Sunday, April 23, 2017

Running the Boston Marathon for Pakistani Women’s Rights

(Or in particular, for the rights of an outstanding Pakistani woman political prisoner)

April 22, 2017

Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
PO Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819

Dear editor,

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, once attended MIT on full scholarship. She completed studies in biological sciences, and went on to do her PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Brandeis University, successfully completing it despite being in an abusive marriage (with a Pakistani from whom she later divorced). Her PhD focused on helping dyslexic and otherwise learning disabled children. Today she languishes in a U.S. federal penitentiary, a political prisoner for whom tens of thousands of Pakistanis demonstrate regularly on the streets of London, Karachi, Islamabad, and Peshawar.

I am a Pakistani woman athlete who has run 31 marathons in nine years (including seventeen sub-4 hour marathons). The case of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who had adopted Boston as her home for over a decade, was so compelling that I could not run America’s oldest marathon except in her name. So, on Patriots Day 2017, I ran my first Boston Marathon in an attempt to draw attention to the egregious human rights violations against this innocent Pakistani Muslim woman.

As I stood in the Boston Commons on race morning, waiting with other runners to board the bus to the race start in Hopkinton, I could picture the slight and slender Aafia among the other doctors, scientists, and health professionals who were among the 27,000 athletes running Boston this year. Instead, Aafia occupied a tiny holding cell at the United States Penitentiary at Fort Worth, completely cut off from her family and community, her health gravely impugned by 14 years of political imprisonment.

She was arrested in Islamabad in a joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence operation in 2003, one of many innocents caught up in a broad net of politically-motivated, arbitrary, or misplaced arrests during the “War on Terror.” At first, Aafia’s captivity was kept a secret by her captors. This lasted about five years. In flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention, Aafia’s captors refused to acknowledge her presence within the prison system, allowing them to act with complete impunity towards her. She spent part of her captivity at the U.S. Air Force Base in Baghram, Afghanistan, where she was known as “Prisoner 650.” During this time, Aafia was denied proper medical treatment, and repeatedly tortured and raped.

Two of Aafia’s young children, Ahmed and Mariam, were arrested and imprisoned along with her in violation of Geneva Convention stipulations on the detention of children. Like Aafia, they were not entered in any prison registry. Much later, Ahmed and Mariam were released and ordered not to reveal anything about their captivity.

In 2008, Aafia’s captors finally acknowledged that they were holding her, and she was sent to the U.S. to face charges. Her trial was held in a Manhattan courtroom beset by fears of terrorism. She appeared in a wheelchair, displaying signs of having been tortured. Bizarrely, the 110-pound, 5’2’’ Pakistani neuroscientist was charged with the assault and attempted murder of seven U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan.

Despite grave contradictions in the prosecution’s case, and clearly exculpatory evidence in Aafia’s favor, she was convicted and sentenced to 86 years.

On Monday, I ran the Boston Marathon in honor of Aafia, who did so many great things while in Boston. The front of my race tee-shirt bore her image with the words “Free Dr. Aafia.” The back of the tee read “Prisoner 650,” a reference to the early period of Aafia’s captivity when she was held secretly in Baghram. Throughout the race, I met many wonderful race volunteers and runners who were students at MIT. I wondered how many of them knew of their government’s abuse of a Pakistani woman scientist who had sat in the same classroom as them.

Aafia’s case is a glaring example of the government’s disregard for due process, human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, prisoners’ rights, and children’s rights. It is my hope that women’s rights groups and civil libertarians in the U.S. will call for her release. These groups have vociferously and consistently opposed the oppression of Muslim women and girls in cases like that of Malalai Yousufzai, the Chibok girls in Nigeria; and in cases of honor killings. If they are act on principle and not politics, they must speak out for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

-Nadrat Siddique

We Did it for Aafia

By Nadrat Siddique

Training for a marathon (26.2 mile race) is a months-long process, very different from casual running for fitness.

In the lengthy preparation for a marathon, many things can happen to derail one’s training:  With 8 weeks left before the 2017 Boston Marathon (held in April), I developed a looming shin splint. I addressed it immediately, switching over to walking and low impact workouts at the gym for about three weeks.

Then, with 7 weeks left before Boston, I woke up one morning with shingles (I had chicken pox as a child). This lasted about two weeks.

Then, about 5 weeks before the marathon, my 26-year old stepbrother passed away. His sudden and tragic death deeply affected the family, and for me, brought back many memories of the death of my child, Hanzela, who died a SIDS death in his second month. At that point, I decided I really did not feel up to running Boston, either mentally or physically.

A week passed, then two, and I saw the mother of my dead stepbrother (my stepmum) heroically carrying on the motions of life, despite the passing of her beloved son, and I toyed again with the idea of running the illustrious marathon.

At this point, I’d run 31 prior marathons, and qualified for Boston many times. At the risk of sounding cocky, I had little to prove! The original—really the only—reason I’d wanted to run the race was to bring attention to the plight of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist nabbed in a joint U.S./Pakistani operation in Pakistan, raped and tortured by her captors, and ultimately sentenced to 86-years by a kangaroo court for a crime she clearly could not have committed. It particularly sickened me that neither the Pakistani government, nor any of the major Muslim organizations in the U.S. were actively seeking her release from what was a clearly politically-motivated and flagrantly unjust imprisonment. If I ran the Boston Marathon—held in the city where Aafia, a top scholar at MIT and Brandeis University—had excelled both scholastically and spiritually—it would have to be in her name. Once again thoughts of running Boston entered my head.

There were only two weeks left before the Boston Marathon when a tiny lump I’d had for three years on the side of my neck suddenly became inflamed. It turned out to be an inclusion cyst which developed an abscess. I tried ignoring it until after the marathon, but it only got larger and more inflamed. Then on Monday of the week prior to the marathon, I had a minor surgery for the cyst. Three days later (Thursday), I did a 15-mile run on a favorite tree-lined trail, with the gash on the side of my neck from the surgery, to see if I was up to the task of a marathon. I felt fine afterwards, and was egged on further to attain the seemingly unattainable.

On Saturday, I jumped in my car, packing little but my marathon outfit and some food items (I am a picky eater), and took off for Boston, arriving around 1:00 AM. The next day was Sunday, and I took the Boston subway to the mandatory bib number pickup at the John Hynes Convention Center, prayed a lot, and did little else.

Then, on Monday—Patriots Day in Boston—I ran the Boston Marathon wearing my long-sleeved black “Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui” tee (prepared for me by brothers from Masjid Al-Islam in SE Washington, DC). I was the only Pakistani woman in the field of approximately 37,000 runners, and finished the very hilly course in 4 hours 4 minutes, despite high temperatures during the mid-afternoon race (Marathons are ordinarily held in the early morning to decrease the possibility of heat injury among the athletes. But in Boston, the runners in my “wave” did not start running until about 11:00 AM, and we did not finish until about 3:00 PM. I saw many runners being carried off in stretchers, likely as a result of the very warm weather. According to the organizers’ website, 810 people were unable to finish the race; the Boston Globe reported that 2,000 required medical treatment during or after the race.)

About an hour after finishing the race, I was in my car, and on the way back to Maryland, composing letters to the Boston Globe on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui in my head as I drove. I reached Maryland safely at 3:00 AM. God is Great.