Pakistan - #SabeenMahmud - Defending activists

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has decided to roll up its sleeves and wake up the authorities to the dismal state of affairs in the country as far as safeguarding all those brave men and women who pick up the torch to campaign for human rights. The HRCP organised a consultation in Lahore on Thursday to imderline the fact that human rights activists are in real danger in Pakistan and that there is a need to push for adequate legal safeguards for them. The HRCP presented an 11-point charter with recommendations and demands to put forward the plight and protection of these activists. It is about time someone stood up for them. One need not look far in our blood-smeared history to come up with examples of travesty and injustice wrought against such members of civil society and the intelligentsia. One only needs to remember the brutal gunning down in May last year of Rashid Rehman, a lawyer who went against all adversity and odds to defend a blasphemy accused, something that seems as ‘criminal’ as the charge of blasphemy itself. Rehman was also the regional coordinator of the HRCP. He believed that every defendant deserved a lawyer, especially those facing the worst allegation of all in Pakistan. His death was a huge blow to the activists’ community. Or how about the death of Sabeen Mahmud just a couple of weeks ago? The owner of the intellectual space known to Karachi’s residents as The Second Floor (T2F) was also gunned down by unknown assailants. She had reportedly been receiving death threats from extremists. Also, the fact that she dared to host a controversial talk regarding Balochistan at the T2F has sent suspicion flying towards the security agencies.

It seems human rights defenders and active dissidents are under severe threat in this country. Nothing has ever really been done to acknowledge the danger in which they stand up against wrongs in society and to protect them against these every threats. The government has, sadly, always turned a blind eye to the sorry state of safeguards for activists. It was not enough that a member of government, Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer himself was brutally murdered in broad daylight just for standing up and campaigning for justice to be delivered to Aasia Bibi, a poor Christian woman accused of blasphemy. His murderer is still enjoying the ‘perks’ of incarceration in the land of the pure.

The 11-point charter, which urges the state to follow international treaties and the constitution for the due protection of its citizens must be taken up by the government. After all, it owes its civil society and brave activists this much at least.