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[MANITHAM represented by its Executive Director,
Mr. Subramanian.G, in the Independent Election Monitoring in which Ms. Aasia
Jeelani, who was died in a Land Mine, at Kashmir during 1st day i.e.. on
20-04-2004.]
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 Her
life was a litany of wishes that I thought were absurd. She wanted an
inexhaustible supply of dresses. She wanted divine permission to worship
mothers! She wanted to stay young forever. Fate granted her last wish in a very
cruel way, and she is a woman of thirty for eternity.
I remember our first day at the University’s Journalism department. She was prim
and imperially slim in a peach Salwar suit, curious and anxious. When she
mentioned Filmfare magazine as her favourite publication, and those who were fed
on the darkness of Dostoevsky’s prose dismissed her as a naïve upstart. But
then, as psychoanalysts say that on the face of it all of us are alike, the
individual surfaces only when we probe deeper.
Vivacious in company that was familiar, reticent among strangers. Her sartorial
elegance and an elite family background never came in way of her humility. She
couldn’t hide an emotion. She was apologetic about her feminine vanity and envy.
A fractured relationship was an emotional catastrophe for her, so she was the
first to reconcile in a dispute. She humbled me thrice after we had petty
fights. She swore by optimism while popping anti-depressants for her own load of
unbearable miseries.
She was supposed to enter into an architecture college at Bombay when
circumstances had taken a twist and she landed up in the field of Journalism.
She did her masters in Journalism securing second position in her batch. Women
of her clan had distinguished themselves in different fields. Her sisters were
achievers. She too was supposed to excel and therefore made a humble beginning
writing for newspapers and interning with foreign news agencies awaiting a big
break in electronic media.
Asked about her reading habits in our ‘ragging session’ with seniors, Asiya
said, " I hate long books," only to invoke ridicule from the other side. She
disliked intellectual prudery and wanted to excel in her field by dint of what
she called a ‘practical dive.’ In the murky media scenario of Kashmir, she
realized her limitations as a Kashmiri woman and decided to work for Coalition
of Civil Society editing several publications of the organisation. She
chronicled the miseries of Kashmiri nation and actively participated in the
activities of CCS, becoming a voice of suffering Kashmiri women in the process.
During her trip to Amsterdam last year, she did a commendable job to portray the
ordeal of the parents of disappeared persons and half widows. In the dingy room
of CCS, she worked untiringly for hours together for the quarterly "Voices
Unheard".
She was member of Kashmir Women’s Initiative for Peace and Development (KWIPD),
a group formed to involve Kashmiri women in the task of conflict resolution and
nation building.
" I wanted to scale heights in the media world, earn money and make my life
comfortable but this is something that has given me contentment, satisfaction",
Asiya told me once. In her last throes, she had prayed Allah for forgiveness
showing her soul was alive in its haste to depart.
At the end of the month, when she would tally the number of dead, rights
violations, injured and other violent incidents, her colleagues would tease her.
" Asiya, there are no women among dead this month."
Angry, she would leave the room.
Her family was looking for a match for her and we so wished her to see her a
bride. It would have been an elaborate affair. She would have shopped for months
for a Lehenga (she wrote a good piece on trends in bridal wear two years ago). A
plain shroud, that covered her, seems a hideous thing for her.
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL ANNUAL REPORT - 2004
India: [January to April 2004]
In Jammu and Kashmir, two human rights defenders belonging to the "Coalition of
Civil Society" (CCS), Asiya Jeelani and driver Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, were
killed during election monitoring activities on 20 April. In January 2004, tens
of thousands of activists from around the world gathered in Mumbai for the World
Social Forum (WSF).
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