 An activist and a former lawmaker were arrested in Pakistan on Sunday. What does this say about the country which is heading for elections very soon? South Korea has reportedly unfrozen Iranian assets that it was holding on to. What deal was struck to enable this? And doctors and dentists in New Zealand are set to go on strike in the first week of September. What are their demands? This is a daily debrief. These are our stories for the day. And before we go any further, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Four stories from Pakistan which is heading to an election soon. On Sunday, former lawmaker Ali Wazir and activist Iman Mazzari were arrested by Islamabad police. They had both attended a rally by the PTM, the Pashtun Tahafuz movement, on the previous day. As viewers of the show know, Ali Wazir has been a long-time target of the security forces in the country as he has advocated for the rights of the Pashtun community. The arrests come at a time when Pakistan has a new interim government which will preside over a general election in just a few months. We go to Abdul for the story. Abdul, thanks for joining us. Abdul, can you begin by telling us what action has been taken against these activists, the kind of work they did and also a little bit about the activists themselves? Well, let's start with the basic background of these activists. One arrested is Iman Mazzari, a human rights lawyer and one Ali Wazir and well-known activist, human rights activist plus political activist also. He has been a member of Pakistan parliament and has been leading a PTM-Pakhtun Tahafuzul movement. This basically leads a movement against the atrocities, at least the atrocities committed by Pakistan army in tribal areas and in KP province, Pakistan's hybrid Pakhtun province in the name of fighting terrorism. So there have been allegations made by PTM and other human rights groups that Pakistan army in the name of fighting terrorism has basically involved in extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance of thousands of people from the province and other human rights violations and they have been fighting against this for a very long time. And because of that, Ali Wazir in particular had been arrested several times in the past. He was released in February after spending two years in jail and then again briefly arrested in June as well. Iman is of course fights cases for PTM and other human rights violations and has been very vocal. Both of them have been very vocal against Pakistan army's role. So in this particular scenario, there were two FIRs filed on Saturday on the basis of PTM rally on Friday near Islamabad in which Iman, in particular there is a video which is circulating on social media in which she is very basically strongly saying that the Pakistan army is basically colliding with the terrorist groups in Pakistan and harming the democratic forces and the innocent people. And therefore she demands a release of all those who are illegally detained by the army, demands court martial cases against the army officials and so on and so forth. So on the basis of this particular speech, the FIR was filed and as per the details in the Pakistani media, the FIR strictly talks about PTM rally, those who participated in and particularly Iman and Ali Wazir, charging them with intimidating civil servants, trying to prevent them from executing their duties, provoking, writing, hatred against the state, conspiring against the state and demeaning state institutions. It does not say army but that is what it basically means. So this is, you can say is a larger part of the NT, all those people who have been very critical to the role of the army. So that has basically led to this particular instance. Abdul, all of this is happening against the backdrop of elections, not very far away in Pakistan. Could you put all of this, zoom out a bit and look at how that process will look? Well, at this moment Pakistan is run by a caretaker prime minister as per the Pakistan constitution and that caretaker government has primary responsibility of conducting the national elections, which are scheduled in November but there are doubts, already there are doubts that those elections may get delayed. Though the opposition parties are pushing for election on time, but it is not very clear whether it will happen as per the schedule. And at this moment it is also very clear that it seems there are comments made by different people who follow Pakistan politics closely that there is an attempt by the Pakistan ruling establishment, in particular the dominant ruling establishment, which can be identified as an army, trying to silence all kind of political forces, which have been very critical to army's role in Pakistan politics, and his role in the human rights situation in Pakistan and so on and so forth. And that basically gives us the larger context in which we can see how Pakistan's main opposition party, the PTI Pakistan Tahrir Khan Saaf, led by Imran Khan, former prime minister, is basically on the receiving end. Imran Khan is already behind bars, which is not clear whether he will be able to contest the elections or not. His vice president, PTI's vice president, sorry, Mamusa Qureshi was arrested on Friday in the case, which is related to documents which basically were cited by Imran Khan as evidence for external conspiracy behind his removal from a prime minister post, his government's cycle, the Cypher case in Pakistan politics. And then there is a crackdown on going against all PTI activists from top to bottom, leaders and activists, a large number of them have already left the party, at least under the pressure exerted by the army and state institutions, and some of them are also targeted now. This is one part of it, apart from what we were discussing about activists like Ahmad or the smaller parties or political opposition which is represented by groups like Awami League or Awami Party, sorry, or the PTM like human rights groups. So all these, there is a large scale, you can say, in the absence of any other word, a crackdown, it seems going on in Pakistan against all these groups which are considered to be questioning or kind of delegitimizing the role of army in Pakistan's politics. And that basically, given the uncertainty about the elections and this crackdown, it seems that Pakistan at this moment is again at a very crucial and very critical stage. Right, Abdul. And Abdul, if you'll just wait for a couple of minutes, we'll be back with you. Our next story is from the corridors of diplomacy. South Korea has reportedly transferred Iranian assets it was holding onto to Switzerland according to media reports. This follows a deal between Iran and the United States whereby Iran could access those assets in return for the release of five U.S. citizens who were detained. If this deal is completed, Iran could access $6 billion in assets we'll return to Abdul for more. Abdul, now there actually has been talk about this deal for quite some time. Can you give us whatever details we have so far about the assets as well as the U.S. citizens who seem to be in question? Okay, briefly it seems that this is an exchange deal. Five American citizens arrested and locked inside Iran will be released in exchange of $6 billion of Iranian assets which were frozen in South Korea will be unfrozen and basically released. So this seems to be the resist of the deal which is currently there between Iran and the U.S. negotiated by an unknown third country. There are speculations about that whether