mehreenkasana: iranian-atheist: In memory of Pakistani human... prom dress April 25, 2015 at 09:10PM

iranian-atheist:

In memory of Pakistani human rights activist, Sabeen Mahmud, who was shot to death today

She was a prominent Pakistani social and human rights activist. The 40 year old Mahmud was one of Pakistan’s most outspoken human rights advocates. Today, she was shot four times at close range, and was pronounced dead shortly after.

I’ve had it with these extremists!! This wonderful woman literally put her life on the line to help others! Do people understand now why it’s so difficult to speak up and push for more human rights in some countries? These barbaric acts are happening far too often! May Sabeen’s hard work continue to have an impact and may she be an example to influence millions of others!

It is unknown whether it was ASWJ that killed her or another group but to give you context - something missing from your well-intended but misguided commemoration - Sabeen had received death threats on political grounds for her progressive work on Balochistan and the state-sanctioned oppression it has been facing since 1947. It was not religion and it was not gender - two oft-reported issues from Pakistan - that ensnared her life in the crosshair of persecution. It was our government’s vicious contempt for dissent that hauled her into the mouth of death.

In this prescient exchange with a friend, Sabeen fears blow-back for her work on Mama Qadeer and the case for missing people of Balochistan. Again, it would be overly simple to claim this was ‘extremism’ that took her life. If you want to do her justice, as a non-Pakistani, then please do not simplify the narrative to ‘extremism.’ It is much more complicated than that, and the correct word one ought to use here is fascism. This is our government’s intolerance for criticism against the ISI, the military - the parallel state that runs Pakistan.

I’m asking you to be more sensitive to contextual information than to push easy narratives because we Pakistanis are incredibly tired, incredibly hurt, and the last thing we need at this fragile moment is an uninvolved accounting of events. If Sabeen was alive and this was someone else, she would urge you to do the same and ask you to be more attentive to detail. Our country deserves more than just glossy obituaries.