Journeys to democracy

Zarteef Afridi's latest photo. Courtesy: HRCP

A tribute to the human rights activist Zarteef Khan Afridi who was shot dead recently – my article in The News on Sunday. Latitude News earlier published a shorter, different version titled In Pakistan, an unlikely hero dies for his cause. Also see my earlier article: Pakistan’s ‘enlightenment’ martyrs

The tribesman who showed the way

There was the letter from an anonymous writer saying he was going to hunt down and kill her. And then there was the letter from an Afridi tribesman offering to come down and protect her.

This was in the mid-1990s. The recipient of the letters was the fiery human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir, under threat for having taken on the case of Salamat Masih, the illiterate Christian boy sentenced to death for ‘blasphemy’ for having allegedly written sacrilegious words on the walls of a village mosque. Continue reading →

Filed under: Human rights | Tagged: adult education, afghan war, Asma Jahangir, Benazir Bhutto, blasphemy, Citizen Rights & Sustainable Development, CRSD Peshawar, Education, fata, Gender, HRCP, Human rights, Idrees Kamal, Jamrud, Khyber, mujahideen, nasim wali, Pakistan, Political Parties Act extended to Fata, salamat masih, women elections, women stopped from voting, Zarteef Afridi | 6 Comments »