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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with Asma Jahangir, head of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, about how the continued bomb attacks in Pakistan are affecting life in Pakistan.
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KATY CLARK: Asma Jahanjir is head of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. And like all Pakistanis Jahanjir is deeply concerned by the current violence in her country. She’s visiting Washington at the moment. And Asma Jahanjir the situation in Pakistan is pretty difficult right now. Can you give us a sense of the mood in Pakistan cities with all of these terror attacks? How is it affecting life for the average Pakistani right now?
ASMA JAHANJIR: Life is very tough. It’s very difficult. When I left Pakistan there had been three suicide attacks in the whole. And that day I myself was absolutely amazed that despite everything, despite the sorrow, despite how people were devastated, people were going about their own work. But there is a bit of depression. People are not going out for shopping. As you know we’re having slow economic turndown. For example, we don’t have electricity half the day. There’s a shortage of gas supply. There’s a shortage of water. All this plus the fact that openly the Interior Ministry is saying we cannot protect you, please protect yourself. This is very demanding on people. And yet the resilience of the Pakistanis is something that nobody talks about. It is amazing. They are so patient with what has happened.
CLARK: Patient to the point where do you think that they’re willing to stick it out? And is the government and the military willing to stick it out for as long as it takes to defeat the Taliban and other extremists fighting in Pakistan? I mean things are likely to only get worse before they get better.
JAHANJIR: I believe that the people of Pakistan have stuck so far. It’s very, very nasty there. And I believe that in any other place you would have seen numbers of people getting up and leaving the country which has not happened in Pakistan. As far as the political parties are concerned, I think that they are taking great risks to their lives both at a personal level and at a collective level. They are saying very openly that they are going to now fight militants. They are going to fight terrorism. It is in our interest to do it. But as far as the military is concerned whether they’re fighting when they have to or whether they have changed their way of thinking is still mood question and politicians are afraid that unless pressure is not kept on them the idea will be of dispersing militants rather than dismantling militants infrastructure in Pakistan.
CLARK: Well given all of the suffering, all of the violence, that Pakistan is experiencing right now, would you say Pakistan is in a state of civil war or on the brink of civil war?
JAHANJIR: Well I’d hate to use that word because I come from there; I live there. I would like to think that we are not in a state of civil war. But the fact remains that there are fissures that you can see even between and inside the security forces. You can see that there is resistance. We had one of the chief ministers of a province saying very openly on television that all those people in government services who are siding with the Taliban, supporting them, protecting them, are giving them protection and safe passage have to be turned in and people must come and tell us who and identify who these people are. Similarly there have been certain attacks where it is apparent that people from inside those institutions have had some kind of collaboration with the perpetrators. So we think that there is certainly cracks within the military and the establishment and particularly intelligence agencies themselves.
CLARK: On a personal level I wanted to ask about your life and your work right now. I mean for years you have been fighting against all sorts of human rights abuses in Pakistan. Well and I should say too that the government hasn’t always been happy with what you’ve been doing and what you’ve been saying. Has life gotten any harder or any easier for you say in this past year even?
JAHANJIR: Let me put it this way, that life is harder for all of us because there is just so much pressure, so much violence. You know you get so confused. It’s psychologically very disabling. And you don’t know who’s doing what. I mean when I was traveling Balutschistan for a week I was told to change my hotel everyday because if the intelligence agencies wanted to kill me and put it on the nationalists it would help them and if the nationalists wanted to kill me and put it on the intelligence agency it would help them. So we are going through that kind of an insecure period. But we still continue to work and must work.
CLARK: Asma Jahanjir is chair woman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan based in Lahore. Thank you so much.
JAHANJIR: Thank you.
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