Senior lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says the judiciary has a role to play for enforcement of human rights in the country, but sadly it has been failing on this front.

She was speaking at a session, Prison Diaries, of the Lahore Literary Festival at Alhamra on Sunday at the launch of a book ‘You Have Not Been Yet Defeated’ written by Alaa Abd-El Fattah, an Egyptian blogger and activist who was sentenced to five-year jail term after a sham trial.

Ms Jilani said state was involved in forced disappearances that was a serious issue, but the judiciary failed to hold accountable those involved in the crime.

She said it is satisfying that the book was written by a person who has first-hand experience of the struggle for human rights and knew where it could lead to. She added that continuing the struggle for rights was necessary because authoritarian regimes feared it.

“We are also struggling to sensitise the judiciary for implementation of rights,” she said.

The senior activist, however, regretted that the crowd that used to defend the struggle for rights was thinning.

She said that in Pakistan there had been periods of great mobilisation and then of frustration, adding that democracy had always been facing challenges in the country.

Deploring lack of public support for the rights struggle, she said: “Civil society is struggling, and we are watching as if a cricket match is going on.”

Ms Jilani said: “We can’t accept anything that is out of [ambit of] democracy.”

She said we have to also fight social retrogression as we all are stake-holders.

The senior lawyer said the civil-military imbalance in the country did not affect political parties only, but it also affect the people.

Novelist Ahdaf Soueif, who is aunt of Fattah, said the book was actually not a prison diary but comprises Alaa’s writings on political issues, written in prison.

She narrated the hardships her nephew faced, including repeated arrests by Egyptian authorities, because of his involvement in the struggle for rights. She says he is from a generation that is still optimistic and thinks they could break the ceiling.

She described in detail how during their imprisonment Fattah and his fellow activist would exchange “voice notes” by reading out their writings aloud from their prison cells, which were later published in book form.

She said when not imprisoned, Fattah would write newspaper articles on different political issues, including, ‘Who will write the constitution’ which discusses the making of a new constitution for Egypt. For the purpose, she said the author, through his blog, asked thousands of people about their views on the nature of the Egyptian state.

One of the panelists, journalist Daniel Hilton, who won Amnesty International UK Media Award for his reporting on mass graves and other civil war atrocities in Libya, said their was a counter revolution after the Arab spring and totalitarian regimes in the Arab world became more oppressive after their failure to suppress dissent because of social media.

Hina Jilani, who has been giving legal advice to the organisers of Aurat March said that before this year’s march police wanted to get an assurance from her that there won’t be any inappropriate talk during the event.

She added that every generation had its own way of expressing their views, so there was no question of appropriateness in this regard.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2022