Bravo! Asma Jahangir

---

Former adviser to a caretaker government Barrister Mainul Hosein addressing the roundtable at the National Press Club in the city Thursday. —Banglar Chokh Photo

Asma Jahangir is a courageous person. Her mark of distinction is her tenacious struggle for human rights and her resolute stance on the marginalised section of the population that include women, children and religious minorities. She is a source of inspiration and a role model to many.
On 27 October 2010 Asma Jahangir was declared the president of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), Pakistan. She won the election, securing 834 votes, a margin of 38 votes from her nearest rival Ahmad Awais.
She is definitely outstanding to have got this iconic position amidst channels of male chauvinism and a paramount of patriarchal regime. Bravo Asma Jahangir!
A leading legal expert, Asma Jahangir is the most vocal advocate of human rights, women's rights, minority rights, and democracy. She is recipient of Hilal-i-Imtaz, high civilian award of Pakistan and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, 2005.
In the year 1972, the then president of Pakistan Z A Bhutto had ordered the arrest of the member of the national assembly. It was Asma's father who was arrested. She filed a constitutional petition in the Supreme Court challenging the arrest of her father by questioning whether the government had come to power legally. In a landmark judgment in 1983, Asma Jahangir won her case.
Also in 1972 Asma Jillani case, the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan C J Yakub Ali declared General Yahya Khan an illegal usurper and all the action of his government as illegal.
She is a staunch critic of Hudud Ordinance, a law in Pakistan enacted in 1979 as part of Islamisation process by Zia ul Huq. In 1982 she fought back Zia-ul-Haq's discriminatory legislation such as the proposed Law of Evidence and the Hudud Ordinance.
In 1983 she took up the controversial case of Safia Bibi, a blind 13 years old girl who was raped by her employer. She became pregnant but charged with fornication, zina, flogged and ended up in jail. Jahangir defended her and the court verdict was over ruled.
'Family laws are religious laws.' These laws give women few rights and need to be reformed because Pakistan cannot live in isolation. It was replaced and revisited in 2006 by Women's Protection Bill. She authored two books to lend further support: Divine Sanction? The Hudood Ordinance, 1988 and Children of a lesser God: Child Prisoners of Pakistan 1992. Her famous publication: Whither Are We! Dawn 2 October, 2000.
Jahangir put in place the Women's Action Forum (WAF), a pressure group campaigning against the marginalised section of the population. She set up a law firm that focused on cases of the poor and in 1986 saw the establishment of the first legal aid centre in Pakistan.
In 1995 Jahangir received death threat for representing Saima Sanwar who wanted a divorce from her husband, and later gunned down in an act of honour killing. She defended and won the case of 14 years old Christian boy Salamat Masib accused of blasphemy.
It was in 2005 that Jahangir received rough treatment from police and Islamists for organising a symbolic mixed gender marathon in Lahore to raise awareness about violence against women such as Mukhtar Mai, Mukhtaran Bibi. She was a woman from Jatoi, Muzaffargarh, a victim of gang rape as a form of honour revenge. The orders came from a local rich powerful clan. Generally women commit suicide after such events. She did not; she spoke up and persuaded the case. The case went up for trial, rapists were arrested, charged and convicted. Her case moved to the Supreme Court of Pakistan and she lived under total fear.
After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007, Jahangir recovered her own daughters and their friends from kidnappers and fought against threat and violence against her own self.
William Dalrymple on July 23, 2007 in Letter from Pakistan, Days of Rage, referred to 'a fragile-looking, diminutive woman in a crisp white shalwar kameez, a neat black jacket, and heavy tortoiseshell spectacles, named Asma Jilani Jahangir. She is in many ways a symbol of the values that the lawyers are fighting for. Pakistan is a notably patriarchal society, but Jahangir is its most visible and celebrated - as well as most vilified - human-rights lawyer. She has spent her professional life fighting for a secular civil society, challenging the mullahs and generals, and championing the rights of women at risk of "honour killing" and religious minorities accused of blasphemy. She has investigated alleged extrajudicial killings by the security forces, set up a shelter for vulnerable young women, and campaigned to end child labour. For Pakistan's liberals, she is a symbol of freedom and defiance, comparable to Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma'.
'These protests really have touched a chord,' shouted Jahangir to Dalrymple and continued, 'There is so much pent-up anger. The country is beginning to stir.'
Same year, on November 5, The Economist, reported that "Over 500 lawyers, opposition politicians and human rights activists have been arrested. They include Asma Jahangir, boss of the country's human-rights commission and a former UN special rapporteur. In an e-mail from her house arrest, where she has been placed for 90 days, Ms Jahangir regretted that General Musharraf had "lost his marbles".
E-mail: farida_s9@optimaxbd.net