Filmmaker Nelofer Pazira shares her story in Hampton

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MARY-ELLEN SAUNDERS
KV STYLE

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Courtesy Nelofer Pazira

Nelofer Pazira grew up in Afghanistan and escaped as a refugee in 1989. She and her family moved to New Brunswick in 1990.

Journalist and filmmaker Nelofer Pazira will share her story of growing up in Afghanistan under Russian occupation and fleeing the country as a refugee.
The Hampton John Peters Humphrey Foundation has asked Pazira to be the guest speaker at this year’s Annual Human Rights Forum on Nov. 2., in Hampton.
Pazira is the star of the film Kandahar, which is based on her personal journey to find a childhood friend. She is also the author of A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of my Afghanistan, a story about her family’s life under Soviet rule.
Anne McTiernan-Gamble, chair of the foundation’s board of directors, said she hopes that Pazira will bring human rights issues in Afghanistan and New Brunswick to life for those who attend her speech.
“I’m excited to meet her for a number of reasons,” McTiernan-Gamble said. “She has lived in Afghanistan during this very turbulent period and has gone back there a number of times and continues to go there to create awareness.
“It will be from a different lens than what we normally hear because she was a woman who lived there who has done incredible things to bring awareness to human rights.”
Pazira grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan, and escaped as a refugee with her family to Pakistan in 1989. The family moved to New Brunswick in 1990 and later settled in Ontario.
Pazira directed and produced the documentary Audition, about cinema and images in Afghanistan, and she is working on a new movie Act of Dishonour about honour killing and refugees who return home. The human rights activist also established Dyana Afghan Women’s fund, an organization that provides education to women living in Kandahar.
McTiernan-Gamble said the human rights forum starts at 7:30 p.m. and is a free event. She said the guest speaker will also be giving a special lecture to social science and women issues students at Hampton High School.
“We are really excited because she is an Afghan-Canadian woman who originally immigrated to New Brunswick who has gone on to do some fabulous things and has created an awareness to the human rights issues people are facing,” McTiernan-Gamble said. “Given that Afghanistan is in the news every day, it’s a pertinent topic and I think people will find it fascinating to hear from someone like her.”
The Hampton John Peters Humphrey Foundation was created in 2000 to continue the Hampton native’s legacy by promoting international and local human rights.
Humphrey was born in Hampton in 1905, and was appointed human rights director for the United Nations Secretariat where he wrote the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the help of others.
McTiernan-Gamble said the foundation paid for the construction of a monument honouring Humphrey in front of the Hampton provincial court. She said the foundation will be unveiling a human rights mural about the right to education on the outside of Hampton High School on Nov. 12 at 2 p.m. and is working a package of information about the Canadian contribution to human rights that it hopes will be included in the school district’s curriculum.