Three receive First Freedom Awards

Credit: DEAN HOFFMEYER/TIMES-DISPATCH

First Freedom Awards were accepted by (from left) J. Brent Walker, Rena Berlin, Sulema Jahangir (on behalf of her mother, Asma Jahangir,) and John Graz.

By: Katherine Calos | Richmond Times-Dispatch
Published: January 14, 2011

If you needed an illustration of how tenuous religious freedom is in Pakistan, it came last week in the assassination of the governor of Punjab province.

After saying a Christian woman sentenced to death under the nation's blasphemy law should be pardoned, Salman Taseer was shot by one of his own bodyguards in Islamabad on Jan. 4.

The assassination caused Asma Jahangir to decide to remain in Pakistan rather than travel to Richmond to accept the International First Freedom Award on Thursday night at the Richmond Marriott downtown. Instead, daughter Sulema Jahangir accepted the honor from the Richmond-based First Freedom Center.

John Graz, secretary general of the International Religious Liberty Association, received the National First Freedom Award. J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, received the Virginia First Freedom Award. The Virginia Holocaust Museum received the Distinguished Service Award for its Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute.

Sulema Jahangir is a lawyer who joined her mother and her aunt at the AGHS Legal Aid Cell, which provides free legal assistance to the needy in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. Like her mother, she is concerned by the blasphemy law introduced in 1986 by a military dictator and used since then against people in minority religious groups.

Jahangir said the security guard who murdered Taseer "has been made into a hero by extremists." Most Pakistanis have a different view, she said, "but they are a scared majority. They are not armed. They don't have resources."

Asma Jahangir was recognized for her role with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which she served as special rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief from 2004 to 2010. She was twice elected chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She was imprisoned in 1983 for protests against the Pakistani military regime.

Sulema Jahangir went to Canada for college and to England for her law degree. She worked for two years as a corporate lawyer in London before deciding to return to Pakistan.

"It was very difficult because I loved London," she said. "But I wanted to go back and work in human rights. You can see the change you bring about in the country."

kcalos@timesdispatch.com

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