, especially in food-insecure countries.
By year five, corn and wheat availability would decrease by 13 per cent globally and by more than 20 per cent in 71 countries with a total of 1.3 billion people. Corn production in the US and Canada — representing more than 40 per cent of global production — would drop by 17.5 per cent.
According to the researchers, 16 million tons of smoke could arise from a nuclear war between India and Pakistan since they now have more and bigger weapons and their potential targets are larger. (IANS)
