A mural created by participants of the Aurat March 2020 at Lahore’s Hussain Chowk was torn down Saturday evening.
While talking to a media outlet a volunteer Amna Chaudhry said, “We had arranged a poster competition where female illustrators and designers were told to design posters for the march and send them in.”
They decided to install a mural in the city after receiving an overwhelming response, “All the artists were called to put up their posters on the wall to showcase the spirit of the march and promote it,” Chaudhry said.
But after four to five hours they had put up their posters, they were torn down. “The posters were not just torn, somebody had ripped through them,” the volunteer said.
Chaudhry also told that before even planning the activity permission had been taken from the authorities. “We had chosen Hussain Chowk as it is the center of the city and a good place for promotion purposes,” she said.
Organizers of the Aurat March posted the before and after pictures of a mural on the march’s official social media accounts after which support started coming in for them.
Many activists condemned the incident. Salman Sufi, the founder of the Salman Sufi Foundation, called it a show of the “insecurities deeply embedded within certain elements of society”.
Human rights lawyer Nighat Dad took to Twitter and wrote that if the posters put up by women receive this much hatred, what about the hatred received by women who stand up for their rights.
Chaudhry said that the incident did not and will not bring the spirits of the volunteers and organisers down. “You can tear down the posters but you can’t tear us apart. We will resist all things like these and keep putting up posters,” she said.
Chaudhry added that they will soon file a complaint. “We have shared the posters on social media and have asked supporters to print them out and put them up in their neighborhoods as a form of resistance.”
The Aurat March will take place across Pakistan on March 8. Fundraisers for the march have started in several cities.
“For those who ask why we march – this is why!” Chaudhry added.
