Youth demand review of cyber crime bill

LAHORE
The speakers on the second day of ‘Pur Amn (Peaceful) Pakistan Conference’ urged the government to review the new cyber crime bill and promote extracurricular activities at campuses for peace and harmony.
They were addressing different sessions of the three-day event organised by the Punjab government and various NGOs.
Provincial Minister for Youth and Education Rana Mashood Ahmed Khan also participated in the session on peace in campuses held on Thursday.
The speakers talked about the role of youth in peace and of media in tackling extremism, cyber extremism and youth and democracy. The sessions also included role of youth in peace, cyber extremism and role of campuses in promoting peace, media and anti-extremism.
In the session on role of universities for peace, the participants urged the government to purge universities of political interference and to continue promoting all types of academic research. They also said engaging youth in extracurricular activities was the biggest step required to promote peace and harmony.
The participants said the universities were part of society and could not be seen in isolation. They stated that fear, humiliation, and deprivation led to violence in society and peace was not possible without engaging youth in positive activities. Sufism, love, creativity, art and music were the key ingredients of peace at campuses, they added.
Chairman Punjab Higher Education Commission Dr Nizamuddin, Punjab University VC Dr Mujahid Kamran, Government College University Lahore Dr Khaleeq-ur-Rehman, and others participated in the session.
In the session on cyber extremism, speakers talked about the cyber extremism and discussed different trends indicating extremist approaches on social media. The speakers urged the government to review newly proposed cyber crime bill and ensure freedom of expression in a responsible way. The speakers of the session included Munizae Jehangir, Mubashar Ikram, M Abdullah and Rimsha Waseem. During the session, it was discussed that cyber violence led towards physical violence and sharing violent content actually legitimizes the violence in society.
The session on ‘Introduction of USIP Peace Innovation Fund’ urged the need to identify and understand violence and its causes. The participants discussed reasons behind youth involvement in political organisations and how they can play a role in the onslaught of violence over the recent years.
The conference also discussed militant organisations’ communication strategy and the ways to counter them, extremism and mainstream media, and role of youth in peace building.
A fruitful session with Punjab Parliamentary Youth Caucus members and youth on the issue of “Youth and Democracy” proved to be richly interactive. The objective of the conference is to highlight role of youth in peace and discuss National Action Plan to counter terrorism. The conference, on the concluding day, would also give recommendations and suggestions on the way forward against extremism and terrorism to actualize NAP. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif will be the chief guest on the last day of the conference on Friday (today).
VU live talk session
Virtual University (VU) hosted a live talk session directly from University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, at VU’s Lawrence Road Office on Thursday.
According to a press release, Dr Shah Rukh Humayoun, a renowned scholar and faculty member from University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, was the speaker of this session connected through electronic mode who talked about the current and future aspects of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The talk was arranged by the VU’s Department of Computer Science in collaboration with Centre for Education and Technology while students from 25 distinct VU campuses, located across Pakistan including Lahore, Karachi, Sialkot, DG Khan, Peshawar, Badin, Rawalpindi, Multan, Faisalabad, Bahawalpur, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Abbotabad, Gujranwala, JalalpurPirwala, Jhelum, Makhdoom Rasheed , Muzaffargarh, Nankana Sahib, Pattoki and QadirpurRaan attended the lecture. —Correspondent