Renowned Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz’s daughter has declined the presidential award that the Pakistani government had announced for her late mother in protest against abduction and torture of journalists and writers by the state.
This is the second national award that has been turned down this year.
Earlier, Saeen Taj Joyo, the father of missing Sindhi teacher and activist Sarang Joyo, had also declined the President’s Pride of Performance (Nisan-e-Pakistan) award on account of the disappearance of his son. Sarang Joyo was recently traced and claimed to have been tortured in captivity.
In a social media post, Fahmida Riaz’s daughter Veerta Ali Ujan said that accepting an award from the Imran Khan government on her mother’s behalf would be an insult to her struggle for justice and equality. She added, “Harassers [are] being awarded. Karachi left to rot in sewage.”
She said had her mother been alive today, she would have also refused to accept the award from the government. Born in Meerut in pre-partition India in 1946, Fahmida Riaz was among the leading Urdu poets.
She was also an unrelenting social critic and had been active in several human rights movements. She was among the writers, who had campaigned against General Zia-ul Haq’s military rule and the execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
{{/usCountry}}She was also an unrelenting social critic and had been active in several human rights movements. She was among the writers, who had campaigned against General Zia-ul Haq’s military rule and the execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
{{/usCountry}}She had to suffer the wrath of the Pakistani authorities and also spent a period of self-exile in India.
Riaz had died on November 21, 2018. She was 72.