Wali Khan

My mother, @DrUzma_KhanPK and my aunts @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK have now spent 30 days in jail under Section 3 of Pakistan’s Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960 - a law rooted in colonial-era preventive detention practices. We have challenged the legality of their detention from day one. Now, even the original 30-day period has expired yet they remain imprisoned. For an entire month, neither the families nor their lawyers have been allowed to meet them. On what basis are they being held? Why are they being denied access to their families and legal counsel? We demand their immediate release.

30 April 1977, Buenos Aires. A handful of mothers whose children had been taken by Argentina's military junta gathered in the Plaza de Mayo to ask one question: where are they? Gatherings of more than three people were banned, so they walked in pairs, arm in arm. They came back every Thursday. The junta called them "las locas" – the madwomen. That December, one of their founders, Azucena Villaflor, was abducted and never came home. They kept walking. In 1983 the junta fell. In 1985 its leaders stood trial. For three years, ever since their brother @ImranKhanPTI was jailed, my mother @DrUzma_KhanPK and my aunts @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK went to Adiala jail every Tuesday to ask to see him. Since 21 September they have been held themselves, without charge. The generals in Buenos Aires underestimated women who kept showing up. The generals in Pakistan keep underestimating Pakistani women. Charge them or release them. #FreeImranKhanAndFamily

Mirza Ghalib (1797–1869): رنج سے خوگر ہوا انساں تو مٹ جاتا ہے رنج مشکلیں مجھ پر پڑیں اتنی کہ آساں ہو گئیں Ranj se khugar hua insan to mit jaata hai ranj Mushkilein mujh par padin itni ke aasan ho gayin "Once a man is hardened to pain, the pain is gone. So many hardships fell on me that they became easy." #Ghalib

ANATOMY OF OPPRESSION | No. 1 The tactic: imprison the leader Remove the person around whom opposition gathers, and the movement is meant to scatter. South Korea, August 1973. Opposition leader Kim Dae-jung is abducted from a Tokyo hotel by his own country's intelligence agency, bound, blindfolded and taken to sea with weights tied to his body. Intervention from Washington and Tokyo saves his life. Five days later he is home – under house arrest. What followed was 14 years of the same treatment, in rotation: – 1976: imprisoned for leading a declaration calling for democracy. Nearly three years behind bars, then house arrest – 1980: arrested again after a new military takeover, and sentenced to death for sedition – 1981–82: sentence commuted under international pressure, then pushed into exile in the US – 1985: returns home, is arrested at the airport, and placed straight back under house arrest Why it works – for a while: – The charge is framed as national security, not politics – A courtroom gives persecution the appearance of law – Rotating prison, house arrest and exile keeps the leader permanently out of reach of his people Why it failed: – Human rights groups and foreign governments never stopped campaigning – Each new arrest made him a bigger symbol of everything the regime denied – In 1987, mass protests forced the military-backed government to concede direct presidential elections He lost that first election when the opposition split its vote. He ran again, and again. In December 1997, the man once sentenced to death was elected President of South Korea. In 2000, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. A prison can hold a man. It has never held an idea for long.

Pakistan's envoy in Geneva briefed NGOs this week on "progress in strengthening national human rights laws." Here is what the briefing appears to have left out. My uncle @ImranKhanPTI has been in prison since August 2023. In 2024 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention arbitrary and called for his immediate release. That has not happened. My mother @DrUzma_KhanPK and her sisters @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK were detained - without any charges - ahead of a planned protest in September and have now been held for more than 40 days. Thousands of party workers have been arrested since 2023, and civilians have been tried in military courts. @UN_HRC – that finding came from your own Working Group. Resolution 60/251 requires Council members to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights. A member state is ignoring your own experts while briefing NGOs on its progress. What will the Council do about it? @UNHumanRights

