Justice for Perween

It took over eight years for the courts to finally award a sentence to the criminals involved in the murder of Perween Rahman. An anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Karachi on Friday awarded life imprisonment on two counts to four accused in the murder case. Perween Rahman was a renowned rights activist who lost her life in a fatal attack near her office in Karachi in March 2013. Four of the five people charged in this high-profile case received a sentence of life imprisonment and fined Rs200,000. The fifth accused received a sentence to seven years in prison with a fine of Rs200, 000. This eight-year-long trial began after the murder of Rahman who was head of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP). She devoted her life to the development and welfare work in the impoverished areas of Orangi Town in Karachi. She had identified and named extortionists and land grabbers for trying to illegally occupy the land of the OPP’s office, a year before she became a target of the same group.

It is not the only case of its nature in Pakistan. We have witnessed activists, philanthropists, and social workers become targets of attacks by assailants for various reasons. Only in Karachi two other cases deserve a mention here. Hakeem Muhammad Said was a well-known and highly respected philanthropist and physician who lost his life in an attack near his clinic in Karachi in 1998. Sabeen Mehmood of The Second Floor (T2F) was murdered not far from her place of activity when she was returning after hosting a gathering with Mama Qadeer, an activist from Balochistan. These murders and many similar attacks on activists, journalists, and social workers demonstrate a sorry state of affairs in the country where selfless personalities became targets of known and ‘unknown’ abductors and attackers.

Pakistan is increasingly becoming a country where fighting for people’s rights, – or even speaking about them – has become a fairly dangerous activity. Looking from the perspective of common people who lack resources and wherewithal to defend themselves from unscrupulous non-state and state actors, these murders signify a further depletion of their meagre strength. Perween Rahman was such an indomitable fighter, with a notably strong voice and indefatigable integrity. One wonders why she was not given adequate security when she had already mentioned she was being threatened. Such cases bring to limelight the extremely perilous conditions in which our activists and social workers find themselves. After the recent verdict of the court, there is at least some solace that the judicial system, though a bit slow at times, has dispensed justice. Sadly, there are not many people in this country who are now willing to follow in the footsteps of Sabeen and Perween. And as someone has put it well, the real justice for Perween will come in the form of continuing all she was working for.