Attacking Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for his brand of politics, Pakistani writer and author Fatima Bhutto today said her country is witnessing extremely worrying censorship.
"We have a lot of cases of a lot of fear and intimidation and unfortunately I don't really see that this government is taking any steps to reverse that. If anything its furthering that," Ms Bhutto said in an exclusive interview to NDTV.
"My criticism of Imran Khan's politics has been that I don't see any conversation with women in his politics. I don't see a conversation that empowers the provinces of Pakistan. I see a lot of opportunism in it," she added.
Ms Bhutto is the niece of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and unlike her cousin Bilawal Bhutto, she has stayed away from politics, preferring writing instead. Her fifth book, a novel called 'The Runaways' is out soon.
"I was encouraged from a young age by my father to write and to read a lot. I don't think it is a divorce from politics, I think a lot of what I write is very political," she said.
Ms Bhutto's father, Murtaza Bhutto, was killed when she was just 14, an experience that she says changed her completely.
"I was very very close to my father. He raised me as a single parent and having a father raise you as a young girl and having a father that believed that there was nothing that you actually couldn't do that just because you are a girl that it changed the possibilities of the world for you. He was and still remains for me very empowering and very important. Losing him was a very painful experience... But also the violence with which he was killed was very painful and still is," she said.
Asked about Bilawal Bhutto's debut election campaign, she said "He's a young man. He has been through a lot of trauma and violence. I hope he will be well and I wish him only well as a person. I prefer not to really comment on the politics of it all."
The writer said social media is not her cup of tea.
"Twitter has become so murky... It has become a platform for a lot of aggression and a lot of hate. Instagram I mean I don't really understand what its redeeming qualities are because it is basically just people competing with each other and you know this terrible narcissistic one-upmanship. Facebook - I want nothing to do with it ever."
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