Islamabad, July 5 (IANS) An anti-terrorism court in Pakistan’s Quetta sentenced Baloch activist Mahrang Baloch to life imprisonment, sparking criticism from international human rights organisations and reigniting concerns over the trajectory of the rule of law in the country. However, the case has demonstrated how Pakistan’s “Hard State” doctrine is evolving from a counterterrorism strategy into a broader model of governance, a report has detailed. This transformation did not take place overnigh…
Latest Dimitra Staikou News & Updates
Brussels, June 13 (IANS) The grooming gang scandal in the United Kingdom (UK) exposes a deeper institutional failure rather than criminal brutality. Victims’ complaints, police reports, court cases, and local investigations repeatedly revealed patterns that were present across multiple towns but not adequately addressed, a report has stated.The issue of a significant number of offenders coming from British communities of Pakistani heritage was long treated as politically sensitive, despite the…
Brussels, June 13 (IANS) The clash between the authorities and the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) has raised wider concerns about political representation, democratic accountability, and the use of anti-terror laws against grassroots movements. What began as a campaign for electoral reform has quickly expanded into a broader crisis marked by communication blackouts, heavy security deployment, arrests, political violence, and competing claims …
Rome, May 23 (IANS) Pakistan’s education crisis exposes a deep governance failure, where official claims of combating extremism are undermined by allowing school materials and public narratives that reinforce the ideology sustaining it. For years, the education system in the country has remained a major concern among human rights advocates, minority representatives and education reformers, a report had detailed.Europe’s stance on human rights appears inconsistent when it overlooks the ideolo…
Brussels, May 9 (IANS) Pakistan’s military establishment for decades has regarded the sponsorship of terrorism as a “low-cost tool”, facing no meaningful accountability. By placing the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance following last year’s April 22 Pahalgam terror attack carried out by a Pakistan-based terror group, India has brought the agreement itself into the strategic “cost calculus”, effectively dismantling that insulation, a report said on Saturday.Writing for ‘European Ti…
Brussels, May 2 (IANS) Political Islam in the United Kingdom is resurging not merely as an identity marker but as an instrument of political power, entrenched within institutional frameworks and supported by transnational networks. It has created an interconnected dynamic where geopolitical instability, ideological shifts, and migration flows overlap — “an evolution the West continues to underestimate by treating it as a series of isolated crises,” a report said on Saturday.Writing for ‘Euro…
Brussels, April 15 (IANS) Although Pakistan seeks to project itself as a peace broker between the United States and Iran, this narrative runs counter to Pakistani military actions in Afghanistan, which have resulted in significant Afghan civilian casualties, including women and children. This contradiction undermines Islamabad’s moral claims, as a nation cannot easily market itself as “a guardian of regional stability” while “carrying the baggage of its own coercive record next door”, a repo…
Washington, April 11 (IANS) Pakistan’s position on women is not merely a case of gender inequality but reflects a broader systemic failure by the authorities to protect basic human rights. Amid a climate of institutional tolerance, practices such as forced marriages and so-called “honour killings” continue to persist across the country, a report detailed this week.Writing for the US-based online platform ‘Medium’, European political analyst and journalist Dimitra Staikou stated that despite …
Islamabad, April 2 (IANS) As Pakistan claims of being a potential mediator between the United States and Iran during the ongoing conflict in West Asia, a report has highlighted that Islamabad has consistently sought to turn crisis into opportunities for relevance, projecting itself as useful to all parties while avoiding the “costs of full alignment” with any one of them. Writing for ‘EuropaWire,’ Dimitra Staikou, a Greek lawyer, writer, and journalist, recently emphasised that Pakistan’s contin…
Islamabad, March 30 (IANS) The recent statements in Pakistan by figures linked to terrorist networks reveal a troubling pattern of leveraging symbolic and emotionally charged occasions to strengthen narratives of conflict, identity, and cross-border mobilisation, a report highlighted on Monday.Writing for ‘Pressenza – International Press Agency’, Dimitra Staikou, a Greek journalist and writer, stated that this dynamic came into sharp focus on March 22, when rhetoric started circulating on the …