Voice for democracy muffled by Musharraf - Revered activist Asma Jahangir, who's spent much of her life fighting for human rights, is under house arrest.
LAHORE, PAKISTAN — Inside a gated two-story home in a fashionable section of this ancient city sits a woman the government appears to fear the most, biding her time, smoking one cigarette after another.
Outside, fidgety policemen with AK-47s make sure no unauthorized person goes in or out. Twice this week, the guards burst into the house, panicked by reports that their charge had somehow slipped past them and out onto the streets, where she allegedly poses a threat to national security.
Asma Jahangir is no terrorist. She is not a hardened criminal. She is a tough-minded, self-taught, internationally admired lawyer who has spent most of her adult life speaking out for democracy and against military leaders such as Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf.
For her insistence that the government obey the constitution and respect individual rights, Jahangir was put under house arrest Saturday, within hours of Musharraf's declaration of a national state of emergency.
Musharraf said that action was necessary to stanch an Islamic insurgency in outlying regions along the Afghan border, such as the Swat valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. But security forces have swooped down instead on hundreds of lawyers and human rights activists like Jahangir. Her 90-day detention order charges activities "prejudicial to public safety and maintenance of public order."
"I don't know why he thinks I am the most dangerous person in Pakistan. He's obviously forgotten the people in Swat area and FATA area and the militants who are hanging around," quipped Jahangir, reached by telephone at her home Tuesday. "I suppose anyone who calls a dictator a dictator is dangerous and imbalanced."
It was a flash of humor from a woman regarded as a symbol of courage and conscience, who says things many Pakistanis wish they could but do not dare.
Now 55, Jahangir has campaigned since she was a teenager against military rulers who have held sway over Pakistan. More than once, her willingness to speak out and protest in the streets has landed the diminutive woman in jail.
The organization she helped found in 1986, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, has championed women's rights, demanded an end to bonded labor, challenged blasphemy laws, defended media freedoms and exposed official corruption.
Jahangir's work has drawn praise from around the globe, including recognition by the American Bar Assn.
