Ansar Burney

Burney was born in Karachi — the English article's infobox and lead, the Urdu article and Wikidata give 14 August 1956, while the English article's early-life section states 16 August 1956, an internal contradiction in that article; the majority reading is followed here. He is the son of Syed Mukhtar Ahmed Burney, and his ancestors migrated from western Uttar Pradesh at Partition. He took a master's degree in law from the University of Karachi. As a student leader with the People's Student Federation in the 1970s he spoke out for justice and civil rights, and in 1977, aged twenty, he was arrested and imprisoned under the military government for pro-democracy speeches; the Urdu article recounts repeated imprisonments in 1977–1979, during which he resolved to work for wrongfully held prisoners. ^{1 2}

On his release, and after completing his law degree in 1980, Burney set up the Prisoners Aid Society, a commission against terrorism and a bureau for missing and kidnapped children in Karachi, and eventually the Ansar Burney Trust International, with offices in Pakistan, Washington D.C. and London. The trust campaigns for the release of innocent and illegally detained prisoners in Pakistan and abroad — including prisoners held for decades, among them people born in jail — for the recovery of missing and kidnapped children (more than 20,000 recovered, on the Urdu article's account), and against human trafficking, false imprisonment, slavery and the death penalty. Burney served as an expert advisor to the United Nations Human Rights Council and, from November 2007 to April 2008, as Pakistan's federal minister for human rights in the caretaker cabinet. He received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, and on 23 March 2013 the Hilal-i-Imtiaz, announced by President Asif Ali Zardari on 14 August 2012; the United States State Department named him an Anti-Human Trafficking Hero. ^{1 2}

His faith is recorded as unknown, because no source names an affiliation for him. Neither the English nor the Urdu article makes any statement of his religion — their content is his legal and humanitarian work, his imprisonments and his honours — and Wikidata carries no religion value at all. ^{1 2 3}

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