[sacw] The current campaign against Asma Jahangir & Hina Jilani

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

28 May 1999
Dear Friends,
Posted below is a note from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan giving
details of the current campaign being carried on to harrass the prominent
lawyers and committed Human / Women's rights activists Hina Jilani and Asma
Jahangir. Please share this information widely.
(South Asia Citizens web)
============================

The current campaign against
Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani

Asma Jahangir and Hina Jilani, prominent lawyers of Pakistan, have for
long been a constant eyesore both for the ruling establishment and the
orthodox sections of the population for their intensely committed legal
and public activism on behalf of human and women's rights in Pakistan.
In one murder attempt on their lives in 1996 a group of several youths
stole into their house and held the family at gunpoint. Earlier a death
decree in the manner of the one against Salman Rushdie was issued
against Asma Jahangir by certain religious groups.

The facts of the current campaign are as follows.
Samia Imran
Late in March 1999 a woman, Samia Imran, 27, married, with two
children, and belonging to Pathan stock of Peshawar, in NWFP, sought
refuge in the shelter home, Dastak, in Lahore. (Dastak is an officially
registered shelter home for women in temporary distress created by AGHS,
Asma and Hina's legal aid cell, but run since 1996 by an independent
Board of Trustees.) Samia wanted dissolution of her marriage on grounds
of her husband's cruelty and drug addiction. The parents wouldn't hear
of it since divorce was considered a mark of great dishonour in tribal
tradition.
2. While in Dastak Samia refused to see any of her relatives, including
her father, who she was convinced would kill her. Eventually she agreed
to meet only her mother, and that in the presence of her lawyer Hina in
Hina's office in AGHS.
The killings
3. The meeting was arranged for the afternoon of April 6, 1999. The
mother came accompanied by a man. On Hina's objection, the mother
pleaded that since she could not walk on her own the man was there only
to help her. Hina then asked the man to go and sit outside while they
were talking. Upon this the man took out a pistol and fired three shots
at Samia, killing her instantly, and a fourth at Hina which missed the
target. Then the two started moving out through the office corridor. An
uncle of Samia, who had also come with them, stood at the other end of
the corridor with a gun in his hand to ensure safe exit of all the
three. To make further sure he seized a senior member of AGHS, Ms
Shahtaj Qizilbash, and held the gun to her head while the team made its
exit. But the man who had killed Samia while on way out took a shot at a
plainclothes police guard on duty in the office. The guard returned the
fire and got his man. The killer was thus himself killed. The other two
meanwhile escaped with Shahtaj as their hostage. They released the
latter an hour or so later after making sure their escape.
4. The local police was immediately informed. They saw the dead bodies
and the scene of the crime. They took statements of the eyewitnesses.
(There were around twenty workers in the office at a the time of the
incident.) Shahtaj returned from her captivity while the police was
still on the scene and was able to record her statement too.
Parents' offensive
5. No arrests or interrogation were made in subsequent days despite the
fact that in the first information report registered with the police
immediately after the crime the names mentioned included Samia's father,
who was the president of the NWFP chamber of commerce, and the mother,
an obstetrician. The father surfaced after mobilising administration's
support. Then a counter-offensive was launched against Asma, Hina, the
shelter home Dastak and women's rights defenders generally. Small
processions were taken out in Peshawar and long statements and columns
began appearing in the right-wing press denouncing them. Among the
incidents:
(a) a contingent of the Punjab police gone to Peshawar to hold an
inquiry was rebuffed from the house of Samia's father, Ghulam Sarwar
Mahmand;
(b) a joint meeting of Peshawar Chamber of Commerce people and some
religious figures charged Asma Jahangir of having conspired to kill
Samia, characterised Dastak as a place for trafficking in women;
(c) 16 'religious' figures of Peshawar issued a statement declaring
that Asma had deserved to be put to death; a procession of taliban of
Peshawar's seminaries held a menacing demonstration on the lawns of the
Peshawar Press Club and sounded grim warnings to Asma and Hina;
(d) when a bipartisan resolution was sought to be moved in the Senate
simply condemning the murder of Samia and regretting the threats to Asma
and Hina the members from NWFP from all the parties, backed up by
government benches, not only strongly opposed it but made fiery speeches
and derogatory references to women human rights activists generally and
to Asma in particular; and
(e) there were clear signs of the government's veering away from its
earlier stated commitment both within the country and at the UN Human
Rights Commission in Geneva to pursue the case to its logical
conclusion. Two current developments in particular seem to have
contributed to the government's finding it had more common ground with
the killers of Samia and the critics of Asma and Hina: first, the
government's new bid to muzzle all independent NGOs and, second, Asma's
joining the legal battle against the arrest of a magazine editor, Najam
Sethi, who had been highly critical of the government.
FIR against Asma and Hina
6. The killer family's backlash, apparently with some connivance of the
government, climaxed in a murder case being registered in Peshawar late
in May. There were two obvious questions:
-- How could a parallel FIR be registered of the same case, and six
weeks after the first one? and
-- Why did the first FIR stand frozen for all this period, when a
challan, or indictment, should have been issued within two to three
weeks?
7. Enquiries in Lahore as late as May 27 showed no signs that any
progress on the first FIR will take place soon. There were indications
on the other hand of efforts to tamper with evidence: for instance, it
turned out that the rickshaw driver used for taking the hostage, Shahtaj
Qizilbash, away on the day of the crime was pressured by the police to
alter his account.There are serious fears of more meddling with the
papers on behalf of the resourceful culprits.
8. The situation also suggested possibilities of Asma and Hina being
arrested as a follow-up of the FIR against them. Asma was out of the
country in the Balkans, on United Nations duty. Hina herself was due to
travel abroad but cancelled the trip in view of the situation here. But
being here she faced the threat of arrest. She applied for protective
bail to the chief justice of Lahore High Court on May 27. A one-month
bail was granted.
9. As of now, it's an extraordinary situation. The two human rights
lawyers and defenders, and their community in general, face greater
danger from the law than do their tormentors!

for Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

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