According to the report of Dhaka Tribune, 15th April, 2015, several women, who joined the Bengali New Year celebrations on Tuesday, were sexually assaulted by a group of miscreants at Dhaka University's (DU) TSC and Suhrawardy Udyan gate areas. Witnesses said a group of at least 30 unruly youths swooped on a number of women and assaulted them on Tuesday evening, while a string of festivities were being held, celebrating the first day of the Bengali year,

After 7 months of much fanfare Imran Khan, former Cricketer turned politician brought an end to his ‘Dharna' (protest) or ‘Azadi (Freedom) march,' and re-joined the Pakistan parliament. Speaking to reporters after emerging from a huddle with the party's core policy makers on April 6, Imran Khan said, "We have decided to attend the joint session of Parliament on Monday. The Yemen issue is very important... I will attend myself and present my party's point of view."

Imran had begun his protests against the government on Pakistan Independence Day back on August 14, 2014. Imran Khan's demands were the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif due to the allegation of vote rigging in the elections of May 2013, where Sharif won with a landslide victory. Re-elections in the alleged seats where vote rigging took place and eventually Imran Khan's demands evolved to include reform of the electoral system as a whole. As soon as Imran Khan announced his plans, Dr Tahir ul-Qadri announced his party the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) would also conduct a similar protest march to Islamabad on Pakistan's Independence Day. Both protests effectively merged together. Pakistan's media at the time gave complete coverage to the march which started from Lahore, a city which is 300 km from Islamabad. The media contributed to making the whole march much larger than it really was. When Imran Khan reached Islamabad on 16 August 2014, he announced to his supporters and the whole of Pakistan through the country's media that their sole demand was Nawaz Sharif must resign and new elections must be held.

These protests took place with very high anti-regime sentiment. A severe energy crisis continues today in Pakistan, with the basic price of fuel beyond the means of most people. Pakistan's economy is in such bad shape that inflation has made the poor even poorer. The IMF and World Bank as well as America's military and economic aid has been linked to economic reforms, which include more privatisation, whilst US aid has been directly linked to operations in Waziristan. The death and destruction due to the monsoon floods in Pakistan's provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (KPK) added to the resentment of the people against the government and it was in this light Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri conducted their protests.

As the days turned into weeks and then months Nawaz Sharif's position was never really under threat, whilst allegations of vote rigging was a façade. Whilst there is every possibility that vote rigging in electoral polls took place, this is normal in Pakistan and not its departure from what has always been the case in the country. Imran Khan's claim of vote rigging could never be taken seriously. Of the 342 seats in Pakistan's parliament Sharif's party won 147 seats, after the results were announced a further 19 independent politicians joined his party giving the PML-N 166 seats. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won 42 seats whilst Imran Khan's PTI won a mere 35 seats. Imran Khan's demand of recounting, at most 10 constituencies (this number continues to change) in reality was an irrelevant demand. Sharif's electoral victory was so large that if he subsequently lost these 10 constituencies, it would not affect the overall result of the election. On 19 August 2014, the Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan addressed the nation and announced that the government was ready to recount votes of 20 constituencies, in his evening address in Islamabad to his supporters Imran Khan rejected this.

The demonstrations had all but fizzled out by October 2014, well before Tahrul Qadri called it a day at the end of October. When Imran Khan called for an end to the protests in December, when the Peshawar attack took place, the stark reality was everyone had seen though his Azadi charade. The announcement to re-join parliament was just the last act in the circus that was called the ‘Azadi' march, similar to the grand act in a circus that brings the event to a close.

Real change was never part of Imran Khan's agenda and never has it ever been the PTI vision. This can be seen from the demands of the march which have constantly evolved, but in origin were never for systemic change but merely change in personnel and some irrelevant processes. Despite Imran Khan's rhetoric of a 5^th Khilafah "Caliphate" Rashida, underneath all this veneer there is nothing Imran Khan is really offering the People of Pakistan but false promises which have given life to the crippling system in Pakistan. Both Imran Khan and Tahrul Qadri constantly take to the streets when the people of Pakistan have lost complete confidence in Pakistan's politicians, parliament, judicial process and the system as a whole. Each time both lured the public back to the system that has failed them.

There can be no doubt now that Imran Khan and his party the PTI are now another aspect of Pakistan's corrupt system. Whilst he criticises Nawaz Sharif and the other corrupt politicians, Imran Khan merely called for replacing Nawaz Sharif (not the system) and his own party has seen a raft of Musharraf era politicians fill the ranks of PTI. Rather than (new) Pakistan Imran Khan is firmly old Pakistan. This begs the question of why he led the nation with a circus back to the parliament - which is another circus in its own right. All of this took place when the army was in full swing with its deeply unpopular Zarb-e-Azb operation in Waziristan. Imran Khan firmly distracted all attention from this with his circus - Dharna.

The media, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan, Tahrul Qadri and the army remain in cahoots to deflect attention from the real issues of the country and in their failure to resolve them, by consuming them with daily nonsense on politicians attacking each other and making grandiose promises to bring real change. In fact Imran Khan was the head of this strategy as he made the most grandiose promises.

