28 April 2015

Crushing voices of dissent

MANAN AHMED ASIF
April 28, 2015 

Activist Sabeen Mahmud’s assassination in Pakistan proves that the state sees in intellectuals a threat to its unitary vision of nationalism.

Why kill intellectuals? Why kill feminists? Why kill artists or writers?

On April 24, 40-year-old Sabeen Mahmud, the director of a literary and cultural space in Karachi, The Second Flood (T2F), was assassinated by unknown assailants. She was driving home with her mother after an event at her cultural centre when the assassins shot her five times on a road in the upper class Defence Housing Authority area. The bullets that pierced her shoulder, chest and abdomen killed her before she could reach a hospital. Her mother, who was shot twice, was critically injured.

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