Life is fun, evolving, amusing...not since 16.12.14 :/
Pakistan
Joined June 2009
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SGul retweeted
This is so utterly condemnable -
Saudi Arabia has executed a Bangladeshi man and woman in Mecca after convicting them of committing an “indecent act” inside a mosque. However, Bangladeshi authorities say they were not informed of the executions until after they had taken place and have sought details about the offence and legal proceedings. The executions have raised concerns in Bangladesh, which has more than three million nationals living and working in Saudi Arabia.
SGul retweeted
The police shot and killed a one year old because his mother had allegedly shoplifted nappies (diapers, in American). Yes, in the richest country in the world.
Police used 'justified' force in fatal shooting of one-year-old, says Mississippi attorney general bbc.in/4shjthB
SGul retweeted
Calgary Opera in Canada removes bass-baritone Gabriel Sanchez-Ortega from future performances of the opera Tosca after he raised a Palestinian flag during the curtain call on opening night.
SGul retweeted
She taught at the National College of Arts for 31 years.
Four of them as principal.
Salima Hashmi. Born December 1942. New Delhi. Salima Ahmed.
Daughter of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Alys Faiz. The family came to Lahore in February 1947. Faiz had left the British Indian Army in 1945 and taken the editorship of The Pakistan Times and Imroze.
She was eight, when her father was jailed.
School at Queen Mary's, then Kinnaird High School after the arrest. FA at Lahore College for Women.
Design at the National College of Arts. Then England in the early 1960s. Diploma in art education from the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, 1965. Master's from the Rhode Island School of Design, 1990. The Bath Academy invited her back in 2016 and gave her an honorary doctorate from Bath Spa University.
She married Shoaib Hashmi, a professor at Government College and the Lahore School of Economics. Two children. Yasser Hashmi and Mira Hashmi.
1981. She started Rohtas Gallery to show work that could not be seen in government venues during the Zia era.
2001 Rohtas 2. At her house in Model Town, for the work of young artists.
Thirty one years teaching at NCA. Four as principal. From 2003 to 2015.
Dean of visual arts and design at Beaconhouse National University. Founding dean of the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts and Design there. Professor Emerita from 2017.
She has organised international exhibitions in England, Europe, the United States, Australia, Japan and India, and lectured across those same cities.
In May 1998, India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons. She was Principal of the National College of Arts at the time. She answered with paintings. The series is called The People Wept at Dawn. Works from this period are dated 1998, 1999 and 2000. She said all that energy could have gone into food, shelter, health and education for everyone.
The books. Unveiling the Visible: Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan, 2002.
ActionAid and Sang-e-Meel.
Interviews and research over a decade on fifty women painters across three generations. The first of its kind in the country.
Memory, Metaphor, Mutations: Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan, 2006, with Yashodhara Dalmia, Oxford University Press.
The Eye Still Seeks: Contemporary Art of Pakistan. 50 Years of Visual Arts in Pakistan, with Quddus Mirza.
A founding member of the Women's Action Forum. Vice-chair for Punjab of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Member of Amnesty International. In March 2021 she became a founder member and advisor of the Southasia Peace Action Network, launched online by nearly 90 people.
Caretaker minister in the Sethi ministry.
Pride of Performance, 1999.
Alma Award, 2016.
Sughra Rababi Lifetime Achievement Award, 2024.
Lifetime Achievement Award at the Lahore Literary Festival, 2024.
Named for the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2025.
She is still living. Still mentoring. Still curating.
The father's poems were the house she grew up in.
The college was the room she ran for a generation.
Salima Hashmi.
Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰
SGul retweeted
Two Palestinian children have just been killed by the israelis in an air strike that targeted the south side of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza
SGul retweeted
Message by Bibi Asifa Bhutto Zardari, First Lady of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, On the occasion of Breast Cancer Awareness Day, 19 October 2026
On Breast Cancer Awareness Day, I want to remind women across Pakistan that their health matters and that they should never hesitate to seek medical advice when they have concerns about their health.
Breast cancer affects women and families in many different circumstances. For a woman facing the disease, the experience can bring fear and uncertainty. For her family, it can also be a difficult time. This is why awareness and support are so important.
Early attention to changes in one’s health can help women seek appropriate medical advice in time. I encourage fellow women to be attentive to their health and to speak to qualified healthcare professionals whenever they have concerns. Awareness should help us replace fear and silence with informed decisions and timely care.
Families have an important role to play as well. Women should feel comfortable discussing their health concerns with those close to them and should receive encouragement when they seek medical care. A supportive family can make it easier for a woman to face the challenges that come with a serious illness.
We must also ensure that accurate information about breast cancer reaches women and families across Pakistan. Healthcare professionals, community organisations, civil society, the media and educational institutions can all help create greater awareness and encourage women to seek appropriate care.
I also want to recognise the women who are living with breast cancer and those who have gone through treatment. Their strength deserves our respect, and they should know that they have the support of their families and communities.
I appreciate the doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, volunteers, patient organisations, media workers and others who work to create awareness and support the women affected by breast cancer. Their efforts help women and families navigate a difficult journey with greater understanding and support.
On this day, let us speak more openly about breast cancer and encourage the women around us to give their health the attention it deserves. Let us ensure that no woman feels alone in seeking care or in facing this disease.