Imran Khan's supporters need to understand that no matter what promises he or anyone else makes of tinkering with Pakistan's secular, corrupt parliament and sham system, this is a recipe for maintaining the system. As the corrupt politicians dominate parliament they will always legislate to maintain the status quo and their positions and democracy is the system that allows them to have this. Until this is not uprooted and replaced others will come like Imran Khan and make similar promises of just scratching the surface of Pakistan's rotten system, which will perpetuate the misery the people continue to suffer from.

Real change in Pakistan begins with eradicating the virus, the virus is democracy in this case. Eradicating this is where real change begins. The Ummah in Pakistan needs to take the example of their brothers and sisters in the Arab Spring who took to the streets to bring real change, anything less than this is just a false dream. Whilst Imran Khan's supporters coined the slogan ‘Go Nawaz Go,' should have always been ‘No Imran No.'

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Adnan Khan

Dialogue Guest: Dr. Mohammed Mekdich member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Tunisia.

Monday 1 Rajab 1436 AH corresponding to 20 April 2015 CE

Headlines:

• Cemil Cicek: Int'l organizations still maintain double-standard position on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

• Nawaz, Erdogan vow to defend Saudi Arabia

• Gulerce denies Sabah's slanderous headline targeting Gulen movement

Details:

Cemil Cicek: Int'l organizations still maintain double-standard position on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

"Armenia must liberate Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region and the surrounding districts it has occupied"
Moscow. Farid Akbarov - APA. The position of Turkey on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is clear. On all platforms, we reiterate the importance of a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and liberation of the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia.

Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly Cemil Cicek made the remarks on Wednesday during a press conference in Moscow, APA's Moscow correspondent reported.

Asked by the APA correspondent whether he discussed the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict during the meetings with the Russian officials, Cemil Cicek said activities of the OSCE Minsk Group, whose mission is to find a solution to the conflict, are not satisfactory.

"Regretfully, the OSCE Minsk Group fails to do anything for the settlement of this conflict. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict started 23 years ago. Unfortunately, international organizations still maintains a double-standard position on the conflict," he underlined.

Cicek noted that stability in the South Caucasus is impossible unless the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"Armenia must liberate Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region and the surrounding districts it has occupied," he added. [Source: Azeri-Press Agency (APA)]

While official figures say that four thousand is lost since Nagorno-Karabakh War, Turkish executives still tries to improve relations between former Soviet Armed Forces servant Serzh Sargsyan leading Armenia and Soviet successor Russia. "Cicek told reporters that Russia is not only a neighbor, but also a country that Ankara attaches importance on a regional and global scale."

Nawaz, Erdogan vow to defend Saudi Arabia

ISLAMABAD: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a phone call on Saturday evening to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for deliberations on the latest situation in the Middle East with reference to the Yemen crisis.

The two leaders held a conversation for three quarters of an hour. They discussed the situation in the region and agreed that both countries would accelerate efforts to resolve the situation through peaceful means.

Diplomatic sources told ‘The News' that Prime Minister Nawaz and President Erdogan were in agreement that the rebels of Yemen were responsible for aggravating the situation and stressed that the Houthis didn't have any right to overthrow a legitimate government in Yemen that had destabilised the country and the region.

They affirmed that any violation of the territorial integrity of Saudi Arabia would evoke a strong reaction from both the countries. The sources observed that for the first time the two countries had publicly acknowledged the severity of the situation as it could have serious implications for the region.

Pakistan and Turkey agreed to continue close coordination as it was their moral and international obligation to play a role in protecting the countries of the region from devastating instability.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is in touch with various important Muslim leaders in his effort to resolve the ME crisis.

It is likely that Pakistan would send a high-level delegation headed by Adviser to PM on Foreign Affairs and National Security Sartaj Aziz to Saudi Arabia soon with a special message from Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the Saudi leadership. The decision would be taken tomorrow (Monday) in high-level meeting here at the PM House

Meanwhile, Sartaj Aziz will have an important meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Tuesday (April 14) in Kabul where both will attend a trilateral meeting on Afghanistan. It is likely that they will also have detailed discussions on the Yemen crisis. [Source: The News Pakistan]

As usual pro-American leaders vow to serve their master's profits in the Middle East.

Gulerce denies Sabah's slanderous headline targeting Gulen movement

In its main story published on Monday, with a headline reading "Scary prophecy," Sabah reported that Gulerce said the June 7 election is a matter of life and death for the movement and said the "parallel structure" -- a term invented by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to refer to adherents of the faith based Gulen movement -- could even commit political murders ahead of the parliamentary election.

Answering a question on what the movement could do before the elections and recalling baseless allegations suggesting assassinations may take place against prominent figures, Gulerce was reported as saying that even political murders could possibly be committed as part of a plan to create chaos before the elections. However, he was not clearly quoted as saying that the Gulen movement would be the perpetrator of the alleged attacks. [Source: Today's Zaman]

Less than 2 months remain to parliament elections in Turkey and conflict between the two effectual movements in Turkey rises. Fethullah Gulen's former right arm Huseyin Gulerce told to an Erdogan adherent daily Sabah that it could be political assassinations against popular persons. But he soon denied this from his twitter account.