The people power of Pakistan

Big up to the people of Pakistan. We at Amnesty always talk about creating mass movements, but frankly we’ve been dwarfed by what’s happening there.A campaign called Yeh Hum Naheen – This is Not Us – and financed by British and Indonesian Muslim businesses has attracted a phenomenal response in Pakistan, according to today’s Guardian.Having already captured the imagination of the nation’s leading actors and media gurus, the campaign has now got mass appeal. We’re not talking hundreds or thousands or even hundreds of thousands, we’re talking tens of millions. In fact nearly 63 million Pakistanis have signed up to the campaign – representing nearly a third of the country’s population.At every morning meeting, as I’ve said here before, we run through the day’s news. And sadly nearly every day for the last year one of us recounts the latest death toll from Pakistan. Just a couple of hours ago at least 15 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack near the city of Peshawar. Yesterday 10 died, including four schoolgirls, when a roadside bomb went off near the Afghanistan border.And last week another suicide bomb outside the home of one of the leaders of the coalition government – Asfandyar Wali Khan, the head of the Awami National Party (ANP) – killed four.Let’s hope this “people power” can make a difference.