India

Pak activist recalls trial by fire

Ketan Tanna I TNN

Mumbai: Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jahangir’s eyes looked fiery as she stared through her glasses.
   “I don’t know whether it changed me as a person or not but it is definitely one of the cases that has created the greatest impact on me. It was a case I handled in 1995, when a 14-year-old boy was given a death sentence for blasphemy. He had a little tin box that he wanted back and kept asking for it. I thought, ‘My god! This little chap is so brave in the face of people who can be cruel in the name of religion.’ In an appeal he was acquitted, but the judge who gave the order was murdered. Then some assassins came to kill me. It was all so messy, but I had resolved in my mind to get the little boy acquitted,’’ said “the small woman with a large job’’ as The Times magazine once described.
   Jahangir is in the city along with Nasir Aslam Zahid, the former Chief Justice of the Sind high court, who has resigned from the Supreme Court of Pakistan instead of taking the oath of office according to General Pervez Musharraf’s Provisional Constitutional Order. The two have come here to create network and gain support from Indian human rights organisations and the civil society.
   Dressed in a floral print Punjabi salwar kameez and always a smile on her face, the 1995 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service winner can easily pass off for a kind grandmother. The only sign of affluence in the 55-year-old activist is the diamond ring that sparkled on her fingers.
   The next few years in Pakistan will be messy, but the country will come out of it, said Jahangir. Being the founding member of the human rights commission of Pakistan, Jahangir danced on the streets of Pakistan along with other men, women and children when the Supreme Court reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar M Chaudhry recently. “No mullah could dare oppose us,’’ she said.
   Earlier at a press meet, both Jahangir and Zahid said the recent reinstatement of Chaudhri was only a milestone in the long road that would lead to a democratic Pakistan. The judges’ movement and the turbulence that rocked Pakistan was a turning point they said. “It is the common person who was at the forefront of the movement. More than 80% of the bar association members belong to rural and humble backgrounds,’’ said Jahangir.
   With general elections just around the corner and a desperate general in office, there is apprehension that Musharraf may impose an Emergency and try to get another five-year extension. But for now, politicians in Pakistan have not been allowed to hijack the movement that brought Chaudhri back. Despite the success of the lawyers’ movement, the future is uncertain, said Jahangir, though she hoped that her country would have a democracy where the rule of law would prevail.
   For her own, she said she did not have any plans. “I wish I could plan for the future. Trouble lands up at my office. I don’t plan for the future, I plan for what we should be asking for and what we should be fighting for. But let me add here, that what has changed in Pakistan is the mood and outlook of the people. God willing, we will emerge as a stronger country with a democratically elected government,’’she added.
   ketan.tanna@timesgroup.com

UNRAVELLING THE SITUATION BACK HOME: In India to gain support from human rights organisations, Jahangir talks about the reinstatement of Pakistan chief justice