Pakistani Crisis Persists as Activists Confront Military Government

MARGARET WARNER:

After 13 days under house arrest, Asma Jahangir is once again free to speak out. The chairperson of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission wasted no time this weekend returning to the fray.

Hours after the detention order against her was lifted, the diminutive 55-year-old chaired a news conference at the Lahore Press Club, calling President Musharraf a "fascist" who has "shown his true colors."

ASMA JAHANGIR, Chair, Pakistan Human Rights Commission:

He actually believes without him Pakistan will crumble. I think if he stays, Pakistan may crumble. I hope not.

MARGARET WARNER:

Then she joined scores of journalists in a demonstration against the media crackdown that's part of Musharraf's 16-day-old state of emergency.

Over the weekend, two of Pakistan's most popular TV channels had their transmission facilities shut down. Jahangir is heartened to see journalists now joining the lawyers, political activists, and human rights advocates like herself in fighting Musharraf's campaign against them.

ASMA JAHANGIR:

Musharraf really wants to destroy not only civil institutions like the judiciary, like he has silenced a lot of civil society groups, but wants to kill the spirit of civil society. So he wants absolute silence and absolute obedience from the people of Pakistan, but I think people have had enough. And nobody, not even violence can stand in the way of people's aspirations for too long.

MARGARET WARNER:

From the offices of the Human Rights Commission in Lahore, Jahangir has doggedly fought for women's rights and represented Pakistanis who claim their relatives have disappeared, been tortured, or killed at the hands of the country's powerful military intelligence apparatus.

The day Musharraf declared a state of emergency, Jahangir found herself under house arrest, though not in prison, as thousands of other lawyers and activists were. Police surrounded her house, confined her inside, and shooed away journalists who sought her comments. She was released last Friday.

Today, free and unbowed, Jahangir says the detention of thousands of lawyers like herself has only further undermined the government's anti-terrorist campaign that Musharraf insists martial law was invoked to advance.

ASMA JAHANGIR:

The impact of arresting leaders of civil society is that courts are not working. The administration is not doing its normal work, but only rounding up lawyers, judges and journalists, or human rights activists.

So there is a kind of a dysfunctional state at the moment. And it really is beginning to show, because those elements in society who are criminals, who are militants are taking advantage of it, and Musharraf seems quite helpless, in a way, quite incompetent to deal with them.