2007 SPONSIBLE AWARDS III

Today we continue our year-end awards with an achiever in human rights...

2007 Sponsible Award - Human Rights
Winner: Asma Jahangir

Asma Jahangir is the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and is the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion. She was among the first people rounded up in the state of emergency declared by General Pervez Musharraf.

Jahangir has a long record of human rights activism, inherited by her father, who was an activist himself and paid the price by way of repeated visits to Pakistani prisons. It was while working with lawyers to release her father at the age of 18 that Jahangir found her calling.

In 1980, Jahangir and her sister, Hina Jilani, got together with few fellow activists and lawyers and formed the first law firm established by women in Pakistan. She began taking now-President Musharraf to task back in 2000 with in an article for Dawn, published October 2, 2000 titled "Whither are We!” in which she demands that the government of General Musharraf work to improve the record of human rights domestically.

On Nov. 3, upon imposing a state of emergency, President-General Pervez Musharaf suspended the constitution, dismissed the Chief Justice, censored the media, and arrested opposition leaders and lawyers, including Jahangir. She was released two weeks later, but not before issuing a string statement on her blog on November 8th:

… The Musharaf government has declared martial law to settle scores with lawyers and judges. While the terrorists remain on the loose and continue to occupy more space in Pakistan, senior lawyers are being tortured ...

Jahangir continues to remain a thorn in Musharaf's side, and as an ever more visible public figure, is helping bring the world's attention to the human rights abuses going on within her nation, always at her own physical peril.

Help support human rights causes in Pakistan by logging onto Amnesty International's Pakistan page and around the world by going to Amnesty.org.