By — Fred de Sam Lazaro Fred de Sam Lazaro Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/sabeen-mahmud-shot-dead-karachi Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud shot dead in Karachi World Apr 24, 2015 6:32 PM EDT Pakistan’s largest city has a well-earned reputation for terrorism and violence, but until the day it claimed her own life, Sabeen Mahmud was determined to show that there’s much more to Karachi. During a visit last month, she told me she was determined not to let fear paralyze the vibrant life that came naturally in a once thriving cosmopolitan city now wrecked by sectarian and ethnic tension. Her coffee shop and performance space, T2F (The Second Floor), was designed to bring people together — for music, dance, art exhibitions and dialog, sometimes over divisive issues. Friday night featured a panel discussion titled “Unsilencing Balochistan,” about Pakistan’s restive western province. Mahmud, 40, was fatally gunned down as she left the event in a shooting that also left her mother critically injured. Her mother, Mahnaz Fazil, was a teacher who encouraged Sabeen to pursue her dreams, which she did by defying many stereotyped expectations for young women in Pakistan. She played cricket competitively, protested on the streets for various human rights causes, entered the tech world as a 17-year-old and then left it all to start T2F, a thriving island of civilized discourse and culture. That will stop now, but if Mahmud’s influence remains, not for long, say friends. “They silenced you but your voice will be heard for ever [sic],” wrote Tofiq Pasha Mooraj, a prominent Karachi media personality who took me to visit T2F. Like so many others, he is shell-shocked as he eulogized Mahmud in a Facebook post: “You spoke up for what you believed. For the freedom of speech. For the freedom from oppression.” By — Fred de Sam Lazaro Fred de Sam Lazaro Fred de Sam Lazaro is director of the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, a program that combines international journalism and teaching. He has served with the PBS NewsHour since 1985 and is a regular contributor and substitute anchor for PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.
Pakistan’s largest city has a well-earned reputation for terrorism and violence, but until the day it claimed her own life, Sabeen Mahmud was determined to show that there’s much more to Karachi. During a visit last month, she told me she was determined not to let fear paralyze the vibrant life that came naturally in a once thriving cosmopolitan city now wrecked by sectarian and ethnic tension. Her coffee shop and performance space, T2F (The Second Floor), was designed to bring people together — for music, dance, art exhibitions and dialog, sometimes over divisive issues. Friday night featured a panel discussion titled “Unsilencing Balochistan,” about Pakistan’s restive western province. Mahmud, 40, was fatally gunned down as she left the event in a shooting that also left her mother critically injured. Her mother, Mahnaz Fazil, was a teacher who encouraged Sabeen to pursue her dreams, which she did by defying many stereotyped expectations for young women in Pakistan. She played cricket competitively, protested on the streets for various human rights causes, entered the tech world as a 17-year-old and then left it all to start T2F, a thriving island of civilized discourse and culture. That will stop now, but if Mahmud’s influence remains, not for long, say friends. “They silenced you but your voice will be heard for ever [sic],” wrote Tofiq Pasha Mooraj, a prominent Karachi media personality who took me to visit T2F. Like so many others, he is shell-shocked as he eulogized Mahmud in a Facebook post: “You spoke up for what you believed. For the freedom of speech. For the freedom from oppression.”