Category Archives: Women
Rest in peace little sister, Parveen Rehman
By Zubeida Mustafa
I NEVER had a younger sister but at some stage, I can’t recall when, a woman entered my life to fill the vacuum I had always felt. Actually she was my friend Aquila’s “little” sister and so charming were her ways that we became connected. She brought sunshine into my life as she did into the lives of many others.
This little sister of mine — Parween Rahman — was shot dead last Wednesday leaving not just her family and supporters devastated. The whole country — in fact the community of caring social workers the world over — is mourning her loss.
There was something about Parween. Anyone who met her was attracted by her cheerful disposition and warm, caring nature. Her versatile personality allowed her to strike an immediate equation with people of all ages and background who met her. Her witty retorts followed by her musical laughter have now been silenced for ever. That really hurts.
Why should anyone want to touch a gentle soul like her who was incapable of doing anyone any wrong? Why? Why? Why? was the question asked in the hundreds of messages that poured in. Continue reading Rest in peace little sister, Parveen Rehman
My Last Meeting with Slain Parveen Rehman
By Nafisa Hoodbhoy
“Did you find that religious extremism has grown in Pakistan on this trip?” asked Sheema Kirmani, sitting cross-legged in the front of the crowd, after I had finished presenting my book at a session of the Karachi Literary Festival.
“Oh yes,” I responded. “But its not just religious, but also ethnic extremism that’s taken hold of Karachi. 
I think that the more violence permeates society, it causes individuals to fall back on the groups that give them a sense of identity.”
Sitting in the audience was Parveen Rehman. She had promised to attend after I went to her sister, Aquila Ismail’s presentation of her book “Martyrs and Marigolds,” a couple of hours before my launch. Continue reading My Last Meeting with Slain Parveen Rehman
It would be safer if she was not the only one
By Steve Inskeep
Several times in Karachi I went to see Perween Rahman. We first met in 2008, as I researched informal settlements where millions of Karachi residents lived. People who knew these vast stretches of concrete-block homes told me to seek out Rahman, who knew more.
We met at her office, the Orangi Pilot Project-Research Training Institute. Someone would lead me across a courtyard to find Perween in one or another of the institute’s cluttered rooms – a dim room, usually, because the power was out. A photo from one of our meetings shows sunlight from a window reflecting off her glasses. Her hand is moving as she talks, and her mouth is bending into a smile. The image suggests her vitality, though I never managed a photo that fully captured the pleasure she took in her work. It was like trying to photograph a bird in flight.
Rahman showed me maps of the city’s incredible expansion. She introduced me to neighborhood activists. And she told stories of illegal land developers she’d met through her research. Though she knew some would kill to protect their business, she published her findings and helped journalists like me.
“Please write about this,” she told me once. “Write about it in your name. It would be safer if I was not the only one!” She spoke with a smile and a laugh, as she often did when describing her precarious existence.
Her words came back to me after Rahman was shot by men on motorcycles this month. Police say they killed the killer, a man linked with the Taliban, though Rahman’s friends have doubts. “I am shattered, my heart bleeds, I feel powerless,” one wrote. The feeling of helplessness is widespread. But Perween Rahman suggested one thing to do. Write about this, she said. Don’t let me be the only one.
The OPP-RTI is famous for “helping the poor,” though that is not precisely what it has done. Akhtar Hameed Khan, the social scientist who founded it in the 1980’s, said the poor must help themselves. His mission was to spread information. If people must live in extralegal developments, he would teach them how to dig their own sewers or lobby for basic services.
Rahman embraced this philosophy, helping an entire city learn about itself. She wrote a report explaining who was stealing city drinking water. A wall map at her office charted sewers and storm drains clogged by unplanned development. Other maps identified hundreds of square kilometers that the informal builders were capturing. She courageously lit a torch at the shadowy intersection where politicians, business interests, criminal organizations, and violence come together.
Pakistanis do not have nearly enough information about that intersection, and Rahman’s death illustrates why.
She courageously lit a torch at the shadowy intersection where politicians, business interests, criminal organizations, and violence come together
Pakistan can be proud of a robust media, brilliant researchers, and dedicated activists who often work at the risk of their lives. The trouble is that they are not yet numerous enough, or supported strongly enough. It is hard to speak truth to power in any country, including mine. And it’s much harder than it should be in Pakistan. The whole ecosystem of information is cramped by scarce resources and constant peril. Vast social trends are under-examined. Murders are described but not often explained. Newspapers commonly edit stories so that basic facts, such as the name of a political party, are omitted. Journalists and activists must make practical decisions about whether this or that statement is so important that they are willing to leave the country after making it.
