Acceptance speech Asma Jahangir

The International Four Freedoms Awards 2010

Middelburg, The Netherlands, 29 May 2010

Speech by Ms. Asma Jahangir

Your Majesty,

Excellencies,

Distinguished laureates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am truly humbled as well as honored to receive today the Freedom of Worship Medal of the International Four Freedoms Award 2010. I would like to sincerely thank you for your support and encouragement.

This day has a special significance because it pays homage to both – Eleanor and President Franklin Roosevelt. As a team, they put a human face to the politics of power. While their personal lives may have taken separate paths, yet their achievements were because of the partnership they enjoyed. They had a common vision and followed it. The message of universality of human rights was the cornerstone of the Four Freedoms speech of 6 January 1941 by President Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt incorporated these values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that she so tirelessly helped draft.

The Four Freedoms speech highlighted that a threat to democratic norms in one part of the world will inevitably be a peril to their sustainability elsewhere. It cautioned against giving up essential liberties to purchase temporary safety. Roosevelt was prophetic in his words when he asserted, “enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom”. Alas, even many of his successors did not heed these words.

Excellencies, Ladies, and Gentlemen, my early memories of State oppression were when I was eleven or twelve. Sadly, I witnessed a political assassination, the arrest of political dissidents, including of my own father, and police brutality on peaceful rallies of students. In later years, we were to see even worse. It was the tyranny of politicization of religion.

In the eighties, the so-called holy war in Afghanistan changed our lives forever. Liberal politics was buried on the pretext that it was contrary to Islamic values. Fear ruled our lives, speech was stifled, and religious persecution was carried out in the most self-righteous manner. In an attempt to liberate Afghanistan, the few liberties enjoyed by Pakistanis were taken away. All this was done in the name of religion.

During the Zia rule, women were expected to stay within the “domestic domain”. Eleanor Roosevelt was a pioneer in insisting that women be brought into mainstream in policymaking and in building public opinion on broader issues. She comprehended, very well, that the barriers of domestic household have to give way for women to step out. In South Asia, feminists say: “flee the kitchen and run for the kitchen cabinet”.

At the same time, Eleanor Roosevelt rightly emphasized that unpaid labor of homemakers too must be recognized. She was particularly sensitive to the recognition of this important task women perform. This is what made her unique. She knew the compulsions of women and experienced some of the dilemmas most women go through. Like so many of us, her marriage too was one of “love and hurt”.

As a lawyer who has defended a large number of women in the last three decades, I firmly believe that women across the world, regardless of their positions in life or cultural backgrounds, have much in common. My clients often express Eleanor’s admission to a friend that she could “forgive but not forget”. However, several women can do neither. Dependency and an all-pervasive male environment force them to accept ill-treatment as their fate. This must change.

The worst threats and attacks made on me were during two cases that I defended. One of a fourteen-year-old, Salamat Masih who was accused of blasphemy which carries a mandatory death penalty in our country, and the second of a 22 year woman who had defied her family and married a man of her choice. Fortunately, both cases were won but at a huge price. The litigants could no longer live in the country, the presiding judge who acquitted Salamat was killed, and I escaped two assassination attempts. Such challenges are instructive. I have never regretted defending the vulnerable. They often put us to shame. Their courage and patience is exemplary.

Religious intolerance knows no borders. It is contagious and rears its head in almost all regions of the world. Rights of religious minorities are compromised, even in a system where democratic norms are otherwise respected. However, dictatorial and autocratic systems provide a fertile ground for intolerance to entrench itself deeper into society. It is therefore important for us to recognize that democracy, rule of law and human rights are closely interlinked. They flourish together or perish one by one.

In my early years of activism, I was dubbed as a controversial person. This, I found, is the initial step of marginalizing an activist for human rights. Next, people like myself are considered dangerous and a threat to moral, and traditional values. Vilification is followed by harassment, arrests, and eventually physical attacks. A number of human rights defenders go through these hurdles. My life was no different. Pakistan has seen both – tyranny and a full-scale resistance to it. I, therefore, accept this honor on behalf of the fearless civil society of my country.

The words of Franklin Roosevelt, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” are so true and particularly pertinent when fear is the weapon of the adversary.

I thank you once again.