Gabriella Giffords was a US Congresswoman from the Tucson area for the 8^th District of Arizona and Salman Taseer was the democratically elected Governor of Pakistan’s most populous State of Punjab. Both were shot some time earlier last week, the Congresswoman as she held a political rally in Tucson and the Governor as he emerged from a private engagement in a shopping mall in Islamabad. The US Congresswoman was in a critical state fighting for her life in a shootout that left six people dead including a federal superior court judge and Governor Taseer shot more than twenty times tragically succumbed to his injuries. A US Congresswoman and a Pakistani Governor, living worlds apart but experiencing the same personal tragedy that is also more importantly a public one, facing extreme violence while engaged in the democratic process.

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