Pakistan as a whole is safer than any stereotype of the country would suggest. Karachi is not among the world’s most violent cities, which are mostly in Latin America or the United States. More than 80 countries have higher murder rates than Pakistan. It is the narrower problem of political violence that disrupts civic life, and risks staining a nation’s soul. All too often victims are targeted simply for what they say – people like Malala Yousufzai, shot as she was promoting education; Salman Taseer, assassinated for his opinion of Pakistan’s blasphemy law; Saleem Shahzad, dumped in a canal after he reported on extremists and the military; or Perween Rahman, producing her maps and reports on Karachi.
The Orangi Pilot Project is famous for ‘helping the poor’, though that is not precisely what it has done. The social scientist who founded it in the 1980’s said the poor must help themselves
But if these attacks horrify the world, there is an opportunity to inspire. Pakistanis can carry on the basic task of citizenship Perween Rahman performed for more than thirty years. Find reliable information. Pass it on. Publish it. And cite your sources, saying how you know what you know.
When I wrote a book about Karachi called Instant City, residents helped me follow Rahman’s example. They helped me to document a battle over park land, which ended in the murder of the activist Nisar Baloch in 2009. Although I could not identify who pulled the trigger, court records, maps, and interviews revealed a great deal about the land grab that led to the murder. Brave citizens helped me because they cared about their city. In the same spirit, citizens can continue the work to which Rahman devoted her life.
How to do this and survive? “It would be safer if I was not the only one,” Rahman said. When in danger, researchers, activists, or journalists can share information. They can publish their findings in many places, so criminals will know they are up against too many citizens to silence. Those who are not writers or activists can offer financial support, whether through a donation to a public interest group or simply a newspaper subscription. Contributions, however small, strengthen institutions doing dangerous work. Through such contributions, citizens effectively band together to inform themselves. It is a form of “self-help,” the principle for which Perween Rahman lived and died.
Ultimately, of course, the government must more effectively prevent or prosecute political violence. That would require extraordinary patience and political skill, especially when violent actors are found to have links to powerful parties or the state. But it is possible to imagine how Pakistan’s next prime minister might begin the job after the elections May 11.
First, congratulate the outgoing government on completing its five-year term, which no elected civilian government had ever done. It was a vital step in establishing democracy, and an overarching goal that the whole country understood. It was a departure from bitter history, worth achieving no matter what else went wrong.
Next, take a moment to recall Perween Rahman and other citizens who have been killed. Define the next vital step toward democracy, an overarching goal that is worthy of the next five years: Make public discourse safe.
Source: The Friday Times
Revolutionary resolve
by Rabiya Ezdi
Rahman had a capacity to pick up on the potential of people, and believe in them until they had no choice but to believe in themselves
It is a natural human instinct to celebrate those that leave us. But a tribute to Perween Rahman is like sharing some of the stuff that real legends are made of. Not the people of big awards and media coverage, but those that make change on the ground while shunning publicity; the true heroes of Pakistan.
I first met Perween eleven years ago. After being disillusioned by the role of mainstream architects in making the kind of change that was needed in our cities, I had decided to plunge into the NGO sector. The replication of the OPP (Orangi Pilot Project) model in Punjab had begun, adding to its recognition as a development alternative with much promise. I expected Perween to be the proverbial ‘NGO-type’: scary, aggressive, intimidating. She was none of these. With a warm smile, a chirpy voice, and a kind demeanour, she welcomed me to the OPP-RTI (Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute) and told me that I should spend the first two weeks just trying to understand the work of the organisation.
OPP was at the time and still is, running on the momentum of Dr Akhtar Hamid Khan’s teachings; simplicity, frugality, and the ideals of love and humanity. Two of the first of Dr Sahib’s axioms I was told I must remember were: “I made a mistake”, and “I have not understood”. Being used to an academic and professional world where flaunting one’s knowledge, talking more than listening, and proving one’s point often in heavy jargon, were characteristic of ‘strong’ professionals — this new ethos was most liberating, and one of the things that made me fall instantly for the OPP’s development philosophy.
Anyone interested in being a part of this most beautiful process of true, rooted change, could just sit back, listen, observe, and internalise when ready. There was no room for ego. Also, where mainstream development work is about ‘doing’ for the poor, this was about learning from the poor, and supporting their initiatives with whatever know-how is appropriate, from technical input, to maps and training. It was the self-help model, committed to bringing human dignity back into the formula of helping the poor help themselves.
It was this that I learnt most from Perween and those at OPP: working for ‘real’ development is, more than anything else, a spiritual discipline.
On the operational side of the organisation, there was the weekly Monday meeting. In appearance just a tedious reporting of the week’s progress by every OPP-RTI team member including Perween herself, in reality it is an exceptional tool for accountability, transparency, and inclusive decision-making. It was the platform for debate, disagreement, acknowledgement of failures, and a celebration of small and big successes.
