As tensions rise between India and Pakistan, we remember a friend who called for peace

Posted on November 8, 2016 by beenasarwar

Sharing a piece I wrote with Dr. Partha Banerjee about our friend Haider “jigar”Rizvi, published by PRI on October 28, 2016, a year after he died in Lahore. Reproduced here with photos that we weren’t able to get to PRI in time.

Haider in Gilgit-fb page

Haider Rizvi celebrating life and love at Ghizar District, Gilgit, 2015. Photo by Qamar Abbas.

Last year around this time, we were saddened by the death of our poet and journalist friend Haider Rizvi in Lahore, Pakistan, on Oct 29, 2015. Haider had lived in New York, and was for many years a correspondent for the Inter Press Service (IPS), based at the United Nations.

With Haider’s untimely passing, we lost someone who loved to make friends irrespective of religion, color or caste — someone who believed firmly in peace.
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Filed under: Pakistan-India | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Haider, jigar, are you at peace now?

Posted on November 12, 2015 by beenasarwar

Haider in Gilgit-fb pageMy article on a journalist, activist, humanist, friend, eternal optimist and conflicted human being who left us forever recently. Illustrations by Feica. Scroll.in published a slightly abbreviated version titled ‘Journalist, optimistic rebel who stood up to General Zia’s excesses’, breaking the text up with sub-heads that I’ve used in the full text below. Their intro: “Haider Rizvi was a Pakistani journalist and activist who passed away in Lahore on October 29. His three-decade-long journalistic career began in Pakistan. He moved to the US in the mid-1990s and covered the United Nations, before returning to Pakistan in 2013 and taking up a job as a lecturer. He was 52.”
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Filed under: Human rights, Media, Obituary | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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