last week while in providence, RI, where i interviewed dr zamindar for “partition stories,” i also met and interviewed asim rafiqui. photographer extraordinaire, writer, journalist, activist. born and raised in pakistan, studied at columbia, is now based in sweden. brilliant, perceptive, incredibly humble. his work on the families of 40 pakistani men held at bagram will be on display at brown throughout this summer. he photographs some of the most marginalized, brutally invisibilized pakistanis, yet their beauty and dignity shine in his work. these are some of the most beautiful photographs i have ever seen and some of the most compelling stories i have ever read.
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“They are ghosts, and I have spent nearly two months trying to find any evidence of them. They are the 40 Pakistani men who remain imprisoned, without charge or evidence, by the Americans at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. They have not been see or heard by anyone other than their immediate families who are granted carefully monitored and heavily censored telephone and internet video call access. Some of the men have been in Bagram, often called one of America’s most notorious prisons, for over 11 years. Denied access to the press, human rights organizations, and legal representation, these men have been silenced and erased, the evidence and rationale for their incarceration beyond the eyes, ears and focus of the public and the media. This is intentional and part of a process of systemic dehumanization that enables the unjust detention and cruel prison conditions the men face. Until 2012, their own government refused to recognize them as citizens of Pakistan. I have spent two months traveling across Pakistan trying to discover something, anything, about them. And I have found the traces of these imprisoned men in the testimonies and stories told by their families–the children, wives, parents, and siblings they left behind, who anxiously wait for their return, and determinedly fight for their release. Sitting in homes located in the deepest depths of the slums of Pakistan’s mega-cities, in small farming communities, and in remote settlements near the border with Afghanistan, I have heard tales of the men’s lives, childhood, dreams and hopes, and, of the emotional and economic consequences inflicted on the lives of entire households. My journey has brought me in touch with some of the most economically marginal and desperate people I have ever met. And what I have felt as I have sat in their tenement rooms and mud homes is a terrible shame and anger at the realization that not only has their own government failed to live up to its responsibility, but that another nation–one that brags about its global economic might and unmatched military power, has chosen to torture, humiliate, and indefinitely incarcerate some of the poorest, and the most economically weak people I have ever met.”
More here.
