Three years ago the promising life of a young peace activist Faraz Ahmed Naveed was cruelly snuffed out allegedly by agents of the Pakistani state.

A student at Karachi University and the son of prominent journalist Baseer Naveed—he was targeted because of his father’s work. Screaming state complicity is also the fact that to date, little action has been taken by the police or the Pakistani government to investigate the case and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Faraz had a deep passion for humanity and being prolific with the pen manifested his thoughts for a better world in his numerous writings. His work was only discovered by his family after his untimely death. An excerpt from a paper titled:  Aesthetic Call—beckoning young people to join together and dedicate for a world without prejudice and inequality, is as follows: 

“. . . I would like to introduce a new organisation of pacifism, which could belong to our youthful standards. We can promote all fields of arts, but especially ‘philosophizing of every common ideology’. We can discuss the truth behind any morals and any kind of schools of thought. This is the requirement for youth because no one else has any stamina left for it now. 

“Our elders’ brains have been sickened by the former concept of reconciliation. But we don’t have to re-cognize anything, as we can surely encourage the term cognition. We should understand everything from a zero perspective. I am asking such because perspectives have always led us to bigoted bias. And it is this bias, which eventually results in all sorts of prejudices and inequalities. Therefore we have to be patient over our limitations, and should start everything from the beginning.  

“Hence I suggest an organisation consisting of youth under the age of 25, which will be based on the concept of ‘no discrimination’ in terms of gender, creed, status, language or any other distinction. But something I would like to point out specifically is that there should be no difference on the basis of moral. We are youth, so we should be one…”

On November 8, 2007 Faraz’s family and friends—some who had never had the privilege to be acquainted with this wise young man—marked his wonderful life at a small ceremony held at the Grand Mosque, in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.