F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: Senior Lawyer and leading human rights activist Asma Jahangir passed away after suffering from a brain hemorrhage in Lahore on Sunday.
Spokesperson of Asman told media that she was taken to a private hospital on Ferozepur Road on Saturday night where she passed away on Sunday.
Funeral prayer of Asma Jahangir will be offered on February 13, a family.
Asma Jahangir remained the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Supreme Court Bar Association.
She was also an author and remained a staunch activist for democracy.
According to media reports, Asma Jahangir was born in Lahore in January 1952. She received a Bachelors’ degree from Kinnaird College and an LLB from Punjab University.
She was called to the Lahore High Court in 1980 and to the Supreme Court in 1982. She later went on to become the first woman to serve as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
She was also jailed in 1983 for participating in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, which agitated against military dictator Ziaul Haq’s regime.
She was also active in the 2007 Lawyers’ Movement, for which she was put under house arrest and co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Women’s Action Forum.
Asma Jahangir received several awards, including a Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2010 and a Sitara-i-Imtiaz. In 2014, she was also awarded a UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights and an Officier de la Légion d’honneur – France’s highest civilian award – and Sweden’s alternative to the Nobel Prize for her decades of rights work.
