Skip to main content

Hameed Haroon: Pakistani media mogul rejects rape accusations by filmmaker

Hameed Haroon
Hameed Haroon (left) and accuser Jamshed Mahmood Raza

The chief executive of one of Pakistan’s most influential newspapers has denied accusations he raped an acclaimed filmmaker, in a case that has spotlighted sexual abuse targeting men and added momentum to the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement.

Director Jamshed Mahmood Raza took to social media over the weekend to allege that Dawn newspaper’s Hameed Haroon raped him 13 years ago.

In October, Raza first described the assault publicly on Twitter but referred to the alleged perpetrator as a “powerful person in our media world”.

Haroon — who hails from one of Pakistan’s wealthiest and most influential families — issued a fierce denial in Dawn, the country’s most popular English daily, late Monday, calling the accusations “simply untrue and intentionally fabricated”.

“I categorically deny the allegation of rape leveled against me,” said Haroon in a statement.

Raza later slammed Haroon’s comments, saying the statement was “nothing but a slap to all us survivors”.

READ ALSO: Okorocha’s Zuma road in Imo renamed Amechi Mbazulike

The allegations have again stirred controversy in the deeply conservative country, where most discussions about sex and abuse are considered taboo.

Some voices have called for accountability, while others dismissed notions of male-on-male sexual assault.

“I have a question: how can a grown man be raped by another individual? Couldn’t they have fought him off,” tweeted writer Salman Rashid.

Others disagreed.

“Rape is not only about physical power; it is about power in general. If a powerful person coerces you to have sex with them, that is rape,” wrote Nida Kirmani on Twitter.

The #MeToo and #Timesup campaigns have gone global since allegations of sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein were made in 2017, sparking an avalanche of accusations against other powerful men.

However, the movement has been slow to catch on in Pakistan, where women have fought for their rights for years in a patriarchal society where so-called “honour” killings and attacks on women remain commonplace.

Cases and allegations involving men assaulting other men have been even more rarely discussed in the country.

VANGUARD

The post Hameed Haroon: Pakistani media mogul rejects rape accusations by filmmaker appeared first on Vanguard News.


by Emmanuel Okogba via Vanguard News https://ift.tt/2SEgsZT Best Known Member of the Cabinet Wikipedia
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

COVID-19: Kano overtakes FCT with total confirmed cases, records 80 in 24 hours

By David Royal Kano state on Thursday overtook the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, with total confirmed cases of COVID-19 after recording 80 cases in 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 219, while Abuja has a total of 178. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Thursday, announced that 204 new cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) have been reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 1932. NCDC also announced that seven more fatalities were recorded, bringing the total number of deaths to 58. The NCDC, in a tweet at about 11:50 p.m. on Thursday, said of the 204 new cases,   80 were recorded in Kano state, 45-Lagos, 12-Gombe, 9-Bauchi, 9-Sokoto, 7-Borno, 7-Edo, 6-Rivers, 6-Ogun, 4-FCT, 4-Akwa Ibom, 4-Bayelsa, 3-Kaduna, 2-Oyo, 2-Delta, 2-Nasarawa, 1-Ondo, 1-Kebbi. Thursday’s 204 new cases are the highest reported in a day since the outbreak of the pandemic in February. READ ALSO: COVID-19:...
Post a Comment
Read more

The anatomy of EndSars protests as an incomplete revolution (1)  

By Douglas Anele Supposing an alien from another planet or solar system visits the earth with capacity to rank the various races of human beings according to their contributions to civilisation particularly in the last six hundred years or so, that alien would perhaps place the black race at the lowest grade. And because Nigeria contains the greatest concentration of black people in the world (one in every four black persons is a Nigerian according to one estimate), a race that worked with European and Arab enslavers to sell their own people like commodities and shamelessly adopted the bizarre religions of their oppressors, it is probably not out of place to assume that that may be the reason the country has been retrogressing for decades. The history of denigrating black people is long and heart-wrenching. Not only do the scriptures of Abrahamic religions contain passages that dehumanise black people, philosophers as enlightened as John Locke, David Hume, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

10-kilometre walk in rememberance of Bruce Mayrock (1949 – 1969)

By Chike Anyaonu I got to know about this name, Bruce Mayrock, some four years ago through Barrister CHUDI Ofodile’s book titled The Politics of Biafra: and The Future Of Nigeria and published by Safari Books Limited, Ibadan in 2016. Ever since then, I have been trying to dig deeper and deeper into the archives to learn more about this young altruistic, dynamic and benevolent personality. An enigma of sorts, for that matter. Ofodile had, in chapter seven of his book, cited Bruce as one of “Biafra’s non- Igbo actors”, those who participated in one way or the other to fight the cause of the ill-fated Republic of Biafra that were not of Igbo origin. One of them who is still alive today is Wole Shoyinka. Though this write up is a kind of joint tribute to all of them, Bruce Mayrock, for me, deserves a special and everlasting mention. He was not an African, but a citizen of the United States of America. So what concerned a 20-year-old university student   in America with what ...
Post a Comment
Read more