A fighter
against injustice to the last
Rashed Rahman
The entire
country is reeling from the shock of Asma Jahangir’s sudden passing away on
February 11, 2018 and in mourning. Her unexpected death has elicited an
unprecedented outpouring of grief and accolades for this icon of struggles for
justice, human rights and against oppression. From an early coming-of-age case
as a 21-year-old law student fighting her father Malik Ghulam Jilani’s
incarceration by the Yahya dictatorship for condemning the military crackdown
in East Pakistan because no lawyer would touch it, to literally her last breath
when she was discussing on the phone the contempt case against Talal Chaudhry,
Asma Jahangir remained committed and consistent to her principles. The first
case mentioned above finally earned Yahya the title of a ‘usurper’, but
unfortunately the Supreme Court (SC) did not adhere to its own laid down
principles in what became known as the Asma Jilani case when dealing with
subsequent military usurpers such as Generals Zia and Musharraf. In the latter
cases, the infamous ‘doctrine of necessity’ made a surreptitious re-entry in
our jurisprudence. Only time will tell if the efforts of Asma Jahangir and
others has succeeded in finally laying to rest this obnoxious doctrine used
time and again to legitimise military coups since the Ayub takeover in 1958.
All her life,
Asma, whom I had the honour to call a friend, remained fiercely committed to
fighting against injustice, for human rights and the rights of women,
persecuted religious minorities and the oppressed. Her list of achievements and
awards, national and international, beggar belief in just the reiteration. A
co-founder of AGHS in the 1980s, the first all-women law practice dedicated to
defending women’s rights, Women’s Action Forum (WAF) in 1981, the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan in 1987, and the platform South Asians for Human Rights
(SAHR) in the 1990s, Asma never shrank from speaking truth to power. The
widespread respect she enjoyed in the lawyers community and society generally
propelled her to the position of the first woman president of the Supreme Court
Bar Association in 2010, an accolade earned through sheer dedication, hard work
and principle.
Apart from these
accomplishments, amongst the honours, awards and positions Asma held here and
abroad, the notable ones are vice-chair of Defence for Children International
in Geneva (1986-88), vice-president of International Federation for Human
Rights, the UN’s (which has paid her tribute after her passing) special
rapporteur on freedom of religion (2004-2010), member of the UN panel for
inquiry into Sri Lankan human rights violations during the Tamil struggle,
member of the fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements, and many more. The
awards she received during her lifetime included the 2014 Right Livelihood
Award, the 2010 Freedom Award, Hilal-i-Imtiaz and Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 2010, the
Ramon Magsaysay Award, the 1995 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders,
the UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights and France’s
Officier de la Legion d’houneur. There may be more that I in my ignorance am
unaware of. She was featured in Time
magazine’s list of the hundred most influential women in the world. This is far
from a complete list of the manner in which her lifelong struggle was
acknowledged at home and abroad.
Asma’s defining
personality trait was courage. She remained undaunted in the face of extreme
pressure and even threats to her life. She was imprisoned because of her
participation in the 1983 Movement for the Restoration of Democracy against
dictator Ziaul Haq and placed under house arrest in November 2007 when
Musharraf imposed an emergency to quell the lawyers movement for the
restoration of the judiciary, in which Asma played a prominent part.
Despite knowing
her since 1979 when I returned to live in Lahore, my first collaboration with
Asma came on the issue of bonded labour and its attendant affliction child
labour in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The SC verdict declaring the peshgi (advance) system prevalent in the
brick making and other labour intensive industries as bonded labour breached
the conspiracy of silence surrounding the pathetic conditions of servitude and modern
slavery that millions of the poor suffered on this count. The verdict paved the
way for the subsequent Abolition of Bonded Labour and Abolition of Child Labour
Acts in 1992 and 1991 respectively, in whose drafting and lobbying Asma played
the leading role. Our last collaboration was the writ she filed in the SC last
year challenging the 50 odd FM radio stations ISPR is running without any
licence or monitoring throughout the country. Alas, with her departure, the
petition is likely to suffer the same fate as the two million cases pending
before the judiciary.
Her abiding
legacy, amongst other contributions, was her courageous defence of people whose
cases no other lawyer would touch, often without charge if the client was too
poor to afford the fees. No victim was turned away for pecuniary reasons, even
if Asma had to pay the costs of the case and, if successful in its defence,
often followed by Asma paying the rehabilitation costs of the defendant. She
was the first successful defence lawyer in a blasphemy case when she won
acquittal for Salamat and Rehmat Masih in 1993 from the Lahore High Court.
Tragically, the judge who delivered the verdict, Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti, was
assassinated by a fanatic in 1997 in his law practice chamber on this count
after he had retired from the bench. Lawyers and judges have since been
extremely wary of taking up blasphemy cases, the exception as always being Asma
Jahangir.
Asma’s
consistent struggle for democracy, the constitution and the rule of law (practiced
more in the breach in Pakistan) often brought her into conflict with the
judiciary when she thought the institution was not being just or indulging in
over-reach. Her consistency created misunderstandings in some shallow minds.
She once said in an interview that even if a Taliban (whom she vehemently
opposed) was extrajudicially killed, she would take up the case. Those who
accused Asma in recent days of going over to Nawaz Sharif’s camp should keep
that in mind. She always stood with the victim of injustice, no matter who or
what her own opinion of that person may have been. Her friendship, for example,
with the late Benazir Bhutto did not deter her from criticising the latter on
issues pertaining to human and other rights.
There has been
in the media and generally much lamentation regarding the vacuum Asma Jahangir
has indubitably left behind and how no one can fill it. Understandable grief
and sentiment aside, this smacks of defeatism. Admittedly, Asma’s are big shoes
to fill and even if no one individual may measure up to her contribution, all
of us must pay our respect and tribute to Asma’s memory by vowing collectively
to pursue her path and legacy and not allow her struggles for justice and rights
to lapse. She would have expected nothing less from us.
It has to be
admitted of course that the most prominent voice of the voiceless in the
country has been rendered silent. Pakistan, all of us, are the poorer for it.
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