Asma Jahangir

Asma Jahangir (Urdu: عاصمہ جہانگیر, 27 January 1952 – 11 February 2018) was a Pakistani human rights lawyer and social activist who co-founded and chaired the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and AGHS Legal Aid Cell. Jahangir was known for playing a prominent role in the Lawyers' Movement and served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and as a trustee at the International Crisis Group.

• A decade later, long after democratic rule was restored, she was still denouncing the power of Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments and the façade of civilian control. In a lecture at Oxford University in 2017, she charged that “the military controls the country through the deep state”, while “the politicians are playing at democracy, hanging onto the cliff with their claws. And then the boot comes.”
  • [1] Asma Jahangir

• For her relentless campaigning against laws that discriminate against women and for continuously speaking truth to power, Jahangir was threatened, assaulted in public and placed under house arrest. Besides her work in Pakistan, Asma Jahangir has promoted human rights internationally through her long service with the United Nations. She died of a heart attack at the age of 66 but remains a great source of inspiration for human rights defenders beyond Pakistani borders.
  • [2] Asma promoted human rights.

• For decades, Asma bravely fought for the most disadvantaged people in Pakistan, often at great personal risk. She championed the cause of women, children, bonded labourers, religious minorities, journalists, the disappeared, and so many others. She confronted injustice wherever she saw it. Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
  • [3] Asma Jahangir a brave human rights legacy.

• One of Asma Jahangir’s most determined struggles has been against the unlawful and cruel practice of enforced disappearances. It was an issue she addressed in her last public speech just three days before her death at the “Pashtun Long March” in Islamabad. Over recent months, there has been a sharp increase in the number of enforced disappearances across Pakistan, stretching beyond conflict zones deep into the heart of its main cities. Asma Jahangir’s human rights work went far beyond Pakistan. She served as a UN Special Rapporteur three times – on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, on freedom of religion or belief, and, most recently, on Iran.
  • ** [4] Asma Jahangir leaves behind a powerful human rights legacy.

• Asma Jahangir was a giant of a woman who spent her entire life fighting injustice, be it based on politics, socioeconomic differences, religion, or gender. She has left behind a still-fractured country that needs her now more than ever.
  • [5] A giant of a woman.