Ms. Isabela Fávero (EFSAS) paying tributes to Asma Jahangir during 37th Session of UNHRC
13-03-2018, Geneva
Ms. Isabela Fávero (Research Analyst EFSAS) spoke at an event during the 37th Session of UNHRC and paid tributes to late Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani Human Rights Activist. Ms. Fávero said in her speech that Asma Jahangir’s sudden death is a huge loss for not only the debate on Human Rights, but mainly for her own country, Pakistan, and its people. She said that Asma Jahangir belonged to the common Pakistani people, just as she fought her whole life to give the country back to its rightful owners; The People of Pakistan.
Ms. Isabela Fávero in her speech stated that the death of Asma Jahangir is a huge loss for the debate on Human Rights and Pakistan
Ms. Fávero described how Asma Jahangir had severely opposed the military and the army-backed Pakistani Government, and that she was arrested for the first time in 1983 when she participated in a procession organized by the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy against the military regime of military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq. Later in 2007, the Pakistani Government put her under house arrest for supporting the debate on secular civil society and defending the Christian minority in Pakistan, whose members were constantly accused of blasphemy - a crime, which under the country's controversial laws could lead to the death penalty. She also represented several civil society organizations that were threatened with shutdown as well as families of countless disappeared activists over the course of her career.
Ms. Fávero said that Asma Jahangir’s death represents a major loss for the human rights struggle in Pakistan, where enforced disappearances, violence against women and children, persecution of religious minorities, journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders, and violation of international law, are widespread. The United Nations has submitted several reports and sent numerous special fact-finding missions to the country over the past ten years to ascertain the situation of human rights in Pakistan, brought to the UN’s attention by courageous human rights defenders like her. The people of Pakistan have always lived in an extremist wave, characterized by threats and violence from, not only armed extremist groups such as the Taliban, but also by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the country’s powerful intelligence agency, which has been accused of kidnapping, intimidation and killing of journalists who cross the way of the Military establishment. In 2013, leaked ‘official’ documents suggested that some intelligence officers had devised plans to kill Asma Jahangir for her critical statements against the country’s powerful Military.
She ended her presentation by saying that she hoped that Asma Jahangir’s struggle may act as an inspiration for generations, of Pakistanis, to come and that Asma Jahangir was indeed a One-woman Army, who courageously took on the imperious Pakistani Army, but died too soon.
