Asma Jahangir

Some Lesser Known Facts About Asma Jahangir

• Did  Asma Jahangir smoke?: Yes 

• Did Asma Jahangir drink alcohol?: Not Known

• She was born in a well-off, affluent, and politically active family in Lahore, having a great history of activism and human rights work.

• Her father, Malik Ghulam Jilani, entered politics upon his retirement as a civil servant and spent rest of his years both in jail and under house arrest for publicly opposing military dictatorships.

• Her mother was a courageous lady as she managed to do her studies from a co-ed college at the time when only a few Muslim women were allowed to study. Moreover, she established her own clothing business and was the only bread earner of the house when her husband was arrested, and their family’s land was seized in 1967.

• At a very young age, Asma urged to get involved in protests against military regime as well as opposing her father’s captivity directed by then president, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

• Asma, along with her sister, Hina Jilani and other fellow activists and lawyers, formed a first law firm established by women in Pakistan.

• In 1982, she got massive support from Supreme Court when she raised her voice against the “Islamic Laws” implemented by General Zia and necessitated changes in it.

• She earned a lot of name and fame as a human rights activist and also received a nickname “little heroine” after her protest against a judgement by then president Zia-ul-Haq in Islamabad in 1982.

• Asma, along with her fellow lawyers, marched against the Islamic law of “The testimony of two women equal to one man” on 12 February 1983. Later, when situations got out of control, she wrote a letter to New York Times in which she portrayed the condition of women in Pakistan going helpless and dreadful. Her motive was to spread awareness among the world about the unfortunate situations of women in Pakistan.

• The same year, she joined the public protest organised by Punjab Women Lawyers Association against the Proposed Law of Evidence in which Asma and other WAF members were teargassed, beaten badly and arrested by police officials. 

• She also protested against the “miseries of minorities in Pakistan” in which she revealed the illegal conversion of Non-Muslims into Islam. 

• In 1986, Jahangir, along with her sister Hina, took the initiative to set up AGHS Legal Aid, which was the first legal aid centre in Pakistan.

• Asma co-founded an independent NGO Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 1987 and remained Secretary General till 1993, after which she was upgraded to its chairperson. 

• Asma had a superb presence of mind, which was observed many times by the fellow lawyers. In 1996, when Lahore High Court issued a decision that a girl can’t marry without the permission of her guardian, Asma immediately started a quick movement against this in which the lawyer’s community fully supported her. She left no stone unturned to force High Court to revert the decision.

• Asma Jahangir is the name which was never behind in the race to raise voice against injustice. She supported a blind 13-year-old girl named Safia, who was not just raped by her employees but even was sentenced to three years of imprisonment and flogging. 

• Apart from protesting for different issues, she was also an active antagonist of child labour and capital punishment.

• Besides her fabulous work in Pakistan, she has also promoted human rights internationally as she had worked as the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions from 1998 to 2004.

• She had also worked as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief from 2004 to 2010.

• In November 2007, over 500 lawyers including her were put under house arrest for 90 days. 

• On 27 October 2010, she won the Supreme Court Bar Association election by obtaining 834 of total votes and defeating her competitor Ahmed Awais. Moreover, she became the first ever women President of Supreme Court Bar Association in the history of Pakistan. 

• In 2010, she was honoured with the Hilal-i-Imtiaz award (the second highest civilian award of Pakistan) by the then president Asif Ali Zardari at a Pakistan Day investiture ceremony. 

• She received The Right Livelihood Award by Jakob in a ceremony held at the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm in 2014. 

• On January 18, 2017, Jahangir delivered the 2017 Amartya Sen Lecture at the London School of Economics, where she called for a counter-narrative of liberal politics to aware people on “Religious Intolerance and its Impact on Democracy” and she became the first Pakistani to do so.

• In a talk with Advocate on Record Chaudhry Akhtar Ali, who had filed cases on behalf of Asma Jahangir in the Supreme Court, told that she had done more than half of her cases without charging any fee.

• In August 2017, she fought for the families of terror convicts who were sentenced to death by military tribunals in front of Supreme Court.

• She was a very bold and outspoken personality as she spoke against five-member Supreme Court judgement, which dismissed Nawaz Sharif from his premiership.

• Besides a lot of publications in magazines and newspapers, she had penned down two books entitled “Divine Sanction? The Hudood Ordinance” and “Children of a Lesser God: Child Prisoners of Pakistan”. 

• She had gathered numerous awards in her lifetime- Martin Ennals Award in 1995, Millennium Peace Prize by UNIFEM in 2001, Ramon Magsaysay Award Leo Eitinger Award in 2002, Four Freedoms Award in 2010, Stefanus Prize in 2014.

• She was equally active in taking part in rallies and campaigns. She also participated in the 2017 Women on Wheels rally held in Lahore. 

• Asma suffered a cardiac arrest on Saturday night and was rushed to Hameed Latif Hospital immediately. The nest day on 11 February 2018, she died at the hospital in Lahore.

• Here’s a brief biography of Asma Jahangir’s life: