Sabeen Mahmud (RIP) murdered Pakistani activist
By Joy Hancock
On Friday evening 24th April, sometime after 9pm, Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead in her car. Mahmud was 40 years old and had for many years campaigned for human rights and particularly for the “disappeared people” of Balochistan. She was a director of T2F (the Second Floor) a café and arts space in Karachi. She was on her way home from an event at the café called “Unsilencing Balochistan Take 2”. The Guardian reports that she organised the event with Mama Abdul Qadeer, an elderly Baloch activist campaigning on behalf of so-called “missing people” abducted by the state security apparatus. The separatists claim their province’s mineral and gas resources are unfairly exploited by Pakistan’s richer provinces.
A previous event to be hosted by Lahore University of Management Sciences was cancelled after the Government put pressure on the University. A very good account of the actual shooting appears in “Al Jazeera” which states the police told the newspapers that she was shot four times at close range, with bullets going through her shoulder, chest and abdomen. She was pronounced dead on arrival at the National Medical Centre. Her mother, who was with her, was also shot twice, but was undergoing treatment in hospital and was said by hospital officials to be out of immediate danger.
According to The Guardian Pakistan is extremely sensitive to the threat from nationalists, given it lost half its territory when East Pakistan seceded to form Bangladesh in 1971.
Alison Houghton, BPCA Lead Researcher, said:
” Another extremely sad day for Pakistan, Pakistani minorities and those who seek to support them and give them a voice. Sabeen and her work will be sorely missed. It seems there are those in Pakistan who will never be happy until every minority group is silenced and subjugated, by any means.”