Day 40. On 28 October, my aunt @Noreen_KhanPK was moved from Kot Lakhpat Jail to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. No one told the family. Today she was moved back to jail. Again, no one told us. We don’t know why she was taken to a cardiac hospital. We don’t know what tests were done. No family consent was sought. We don’t know how much danger she is in. What we do know: there were armed police every few feet at PIC. What are they so afraid of? My mother @DrUzma_KhanPK and my aunts @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK have been held in Kot Lakhpat Jail since 21 September under Section 3 of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, 1960. No charge. No trial. Their only “crime” is standing up for their brother, @ImranKhanPTI. @HRCP87 has condemned the misuse of the MPO against political workers before. We ask you to speak now. Charge them or release them. #FreeImranKhanAndFamily

It is our privilege

غلامی میں نہ کام آتی ہیں شمشیریں نہ تدبیریں جو ہو ذوقِ یقیں پیدا تو کٹ جاتی ہیں زنجیریں Ghulami mein na kaam aati hain shamsheerein na tadbeerein Jo ho zauq-e-yaqeen paida to kat jaati hain zanjeerein "In bondage, neither swords nor schemes avail. When conviction takes hold, the chains are cut." – Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Tulu-e-Islam (Bang-e-Dra, 1924) #AllamaIqbal

In March 1919, the British passed the Rowlatt Act, allowing Indians to be detained without trial. It was passed over the united opposition of the Council's Indian members. Muhammad Ali Jinnah resigned from the Imperial Legislative Council in protest. In his letter to the Viceroy, he wrote: "A government that passes or sanctions such a law in times of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilised government." 107 years later, in the country Jinnah founded, the sisters of @ImranKhanPTI – my mother @DrUzma_KhanPK and my aunts @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK – have been held for six weeks under a 1960 preventive-detention law. No trial. No charge. What would the Quaid call such a government? Charge them or release them. #RuleOfLaw #FreeImranKhanAndFamily

بنے ہیں اہلِ ہوس مدعی بھی منصف بھی کسے وکیل کریں، کس سے منصفی چاہیں – فیض احمد فیض، «نثار میں تری گلیوں کے» (زنداں میں لکھی گئی، ۱۹۵۰ کی دہائی کے اوائل)

بنے ہیں اہلِ ہوس مدعی بھی منصف بھی کسے وکیل کریں، کس سے منصفی چاہیں "Those who hunger for power are now both accuser and judge. Whom do we make our advocate? From whom do we seek justice?" – Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Nisar Main Teri Galiyon Ke. Written from prison in the early 1950s.

What a farce. They keep treating the people as second class citizens. They have stopped even pretending that they care about the people. Why would they? It's not a regime elected by the people. It's a coloniser mindset: how dare the natives remove the VIP barriers. 10 years in prison based on arbitrary rules I just made up. Time to get rid of the colonisers and finally be free & emancipated. Time for Munir, marium & the lot to go

Day 39. My mother @DrUzma_KhanPK, has been held in Kot Lakhpat Jail since 21 September. She has not been charged with any crime. She is detained under 3-MPO, a colonial era public-order law that lets a deputy commissioner jail a citizen for 30 days on a police recommendation, and then extend it. Her first order expired on 20 October. The Punjab government has renewed it for another 30 days. Her sisters @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK are held under the same law. Noreen was taken to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology without her family being told she was unwell or that she was being moved. No one has been allowed to see her.

In December 2017, Pakistan allowed the mother and wife of Kulbhushan Jadhav – an Indian naval officer convicted of espionage and sentenced to death – to meet him at the Foreign Office in Islamabad. The government said it did so on humanitarian grounds. Today my aunt, @Noreen_KhanPK, is in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology - shifted from Kot Lakhpat where she has been illegally detained. She has not been charged with any crime. No one has been allowed to see her – not her daughter, not any member of her family. Family members at the hospital say her ward is under police lockdown, with officers posted every few feet. A convicted foreign spy was granted a family visit as a humanitarian gesture. A Pakistani citizen in a cardiac ward, held without charge, is denied her own daughter. Who ordered this, and on what authority? Where is the rule of law?