RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13432/pakistan-country-particular-concern

“Occupations deemed as ‘dirty’ and ‘shameful’ are reserved for Christians, and many believers are victims of bonded labor. Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws target religious minorities but affect Christians the most…”. — Open Doors.

“Christians continue to be killed for accusations of blasphemy, as well as for their low status in society. In June 2017, a Christian sewage worker died in a hospital because three Muslim doctors refused to touch him, thereby making themselves unclean, during their Ramadan fast.” — Open Doors .

“Abusive enforcement of the country’s strict blasphemy laws resulted in the suppression of rights for non-Muslims, Shi’a Muslims, and Ahmadis.” — United States Commission on International Freedom.

Pakistan was among the nations recently designated by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “Countries of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 for having engaged in or tolerated ‘systematic, ongoing, [and] egregious violations of religious freedom.'”

Islamabad promptly issued an angry response, which reads, in part:

“Pakistan rejects the US State Department’s unilateral and politically motivated pronouncement… Besides the clear biases reflected from these designations, there are serious questions on the credentials and impartiality of the self-proclaimed jury involved in this unwarranted exercise.

“Around 4 percent of our total population comprises citizens belonging to Christian, Hindu, Budhists [sic] and Sikh faiths. Ensuring equal treatment of minorities and their enjoyment of human rights without any discrimination is the cardinal principle of the Constitution of Pakistan…”

“As a party to seven out of the nine core human rights treaties, Pakistan has been submitting compliance reports on its obligations with regard to fundamental freedoms. The government of Pakistan has devised well-establishment legal and administrative mechanisms to safeguard the rights of its citizens. Pakistan does not need counsel by any individual country on how to protect the rights of its minorities.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bomb-explosion-in-athens-fuels-fear-of-new-generation-of-terror-11545907002

Two people were injured after a bomb exploded outside a church in central Athens on Thursday, fueling concerns of a resurgence of urban-guerrilla violence in Greece.

The growing number of recent attacks has sparked fears of the emergence of a new generation of terrorist groups rooted in far-left organizations that target the conservative establishment.

Thursday’s blast occurred just after 7 a.m. local time outside an Orthodox Church in the upscale neighborhood of Kolonaki, before it was due to open for service. A police officer and the church caretaker were wounded and rushed to hospital, the officials said. There was no warning call to authorities or claim of responsibility.

“The church caretaker spotted a box outside the entrance of the church, moved it and called the police,” a police official said. “It exploded a few minutes later when the police arrived; the blast was not powerful.” The two were slightly injured and were receiving treatment at local hospitals, officials said.

Earlier this month a powerful bomb exploded outside a big Greek media group, in what officials called an attack on free speech and democracy. In mid-November, a bomb was placed outside the house of senior Greek judge in central Athens. No one was wounded as there were warning calls for the attacks.

Last year, former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was wounded and hospitalized for several weeks after he opened a letter bomb while riding in his car. In March 2017 Greek politicians and European Union officials were targeted in the same manner. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-bumbling-police-state-11545869066

Barely a day goes by without a story about China’s ambition to use new technologies for nefarious means, and Human Rights Watch has amassed evidence that President Xi Jinping is building a “digital totalitarian state.” But Beijing’s aspirations to control people’s everyday lives are not so easily realized. Supporters of human rights have plenty of opportunities to limit the damage.

The recent headlines are chilling: “In China, your car could be talking to the government.” “China’s brightest children are being recruited to develop AI ‘killer bots.’ ” The country’s “social credit” system restricts the freedoms of citizens the state considers to have behaved badly. The government is pushing for national DNA and voice-recognition databases and for big-data “predictive policing” programs aimed at picking out political threats—all without any effective protections for privacy. The brutal crackdown on Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China involves both high- and low-tech surveillance.

Yet the Chinese government’s mass-surveillance capabilities are more fearsome in theory than in practice. “While big data has become a sizzling hot concept, there is so much more speculation than actual application,” laments one researcher working for the Chinese police, who adds that police leaders are frustrated they may be “sitting on” a “data gold mine” that they are unable to exploit properly. Authorities’ mass-surveillance ambitions are bedeviled by unreliable and incomplete basic data, as well as incompatible datasets and systems developed by different companies, among other problems.

Plus, citizens across China find ingenious ways to evade surveillance. Blacklisted by the social-credit system? Use documents other than ID cards to get around the restrictions. Concerned your calls are being monitored? Activists have learned creative ways to make police lose track of them.

Beijing has devoted enormous efforts to perfecting mass surveillance during the “Strike Hard” crackdown in Xinjiang, which began in late 2016. One element—the “Becoming Family” program, in which officials are dispatched to live with Muslim families, monitor and indoctrinate them—requires mobilizing 1.1 million government officials to keep tabs on a population of 13 million Muslims.

These programs depend on meticulous data input, which may prove unsustainable. Local officials report logging grueling hours—early morning until midnight, with hardly any vacation—to maintain a constant stream of “dynamic” data necessary for mass surveillance and other repressive measures. CONTINUE AT SITE