——
SGul retweeted
“She was trapped amid the flames, crying, while the intense fire and thick smoke made it really difficult for us to get inside and rescue her.”
This Palestinian journalist pulled a young girl from a burning residential building after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
SGul retweeted
45 year-old Palestinian citizen Ahmad Zahir Humaidat from Jalazone refugee camp in Ramallah, dies at the hands of the israelis in custody
SGul retweeted
BREAKING: At least 74,475 people have been killed and 175,517 wounded by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/e9uqrl
SGul retweeted
Interesting to note that neither Zia nor Begum Zia make any bones about shaking hands with members of the opposite sex in their 1982 visit to the US.
SGul retweeted
Majority of gang rape cases in the country occur in Punjab. Pakistan is not a safe country for women, and the saddest part is that no one seems to care or wants to fix this. Unfortunate that all of this is happening under the watch of a female Chief Minister. This is precisely why we need women’s empowerment from the grassroots level, not just elite women who uphold patriarchy and abuse the system just like men.
Patriarchy always gives power to women who uphold their agenda. What a sad state of affairs!
Important story @Riazhaq
dawn.com/news/2037785
Gang-rape on the rise in Punjab. Disturbing facts revealed by @Riazhaq Punjab has accounted for 89.7 percent of all the registered rape cases across the country. Gang-rape alone makes up 62.8 percent of the total national rape-related data, but Punjab has a share of 99.2 percent of all registered gang-rape cases. In Punjab, gang-rape cases account for 69.4 percent of the total caseload and its 29,555 registered cases are 6.6 times its 4,494 cases of single-perpetrator rape. Every other province shows the inverse pattern. Sindh records 4.3 single-perpetrator rapes for every gang-rape, KP 51 and Balochistan 47. More details 👇
dawn.com/news/2037785
SGul retweeted
Remembering Dr Waheed Qureshi, a leading scholar of Urdu, Persian and Iqbal studies - goo.gl/alerts/iDzuFZ
SGul retweeted
Perseverance pays
Nobody knew her exact birthday.
So chose one for herself
Sidra Qasim. Okara. Punjab. Pakistan.
Her mother's best guess for her birthday was a few days before Pakistan beat India by one wicket in 1986.
Raised outside Okara, Punjab. One of six siblings.
Then Lahore.
Then Mountain View.
Then Brooklyn.
Then she became CEO of a sneaker company whose revenue grew from $1.8M to $12M in two years.
At 17, a matchmaker came to her home. She looked her in the eye and said she was not ready.
At 18, she met a student at her aunt's house. His name was Waqas Ali.
She finished a degree in economics. Waqas had a startup idea. After a month of persuading, her parents let her move to Lahore.
Their first idea failed. An event they paid for with 70,000 rupees brought no clients. Their families called them home.
Then news arrived of a $10,000 grant. They had forgotten they applied.
They turned to leather shoes. An online brand, with Pakistani craftsmen making every pair.
Markhor. She managed operations and product development.
They applied to Y Combinator. Rejected.
Kickstarter did not allow projects from Pakistan. So they registered the company in the US.
Waqas borrowed $3,500 for his first ever flight. He came back with $30,000 from two investors.
September 22, 2014. Kickstarter launch. Goal: $15,000.
They hit it by the next morning.
The campaign closed at $107,286. The most successful Kickstarter ever from Pakistan.
March 8, 2015. International Women's Day. They got married.
Then Y Combinator said yes. Summer 2015. The first Pakistani company in the program.
They barely spoke English. At night they watched American movies with subtitles and listened to startup podcasts.
Then Demo Day taught them a hard lesson. Of the 60 or 70 YC people who bought Markhor shoes, only a couple wore them. People wore sneakers.
She asked her husband what opportunity they were really sitting in.
Every day they sat in Golden Gate Park with books and case studies. They wrote their questions in a Google doc called Project K2.
They started over. Atoms. Sneakers in quarter sizes. Named for quality at an atomic level.
2019. Brooklyn. Model 000.
A 13,000 square foot headquarters in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With its own art gallery.
Her focus was business, operations and finance. Atoms grew 300% year on year.
2021. Humans of New York told her story.
September 2022. She became CEO.
Atoms noted how rare that is. A Pakistani woman leading a footwear company.
2025. She opened a funding round to customers. About 450 of them invested over $2M. She called it the most meaningful experience of her career.
Back in Okara, her mother was the first woman in town to drive a car. She became a headmistress and opened a computer lab.
A girl from Okara who chose her own birthday.
Now CEO of a company in Brooklyn.
Sidra Qasim.
Pakistan Zindabad. 🇵🇰
SGul retweeted
Predetermined Innocence or Guilt? Shabbir dar asking the absolute right questions - we continue to move forward and thank the people of Pakistan for their support. No one will stop us from getting justice for Hina.
It appears that the head of the high-level committee formed to investigate the #HinaJaved murder case has made the case controversial himself by prematurely commenting on its findings. The details emerging now are raising serious questions about the police investigation & the claims made by the investigators.
SGul retweeted
New Zealand is deeply concerned at reports of attacks by Israeli settlers against diplomatic personnel and journalists in the West Bank. We call on Israel to conduct an immediate and full investigation and expect accountability for those responsible. Israel must take action to end ongoing settler violence in the West Bank.
