The mullahs hate him
for helping "kafirs'' imprisoned in Pakistan. Arab Sheikhs loathe him
for being a spoilsport in their traditional desert game of
camel-racing. But to hundreds of commoners like Dalbeer Kaur, sister of
the Pakistan-incarcerated Sarabjeet Singh, he is no less than an angel.
Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney handles the accolades with
a calm pragmatism. The man responsible for helping get Sarabjeet's
death sentence converted to life imprisonment, insists he is nothing
more than a tool to change a mindset which is lopsided against victims.
Victims of rape, wrongful confinement and brutal practices like child
slavery and human trafficking.
"Khuda rahmatulil almeen hai. Woh sabka hai aur sab jagah hai (God is a
blessing for the world. He is omnipresent and belongs to all),''
philosophises the 52-year-old Burney, twirling his handlebar moustache,
seated at a trendy restaurant in Andheri in suburban Mumbai. Earlier in
the day, Burney, along with his elder son Fahad, as if to make a
statement, had toured Mumbai's famous places of worship like the Haji
Ali dargah, Siddhivinayak mandir, Mount Mary church and a gurudwara.
"I regret that nobody took me to a synagogue and a Parsi fire temple,''
he says. "We were running short of time or we would have visited those
places too,'' butts in Harmony Foundation's president Abraham Mathai
who fought bureaucratic hurdles, both in India and Pakistan, to bring
Burney down to Mumbai where he was bestowed with an award at the 3rd
Mother Teresa Memorial Awards for Social Justice last week.
The first time Karachi-based Burney fell into the iron arm of the law
was back in the 1970s when, as a fiery student leader at Karachi
University, he criticised General Zia ul Haq's ruthless martial law.
Charged with sedition, Burney was detained in a police lock-up for six
days. "On the seventh day, a very young Benazir Bhutto met me at the
lock-up. She met me at 7 pm and by 11 pm, I was awarded eight months of
rigorous imprisonment,'' says Burney who recalls meeting an old blind
convict in his barrack. One day, he says, he asked the old man about
his crime. "Murder,'' replied the senior. "But you are blind and old,
how did you kill someone?'' inquired Burney. "Beta, this is martial
law. Anything can happen here,'' replied the old man. That very day
Burney decided to study law and fight for unfairly convicted prisoners.
His subsequent two imprisonments only steeled his determination to
fight for the rights of innocent prisoners.
"I don't side with criminals and terrorists. But I can't stomach
innocents being jailed,'' says Burney who, as Pakistan's caretaker
federal minister for law and human rights, made former president Pervez
Musharraf pardon Kashmir Singh, an Indian who spent 35 years on Death
Row in Pakistan.
The day Kashmir Singh was released, a source told Burney that he might
be arrested again. "I postponed my return to Islamabad and stayed back
in Karachi. After Kashmir Singh spent a night in my room, I accompanied
him to the Wagah border the next day and returned home only after
handing him over to the Indian authorities,'' he says.
Immediately after Kashmir Singh's much-publicised release, Burney took
up the case of Sarabjeet Singh. This was enough for the India-bashing
mullahs of Pakistan. Irate fatwas against him came fast and furious
from many mosques, calling him an Indian stooge. "But I refused to
buckle as I am convinced, through his case papers, that Sarabjeet is
innocent,'' he says.
Of the seven lakh-plus prisoners across the world Burney has helped get
released, those closest to his heart are the children who were enslaved
as camel jockeys in the Gulf. Brought from the poor pockets of India,
Pakistan and Bangladesh, these children were kept in private prisons.
"They were underfed to keep them lightweight, were made to live and
sleep in hot, crowded huts. I saw many children getting killed after
they fell and came under the camels' hooves,'' recalls Burney. "Nobody
believed me when I recounted this story.'' Then in 2005 a journalist
from the American channel HBO accompanied Burney to a cruel camel race
in a Gulf kingdom. "With a hidden camera, he filmed the inhuman sport.
Once HBO aired the 25-minute documentary, the world was in a rage,'' he
says. In came the numerous accolades, including the US Department of
State's Anti-Human Trafficking Hero Award (2005).
But perhaps the best compliment for Burney so far has come from
Sarabjeet's sister Dalbeer who, saluting the feisty activist at the
Mother Teresa Awards, said: "Tumko khuda kahoon ke khuda ko khuda
kahoon/Donon ki soorat ek hai, kisko khuda kahoon (Should I call you
God or call the Almighty God/The faces are identical, I don't know whom
I should address thus).''
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Sunday_TOI/Cry_freedom/articleshow/3663338.cms
Copyright
© 2008 Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd.
