“PEOPLE are their own resource.” That is what Parween Rahman said to one interviewer not long before she was killed. The force behind the Orangi Pilot Project, Rahman — who had dedicated her life to designing, mapping and then implementing community-based uplift for Karachi’s largest slum settlement — was killed two years ago this Friday. She had been leaving her office when she was attacked by gunmen.

In the days before she died, Rahman had been mapping the many goths that exist on the outskirts of Karachi, in an effort to regularise these settlements and provide formal rights to the people who live in them. Two years later, justice has not been done.

In the harrowing moments after the attack, an FIR was filed by Rahman’s driver at the police station nearest to where the attack occurred. A petition was filed with the Human Rights Cell of the Supreme Court on behalf of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and other petitioners.

Those who dare to believe in something better will not only be killed but also forgotten.

They sought investigation into the murder and protection for the remaining members of the OPP. Drafted by lawyer Muhammad Haider Imtiaz, it reports that an initial inquiry along with an assessment of the crime scene was conducted by an officer of the Manghopir Police Station on the day of the killing.

In March 2013, a report was received by the investigation officer from the forensic science laboratory. This stated that a man named Qari Bilal had been killed in a ‘police encounter’ in the area of the Manghopir Police Station on March 14, a day after the attack.

Among the things recovered from the dead man was a 9mm pistol with three rounds. After analysis, investigators said that this pistol matched the 9mm empty rounds recovered from the crime scene in Rahman’s case.

This led the lab to conclude that the same weapon had been used in her murder.

Hardly anything has emerged since then. Even though the initial FIR clearly alleged that there had been more than one assailant, it seems that no effort has been made to apprehend the others.

Officially, the investigation remains open. Following the filing of the petition, the court appointed a commission and asked for a report from the investigative agencies. Since then, according to attorney Imtiaz, protection has been provided for the other employees of the OPP but no concrete progress has been made on the investigation itself. Its neglect, he points out, is a reflection of the “general inefficiency, un-professionalism and apathy of the law-enforcement agencies.”

In interviews she gave in the days before her death, Parween Rehman had alleged that she was receiving death threats from the many mafias opposed to the OPP’s work. In her own words, “One day they just came, and from the morning they occupied the roundabout in front of our office. They came with gunmen. About five to six of them sat there at the roundabout, five to six of them went all around, five to six of them went into this courtyard trying to threaten us. And they said today we will occupy this place no matter what. So one of our colleagues was negotiating with them; we said, we won’t go, you stay if you want, kill us if you want, kill everybody.”

Parween Rehman and her colleagues were lucky that day; but, as we now know, her luck would run out not long after. Her enemies were determined and the stakes were high. They realised that if the project was successful then a community long exploited by the many mafias that are used to extorting money from Karachi’s poorest would be set on the path of becoming self-sufficient.

Here was a woman who believed ardently in community resource management, in the virtue and possibility of self-sufficiency, and in the idea that life in a city and even a slum could be transformed if only the people themselves are given the power to transform their living conditions. For this sin, of course, she was extinguished.

Even as Parween Rehman is no longer, the work of the OPP has continued, its longevity ensured by the men and women who worked with her and continue to carry on her legacy. In the two years since her death, the demographics of Orangi are again changing: new actors, equally dangerous and equally uninterested in community empowerment, have arrived on the scene and have begun to claim their own stakes.

It was dangerous to work there before, and it is dangerous to work there now. The community itself, bearing the weight of neglect and demographic change, conflict between political interests, land grabbers and a host of other criminal and even terrorist elements, needs the project’s work more than ever before.

The lack of investigation in Parween Rehman’s death is a devaluation of a life that was devoted to the uplift of others. It is not that she did not know that the work she did was dangerous; but she had complete faith in the premise that it was a risk worth taking.

In a Pakistan, and particularly a Karachi, where cynicism and even nihilism prevails, she dared to think differently.

Against this courage, we have the callous ineptitude of investigative institutions that have refused her justice, and latched on to an incomplete explanation of what happened and who did it. The message is clear and catastrophic: those who dare to believe in something better, in the possibility of empowerment of the ordinary, will not only be killed but also forgotten, their deaths undeserving of justice or of accountability.

As March 13 approaches again, it is this tragic conclusion that hangs over the city and the slum that Parween Rahman tried to save, and that in return took her life.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2015

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