it is Oman or Qatar or some other country. But yeah, Iranians are claiming that this is not an exchange deal. Yes, they are ready to release the five prisoners and that is a separate deal. They have been moved out of jail and into the house arrest. Both of these five prisoners are basically American citizens who have been charged with spying while in Iran and that is why there have been some of them since 2015. That is one. But the U.S. is claiming that this is primarily an exchange deal. So as for the latest information, the $6 billion which were frozen in South Korea after South Korea cited the U.S. sanctions as the region behind it is released. $6 billion have been released and they have sent to a bank in Switzerland and ultimately it will reach Qatar. And from there Iranians can use it to buy whatever commodities they need provided those commodities are not in the sanction list in the U.S. So that is one part of the deal. That is primarily the deal which is there. And one last thing which is significant about this deal is Iranians there are other prisoners in the Iranian prisoners sorry in the U.S. which Iranians are claiming should also be released from the U.S. prison but the U.S. have denied it. So these are the facts which are available in public domain at this moment. Abdul now this would make anyone think that this is part of the sort of zigzag relationship that has existed between Iran and the United States for quite some time. So what is the state of play over here? What can we expect to happen in the future? It seems that there is no building up on the basis of this deal. Both the U.S. and Iranians have completely denied that these deals are related to the larger problems between Iran and the U.S. which of course had a larger geo-strategic and geopolitical aspect behind it. But if you narrow it down on the issue of the nuclear deal from which U.S. under Trump in June 2018 and ever since that withdrawal it has imposed a number of sanctions against Iran and that also has basically led to a kind of snowballing into different other regional confrontations. Some of those are of course clearly between U.S. and Iran but some of them are indirectly through different quote-unquote proxies. So it seems that both the countries though there has been negotiations going on for a very long time to revive the nuclear deal the U.S. is quite reluctant to do so and it seems at this moment out of question particularly given the fact that U.S. is already entering into the election phase and during the election Biden would not basically is in no position and not willing to take the issue and create another set of things where it has to be held accountable because if we remember during the last election Biden had promised that his administration it comes to par would revive the deal and it has been almost four years and nothing has happened on those front. So it seems that this deal is a standalone deal and this will not have much impact on the larger Iranian-Iran U.S. relationship at this moment. All right, Abdul. Thanks very much for both those updates and we'll see you soon as the stories develop. Thanks a lot. And finally about 5000 senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand will go on strike on September 5 and this will be just the first round of protests. The doctors decided to go on strike after pain negotiations failed. We go to Anish for more on the story. Anish, thanks very much for joining us. Anish, can you tell us what the demands of the doctors are and why those negotiations they were having failed? Well, the demands are not very different from what we've seen with similar strikes of health workers, not just in New Zealand but also different parts of the world. Now, some of the main demand is actually for a wage, a fair wage contract that is adjusted with the consumer price index. And that is something that is very specific privately because A, it is coming from senior doctors established tenured public system doctors and those are not junior doctors who may not have the same kind of job security either. So they are really talking about real wages being cut over the years, especially since the pandemic especially since the cost of living prices have spiraled and this is something that the government has not really taken account of when it comes to negotiating deals with their public employees. NOSAs were one of them earlier this year. We did cover a set of NOSA strikes that actually did have the same set of demands. A couple of years ago, we did have junior doctors striking on a very similar set of demands talking about rising cost of living prices which was already there in many ways and used it before the pandemic hit but it's now something that has been exacerbated to the point where doctors are saying that the current deal, the existing deal and the deal that the government is offering will actually give them 11% decrease in their real wages over the next few years. That will actually significantly bring down their standard of living not just as doctors in the public healthcare system but also as average wage earners of average public wage earners in a system that is becoming increasingly expensive over the years. Anish also, New Zealand is heading for elections. Not the most opportune time to have doctors, dentists basically fall out with the government in this way. Exactly. It is actually happening on September. There are three strikes that have been planned. A fourth one is still being debated. We are already looking at a good part of the election season being marked by senior doctors striking and walking out from their workplaces and that is something that is going to seriously dent the pro-labor kind of image that the labor government is trying to present especially under the new prime minister and that is not going to go down well in the general elections either. In the previous general election we saw the labor government winning a very clear majority that is not something that we can expect at the moment. There have been multiple polls that are already saying that they are very neck-to-neck in competition with the conservatives and that is really not good for the labor at time with this. On top of that doctors are highlighting something that is affecting everybody every single working class in New Zealand at the moment and this is something that the labor has really failed to actually address which is to keep up wages with the rise in cost of living and that is something that the rising inflation especially and that is something that is going to really affect how labor issues are dealt with in the election campaigns as well including the promises that they might make during the campaign. We need to see how that will play out over the next one month or so but this is definitely going to put a significant pressure on the current government to actually make something do something about the negotiation come up with a better pay package perhaps and maybe offer some kind of promises at the current moment to keep the strike away. There is a significant pressure at the moment and we need to see if they are to keep these warnings. Right Anish, thanks very much for joining us with that update and that's all we have for today thanks very much for watching Daily Debrief we will see you again on Tuesday our website peoplesdispatch.org and our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have more of our stories and our YouTube channel has more updates and this show Daily Debrief remember to subscribe and thanks again for watching.