NPR: Escape To New York: Afraid For Her Life, A Pakistani Activist Seeks Asylum
Tim McDonnell/NPR
This story first appeared on NPR.
In May, one of Pakistan's most controversial women's-rights activists vanished.
Gulalai Ismail, 32, had spent much of her life organizing young women and girls to push back against child marriage and assert their rights in a male-dominated society. She founded an organization, Aware Girls, that provided leadership training and produced one alumna who went on to become the world's best-known girls' education advocate and youngest-ever Nobel laureate: Malala Yousafzai.
Ismail was used to making enemies, ranging from anonymous Facebook trolls to Taliban militants. But early last year, when she began to draw attention to the stories of women who claimed to have been raped or sexually assaulted by Pakistani security forces, she attracted the ire of her most formidable opponent yet: The country's all-powerful military and intelligence agencies.