Re: Student activism absent from city’s campuses
E-Resistance Blooms in Pakistan](http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/nov2007/gb20071112_430063.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business)
** With the media muzzled, citizens are blogging and using sites like Facebook to spread news and organize “flash” protests against Musharraf’s emergency rule **
On Nov. 7 at 2 p.m., about 1,000 students of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), the most elite business school in Pakistan, gathered to protest the imposition of virtual martial law by President Pervez Musharraf and the arrests and beatings of many lawyers. The students, mostly children of Pakistan’s intelligentsia and middle classes, were horrified to hear that on Nov. 4, the day after Musharraf imposed the rule of emergency on his country, police had broken into a peaceful meeting inside the premises of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and dragged away over 70 of Lahore’s best minds, including lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jehangir, and locked them in jail or put them under house arrest. A complete blackout of cable television—the most pervasive medium in Pakistan—radio, and the Urdu press had blocked images from public view, but word spread. The students decided to participate in the protests.
That’s when the blogging began. On Nov. 5, the Emergency Times (and an attendant appeared. It declared itself “an independent Pakistani student initiative against injustice and oppression,” which gave readers a regular update and comments on the emergency, and student activities against it across Pakistan. It announced that there would be a protest by LUMS students on Nov. 7 at 2 p.m., as also at FAST-NU, a technical university in Lahore. This was followed by Metroblogging Lahore and Metroblogging Karachi, all of which began to post comments about the emergency and its impact in Pakistani cities.
Facebook users joined in. Under Event Info, the Students Protest for a Free Pakistan put out the word to students of Islamabad’s Hamdard University to gather outside the college, in support of other protesting students at LUMS, as well as Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad and Punjab University in Lahore, all simultaneously at 2 p.m. on Nov. 7. The Facebook tagline: “The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” And in the description of the event, this is what the group had to say: “The time has COME for us students to stand up against the tyranny of a dictator. We must join hands with the countless citizens already protesting for our safety…and protest for our rights…to protect what is ours, and not someone else’s to hijack.”
Calling on the Student Community
**The Nov. 7 protests were, by any standard, a huge success. The police charged the students with batons inside their campuses, arrested economics professors, laid siege to students in their classrooms, and seized media cameras and equipment. But the students stuck around till darkness began to fall. A. Moiz Penkar, a Facebook participant, wrote in excitement upon his return: “Just came back from there. Made me very sad but hopeful. Big thumbs up to everyone who came!” Metroblogging Lahore ended its reportage of the day by saying: “We call upon the entire student community of Pakistan to rise up. Together, we will take this to its inevitable conclusion. In Complete Unity.” **
Pakistan may be under military siege, but its citizens have found a place to make themselves heard through the sophisticated use of the Internet. An unexpected but robust underground e-resistance movement is under way in Pakistan—from blogs, to flash mobs, to e-mails, to streaming video broadcasts, to cell-phone multimedia and text messages.
