{"id":25693,"date":"2018-02-16T12:14:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T12:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=25693"},"modified":"2018-02-16T12:14:55","modified_gmt":"2018-02-16T12:14:55","slug":"leading-pakistani-rights-activist-dies-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2018\/02\/16\/leading-pakistani-rights-activist-dies-66\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading Pakistani Rights Activist Dies at 66"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A leading Pakistani human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir has died at the age of 66 after she suffered a cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n<p>The pro-democracy activist championed women&#8217;s rights throughout her career.<\/p>\n<p>Jahangir was a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pakistan\">Pakistani<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lawyer\">human rights lawyer<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Activism\">social activist<\/a>\u00a0who co-founded and chaired the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Human_Rights_Commission_of_Pakistan\">Human Rights Commission of Pakistan<\/a>.\u00a0She was known for playing a prominent role in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lawyers%27_Movement\">Lawyers&#8217; Movement<\/a>\u00a0and served as the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_Nations_Special_Rapporteur_on_Freedom_of_Religion_or_Belief\">United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief<\/a>\u00a0and as a trustee at the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/International_Crisis_Group\">International Crisis Group<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi led tributes to Ms Jahangir, saying her death was a great loss for the legal fraternity, and praying for her and her family.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CMShehbaz\/status\/962621765519396864\">Punjab state chief Shehbaz Sharif tweeted that he was &#8220;deeply saddened&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0at the news.<\/p>\n<p>Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai called Ms Jahangir a &#8220;saviour of democracy and human rights&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Another prominent Pakistani lawyer,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/salmanAraja\/status\/962616297535176705\">Salman Akram Raja, tweeted that Ms Jahangir was &#8220;the bravest human being I ever knew&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0and that the world was &#8220;less&#8221; without her.<\/p>\n<p>In her career, Ms Jahangir was a staunch defender of human rights and women&#8217;s rights, and a pro-democracy activist, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014 Ms Jahangir told AFP news agency she had seen changes in the perception of human rights in Pakistan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a time that human rights was not even an issue in this country,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Then prisoners&#8217; rights became an issue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Women&#8217;s rights was thought of as a Western concept. Now people do talk about women&#8217;s rights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Asma Jahangir&#8217;s career:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Trained as a lawyer and worked in Pakistan&#8217;s Supreme Court from age 30<\/li>\n<li>A critic of the military establishment<\/li>\n<li>Jailed in 1983 for pro-democracy activities<\/li>\n<li>Put under house arrest in 2007 for opposing military leader&#8217;s removal of Supreme Court chief justice<\/li>\n<li>Co-founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and of the first free legal aid centre in Pakistan<\/li>\n<li>Co-founder of the Women&#8217;s Action Forum, set up to oppose law that reduced a woman&#8217;s testimony in court to half that of a man&#8217;s<\/li>\n<li>The first female leader of Pakistan&#8217;s Supreme Court bar association<\/li>\n<li>Winner of several awards including the Unesco\/Bilbao prize for the promotion of a culture of human rights and the French Legion of Honour<\/li>\n<li>Served as UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion and on human rights in Iran<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A leading Pakistani human rights activist and lawyer Asma Jahangir has died at the age of 66 after she suffered a cardiac arrest. The pro-democracy activist championed women&#8217;s rights throughout her career. Jahangir was a\u00a0Pakistani\u00a0human rights lawyer\u00a0and\u00a0social activist\u00a0who co-founded and chaired the\u00a0Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.\u00a0She was known for playing a prominent role in the\u00a0Lawyers&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,53,3],"tags":[802],"class_list":["post-25693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-latest","category-news","tag-asma-jahangir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}