In work ethic, Perween was a disciplinarian and this had trickled down to all members of the institution. Work was the temple, the worship; there was no compromise. While she was gentle, she was as firm and upright as the trunk of an oak tree. The OPP-RTI research objective was clear: advocacy for the poor. The methodology was simple — interview, mapping, writing, and dissemination.
And then there was Perween’s insistence on using the right words; “It is the terms we use that shape our biases towards the poor,” she would say. Perween was not opposed to the city’s ‘mafias’ any more than she was saddened by the government’s indifference in solving the problems of the poor. She had come to realise that the term ‘mafia’ is misleading; in a system that is not fair by its very nature, and where the majority has no choice but to fend for themselves, a ‘mafia’ was simply an opportunist’s response in a crisis.
The word ‘katchi abadi’ she would say, leads to an automatic anti-poor prejudice. It was merely ‘People’s Housing’, “They are people who have found no alternative and this reflects the failure of the government to absorb them”. And ‘informal settlements’? Perween had concluded that there is no such thing; it was simply that which was ‘unofficial’ planning, unofficially supplied services, and unofficial systems, versus what was ‘officially’ done and recognised. And it was these ‘unofficial’ systems that existed often in collusion with the government, and supported the lives of 70 per cent of the city’s population, hence the need to recognise and understand them.
Perween was high on life. Along with countless people from community-based organisations in Sindh and Punjab, we travelled across the country several times a year, trying to understand and support poor people’s initiatives. Travel was not just business; while the tone was always jovial, it was above all an opportunity to make connections and give people hope. It is this people-building that was the real and lasting investment. Perween had a capacity to pick up on the potential of people, and believe in them until they had no choice but to believe in themselves. She would instil idealism, humane values, and a work ethic without overtly ‘preaching’. She was that rare combination of mentor and friend.
Perween was not the change itself, she was one of change’s most potent agents — the faith of change, the brain behind change. In her inside-out understanding of the city’s ways, and in the networks and relationships with government and communities that she had forged over the years, Perween had crystallised a movement of sorts, where the marginalised were shown ways in which they would really no longer be the city’s ‘Citizen X’. And it is always the true change-makers of the world that shake the hold of those who live only to maintain a ruthless status quo.
Many theories abound about who would want to so heinously rob this gentle soul of her life, this soul that couldn’t hurt an ant. The truth is simply that in the years since she first joined OPP, Perween had quietly grown and come to a point where she could move mountains. The OPP’s ground-breaking low-cost sanitation model, and the upgrading of housing in Orangi, were the primers. The Karachi master plan for the conversion of Karachi’s open nallahs into box culverts was achieved through an arduous process of lobbying with the KWSB. Research into the truth about Karachi’s water crisis, and unearthing water ‘thefts’ was geared by the OPP.
The 2006 floods in Karachi and their connection with the choking of Karachi’s storm-water nallahs due to encroachments by government and private interests alike, was investigated by the OPP. And now the Secure Housing Initiative, wherein it was discovered that pre-partition villages or Goths in Karachi’s peripheral areas, were being evicted by political interests in order to create new constituencies for political parties. Where the government’s figures recognised these goths to be 400 in number, through research the OPP-RTI discovered that there were more than 2000. The OPP-RTI had entered into a process of mapping these goths, and supporting goth dwellers to advocate for land title.
In 2010, these maps helped convince the government to issue land titles to over half of those communities. Now, by 2013, more land titles were on their way. “The maps did it. Maps help to build relationships,” she would say, “The maps tell us what to do, where to go, who to lobby. They help professionals to understand the reality and have the courage to accept it. They help government to understand the reality and accept it too, because they are no longer the only ones that have that information. The people have this information now, and the NGOs and media have it too.” Most of these maps of the goth settlements have now been accepted as official government maps. “It is the community youth who actually do the mapping. We only help train them, and then take a back seat, become invisible.”
Despite negativity and despair all around, with the youthful spirit of a sixteen-year-old, Perween never stopped being an incurable optimist.
In a presentation she made in Bangkok in February at a meeting of community-based organisations from Asia, Perween’s words are the only solace one finds in the midst of this painful turn of events: “Today Karachi is in flames, and one of the aspects of the violence in the city is the politics of land and who gets title to it. Getting land title for these goth settlers, who have lived there since long before partition in 1947, has been a very powerful step forward for the peace and the political balance of Karachi. We were just saying amongst ourselves that if we die today, we will die so happily, because we have done it.”
This was Perween Rahman. With the childlike vivacity of a fluttering bird, the resolve of a revolutionary, and the magnanimity of a sage, this gentle soul had helped to change the map of Karachi.