The Other Face Of Pakistan

The Other Face of Pakistan: After listening to many women's stories, I am struck with their brilliance in constructing strategies that are not rooted in war or violence, but rather in courage, enabling justice, transformation and real security. There is another Pakistan -- the Pakistan of women academics running women studies programs, women demonstrating in front of the judiciary, speaking out on television, fighting law suits in protection of women's rights, harboring and giving refuge to women who are acid burned. There is the mother obsessively seeking justice for her daughter who she believes was poisoned by a Mullah after he raped her, the woman fighting off the Taliban after they murdered her husband in Swat. Activists like Tahira Addullan, who has been in the human rights and women's movement 30 years, always threatened, arrested twice, fiercely fighting for the restoration of an independent judiciary. And, Nighat Rizvi, who produced a sold out event to raise awareness about violence against women in the middle of a paralyzed city, and who screened her documentary on the inhumane conditions for women in the recent IDP camps.