KARACHI, March 25: Journalists and social activists paid tribute to a senior journalist, the late Maisoon Hussein, who was associated with Dawn till a few days before her death, at a memorial meeting held at Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Tuesday.

The meeting was organized jointly by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research and the KPC.

The speakers said Ms Hussein’s selected articles and reports would be published in a book form soon.

They said she always highlighted the issues being faced by the oppressed classes of society. She mostly wrote on the issues of prisoners, children, women, child labour, human rights, workers, bonded labour, and other neglected segments of society. She put in hard work and did extensive research and spoke to many sources for almost every article, which covered every aspect of the issue.

They said she not only wrote about and highlighted the problems of the disadvantaged sections of society but also helped the needy. Speakers cited a few instances of how she had helped get shelter and employment to divorced women, having young children, after their families had abandoned them. In doing all this she was driven by humanitarian considerations alone.

One of the speakers recalled that she had volunteered to deliver a copy of the Holy Quran (in Russian language), through her contacts, to a Russian plane hijacker who was serving his sentence in Lahore jail and during his stay there had embraced Islam.

The speakers said besides being a dedicated, committed and highly professional journalist, she also gave her time to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, the Women’s Action Forum and other such organizations which raised their voice for the marginalized sections of society.

They said her articles many a time touched the raw nerves of powerful groups who tried to stop them from being published, but she never stopped writing about what she felt and believed to be correct and right, during her more than two-decade long association with Dawn.

The speakers said Ms Hussein would remain a source of inspiration for newcomers to the profession of journalism, particularly those who intended to write on development subjects and problems facing disadvantaged sections of society.

Later, Fateha was offered for Maisoon Hussein and two other journalists, Salman Husain and Mehdi Shirazi, who had died a few days ago.

Abdul Hameed Chhapra, Zubaida Mustafa, Kaiser Bengali, Sabihuddin Ghausi, Karamat Ali, Khursheed Tanweer, Beena Sarwar, Dr Ali Arslawn, Khursheed Haider, A. H. Khanzada and others spoke at the meeting, conducted by Najeeb Ahmed.