Sabeen Mahmud- The voice of voiceless

Sabeen Mahmud, a courageous woman, a human rights defender, an inspiration, NGO  worker, a voice of voiceless people, I am speechless and clueless as to what to call her.

It was very shocking to know about murder of Sabeen Mahmud, Director The Second Floor (T2F), in Karachi, soon after hosting a dialogue on Balochistan at her office.

When I recall my meeting with her sometime ago at T2F, I found Sabeen Mahmud very sophisticated, polite, open minded and intelligent lady. A brave woman who takes decisions boldly and fight with guns alone. Sabeen loved books and believed in freedom of speech. She was also firm believer of technology as her biggest weapon to promote and fight for human rights.

During talk with her about journalism and professional work, Sabeen was very informative and a true mentor. Despite being a director of an organization, she was very down-to-earth woman and I was really very inspired by her.

In her last days, Sabeen was working on the Balochistan issue. A person, who held "Un-Silencing Balochistan" was silenced forever with the force of guns. The one who was talking about the missing persons, included herself in that list.

Her last event was attended by Mama Qadeer from Balochistan and Wusatullah Khan from BBC, in which the issue of missing persons, injustices in Balochistan were thoroughly discussed. This brave daughter of Pakistan dared to break the silence of Balochistan, aimed at highlighting the injustice with the Balochi people, but it seems this issue has become prohibited, that the one who talks about it is forced into silence.

In our country, those who raise their voice on freedom of expression, human rights, promote free speech are killed. Such list included rights activists Rashid Rehman, Parveen Rahman and now Sabeen Mahmud.

Though Sabeen Mahmud was silenced into death but she has become the voice of the world. She is a flame, which cannot be extinguished.  Her mission of bringing good name to Pakistan will be continued by other energetic and bold people like her. Sabeen will always be remembered, though, she is brutally silenced but we will not remain silent and will not allow the authorities to forget her.

This write-up has also been published in Online Indus News.

Below is the link: 

http://www.onlineindus.com/sabeen-mahmud-the-voice-of-voiceless/