In real estate and realpolitick, location is everything. Strange then that fate (or John Lindsay perhaps) placed the New York consulate of Pakistan on East 65th Street, nearly back-to-back with the (you guessed it) Indian consulate on East 64th Street. Their staffs can easily converse over the back garden fence. One just north of the other; both a half a block in from Fifth Avenue and the Central Park Children's Zoo, near which today a gaggle of earnest New Yorkers rallied to support Pakistani human rights icon Mukhtaran Bibi.
As buses and taxis whisked toward the Plaza, and nannies and strollers and tourists tried to claim a path down the sidewalk next to the park, a coalition of human rights organization sent a stern and strong message to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf: it is patriotic to be a Muslim, a Pakistani, and a woman in support of Ms. Mukhtaran.
"President Musharraf has talked about enlightened moderation," said Amna Buttar, president of the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Woman, which organized the public press conference. "Well, we are a group of enlightened and moderate Pakistani-Americans."
The groups involved included ANAA, Amnesty International, Turning Point, Human Rights First, and Women in Islam. Two dozen woman held placards with Mukhtar Mai's picture on them up for passersby and the traffic along Fifth Avenue. All of the speakers called on the Pakistani government to allow Ms. Mukhtaran to travel to the U.S. on the tour originally organized by the ANAA.
The speakers were passionate and eloquent, and time and again, they sought to counter the Musharraf argument that promoting the case of Mukhtar Mai is bad for Pakistan and for Islam. Pakistani-American social worker and activist Robina Niaz, founder of Turning Point, a New York-based organization offering services to Muslim women and families facing cultural, religious and other problems, put it best.
"Mukhtar Mai is a role model for all Pakistani women," she said. "Indeed, she is a role model for all women of the world."
No sign they got through, however. According to a new post on Kristof's blog, the Pakistani embassy handed out flyers saying that ANAA is actually an Indian-financed Hindu group of Pakistan-haters. Nice. But then again, location is everything.
Note: I was going to create a montage of the quickie camera pics I snapped with my Treo 650 today, but found that Technorati did it for me (left) by grabbing thumbnails via RSS from Flickr - and with captions. Neat.
