NEW DELHI \u2014 Her face was everywhere \u2014 on the news, at police stations and at the airports where the Pakistani government had put her on a list of the nation\u2019s most wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has been accused of treason, though human rights defenders said that the allegations were bogus and that she was being targeted for highlighting abuses committed by Pakistan\u2019s military. Security services were searching for her in every corner of the country, raiding her friends\u2019 houses and closing in on her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But somehow Gulalai Ismail<\/a>, a 32-year-old Pakistani women\u2019s rights activist on the run, managed to slip through the dragnet last month and escape to America. She is now staying with her sister in Brooklyn and has applied for political asylum in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She is still worried about her parents back home and the underground network that secretly protected her as she moved from house to house, city to city, through countless police checkpoints, always wearing a veil over her face, her eyes barely visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She did not reveal how she got out, except to say, \u201cI didn\u2019t fly out of any airport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you any more,\u201d she said in an interview this week. \u201cMy exit story will put many lives at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her ordeal sheds light on the state of human rights in Pakistan, a troubled nation with a history of brutal repression. Ms. Ismail has campaigned aggressively for women\u2019s rights, bringing attention to rapes, disappearances and other abuses that she and many others say have been committed by Pakistan\u2019s security forces against their own people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The military is all-powerful in Pakistan<\/a> and the country is approaching an inflection point. Pakistani officials do not like talking about Ms. Ismail \u2014 none would comment publicly for this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [How Ms. Ismail became Pakistan\u2019s enemy of the state, accused of inciting rebellion<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her account of being chased out of the country does not help the government\u2019s efforts to win diplomatic support at a time when the economy is tanking and Pakistan is begging the world to censure India for its\u00a0recent moves on Kashmir<\/a>, a disputed territory claimed by both Pakistan and India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has taken Ms. Ismail some time to feel safe even in New York, she said, but she has begun to meet with prominent human rights defenders and the staffs of congressional leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI will do everything I can to support Gulalai\u2019s asylum request,\u201d said Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York. \u201cIt is clear that her life would be in danger if she were to return to Pakistan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistani security officials said they had suspected for some time that Ms. Ismail had slipped through their fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur guys have been after her, by all means, but she is not traceable,\u201d said a Pakistani intelligence agent who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing intelligence protocols. \u201cShe has gone to a place beyond our reach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How she did that \u2014 whether it was crossing overland into Iran or Afghanistan and then onward to Europe or America, or perhaps getting smuggled out by sea \u2014 remains a tantalizing mystery. The Pakistani government had barred her from leaving the country and tried to seal all the exits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ever since she was 16, Ms. Ismail has been speaking out about human rights abuses, focusing on the plight of Pakistani women and girls who suffer all kinds of horrors including forced marriages and honor killings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January, she aired accusations, on Facebook and Twitter, that government soldiers had raped or sexually abused many Pakistani women. She has also joined protests\u00a0led by an ethnic Pashtun movement<\/a>\u00a0that Pakistan\u2019s military has tried to crush. Pakistani officials have accused Ms. Ismail of sedition, inciting treason and defaming state institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In late May, she became a fugitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It started with a phone call from a friend to her house in Islamabad, Pakistan\u2019s capital, where she lived with her elderly parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s all over the media, a raid team is coming, you have to leave \u2014 now!\u201d the friend said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Ismail scrambled out the door with no spare clothes or even a phone. \u201cThey can trace you, even when it\u2019s off,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Was she scared?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was one of those moments you don\u2019t have time to feel,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have time to be frightened, you don\u2019t have time to be brave, you just have to act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She spent the next three months moving from place to place, across many different Pakistani cities, never using a phone or touching a computer, she said. She turned to a small, trusted group of friends and their contacts, staying indoors, covering her face for the few moments when she did step outside, incredibly careful each time she changed locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan is a heavily watched place. Roadside security checkpoints are everywhere. Ms. Ismail said she crossed hundreds of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She recalled one incident when she showed up at the house of a friend of her father\u2019s and when the friend answered the door and saw her standing there, he froze. \u201cHe was so scared that he would be arrested for supporting a terrorist and his children would be arrested,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day the friend called a taxi and Ms. Ismail left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHiding is not pleasant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She already had a visa to the United States, where she has visited regularly, meeting prominent women including Michelle Obama. After she arrived in New York in August, she immediately holed up in her family\u2019s house in Brooklyn, where two brothers and two sisters live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, she did not want to go outside. She felt depressed and anxious. She said she didn\u2019t feel any huge gush of relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was worried about her parents, who face charges of financing terrorism and remain under heavy surveillance in Islamabad. She was also worried that a Pakistani agent or someone on the government\u2019s side might see her on a New York street and take a picture of her \u2014 or worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent days, she said, she has been feeling much better. She still spends most of her time inside the family home, cooking mutton achaari and other Pakistani dishes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She is waiting on her asylum application. Lawyers said there was little chance that the United States would send her back to Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn Gulalai\u2019s case, I understand that she is charged with anti-state activities, which obviously carry a death penalty,\u201d said Masroor Shah, a lawyer in Islamabad who has dealt with many human rights cases. \u201cThere is no likelihood based on past policies and local laws that U.S. authorities would even consider an extradition request.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms. Ismail has started a new research and advocacy group, Voices for Peace and Democracy<\/a>, to protect women in conflict zones. She is also thinking of law school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it makes her sad, a constant shadow on her life ahead, that she might never see her parents again \u2014 or Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen I left, I knew this was a one-way trip,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd as I was leaving, I bent down and touched the soil, and told myself, \u2018This is where I belong, this is my country.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW DELHI \u2014 Her face was everywhere \u2014 on the news, at police stations and at the airports where the Pakistani government had put her on a list of the nation\u2019s most wanted. She has been accused of treason, though human rights defenders said that the allegations were bogus and that she was being targeted for highlighting abuses committed by… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3785,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions\/3785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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