When Peaceful Protest Became Treason in Pakistan

Source: YouTube

Pakistan is a funny country. We have been taught as citizens growing up by state propaganda to pledge our unity under one flag and that all the people in Pakistan are equal citizens. However, as we grow up and the reality of the country dawns on us, it becomes evidently clear that some people are more equal than others.

Perhaps no political movement has revealed this notion in recent years more than Manzoor Pashteen’s Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. It has become perhaps the largest non-violent civil rights movement of its kind in a country that has largely discouraged democratic ideas and protests. However, it would be unfair to say that the people of Pakistan have not been democratic or focused on civil rights, considering the various progressive movements, albeit failed, throughout the history of Pakistan. In that tradition, the stand that the young leaders of the Awami Workers Party has taken has been nothing short of heroic.

When Pakistan is declaring bright young political leaders such as Ammar Rashid as a traitor. There were around two dozens other political workers who were arrested during a non-violent and peaceful protest demanding the release of Manzoor Pashteen in Islamabad. The brutal police crackdown made a mockery of the claims of the current government’s claims of democratic values.

Source: Awami Workers Party

Ammar Rashid and other young AWP workers were arrested and charged with sedition and terrorism. Earlier, the organizers of the Student Solidarity March were also arrested and charged with sedition, and those arrested included Lala Iqbal, the father of Mishaal Khan, the martyred progressive student of the Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, for alleged blasphemy.

The authoritarian regime in Pakistan is trying to intimidate anyone who has a dissenting voice, especially anybody going anywhere near the message of Manzoor Pashteen. A person like me would think twice and neither do I care enough about Pakistan to spend a night in jail, let alone two weeks like Ammar. Undeterred, Ammar and his comrades displayed courage in the face of harassment and intimidation and endured the harsh jail term

I was placed, along w/ the other arrested protestors, most of them young Pakhtun students & workers, in the jail’s High Security Barracks (HSB), filled with death row & life prisoners, including those accused & convicted of murder, rape, dacoity & terrorism.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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We were separated and placed in square 9’x9’ cells including an open toilet with 7 prisoners each. We later learned Adiala was filled to 6 times its original capacity despite having acres of uncovered space (yes, we’ve even reproduced wasteful urban sprawl in our jails).

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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Most of the jailers were pointlessly cruel, enjoying ritual humiliation, engaging in arbitrary violence, mocking us abt being enemies of the state. Some, tbf, were decent people, even sympathetic to our views, but unwitting, overworked & underpaid participants in our silencing.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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This included Inam, a humble Baloch goat-herder from DG Khan who got picked up for his brother’s alleged involvement w/ a banned outfit tortured in a safe house for 6 months to disclose his whereabouts & then implicated in a fake ‘ammunitions possession’ case & thrown into Adiala

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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It included Liaqat, a 23 y/o Pakhtun man, who was born & bred in I-11 katchi abadi (he remembered us from our time there), had spent most of his brutal childhood dragged from one police thana to another, then rendered homeless with his family by the 2015 demolition of the abadi.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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It included Satti, a laborer on death row, who had admitted to shooting and killing his young niece’s rapist-murderers and was now serving two life sentences & a death sentence, yet somehow still remained strangely cheerful about his circumstances.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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There were many other stories like these, of those residing in the underbelly of our decrepit system, abandoned by state & society, victims of economic exclusion, dispossession, imperialist wars, ethnic discrimination, enforced disappearance, & a broken, punitive justice system..

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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They say prison radicalizes you and I now understand why. It makes you too uncomfortably familiar with the rottenness of the system you live in, unable to turn your eyes away from its grisly failures and their human consequences.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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..jailed since 2016 for leading a non-violent peasant movement, and now Manzoor Pashteen and Alamgir Wazir, young Pakhtun men told that their lived experiences of pain and suffering in conflict & war are too harsh to the sensitive ears of the powerful.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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Yet we return, inspired by the resolute, diverse and multi-ethnic solidarity & resistance you all showed outside, ever more committed to fighting injustice and exclusion in all its forms and transforming the brutal system that excludes and devastates so many lives.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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..it’s very easy to see how many enforcers of this system are caught in unfortunate situations in resource-starved & ignored circumstances. What’s more important is to create space for actually talking seriously about the problems & their solutions. Just stop silencing debate.

— Ammar Rashid ☭ (@AmmarRashidT) February 5, 2020

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We certainly have bigger civil rights resistance heroes like Manzoor Pashteen, Ali Wazir, and Mohsin Dawar, but Ammar Rashid is most certainly a hero for progressive politics and the cause of the people of Pakistan. Ammar’s struggle is important because someone from the strongholds of the Punjabi ethnic majority needs to stand up for the civil rights of all Pakistanis too. Ammar is one of such political leaders, although not well known by most of the voters in his constituency of NA-53 in Islamabad. Not only that, He has always been on the forefront by demanding people’s rights from issues such as rescuing Islamabad’s razed Afghan refugee slum to protesting against the Blasphemy law and the rights of students to form political unions, he has always led the right causes for civil rights.

I don’t know about others but Ammar Rashid has truly earned his vote for me as a progressive leader pursuing civil rights.

My Pakistani Persons of the Year 2019: Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir

Source: Pakistan Today

Never before in the history of this country have we ever seen politicians such as Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir. The anti-establishment independent MPs from Waziristan are the standard-bearers of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movment, which fights for the civil rights of the Pashtun ethnic minority in Pakistan and against their targeted killings since they have been largely demonized and racially profiled by the Punjabi dominated military following the operations against military insurgency.

Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir aided the movement’s leader Manzoor Pashteen to articulate the viewpoint of the Pashtun people and make their grievances known nationwide despite a draconian state crackdown. They reminded the world about the non-violent and progressive political traditions of the Pashtun people and that Talibanization was an engineered phenomenon in an otherwise peaceful community.

In May 2019, they exposed the authoritarianism of the Pakistani state, when they protested the un. The military checkpoint at Kharqamar opened fire on non-violent protesters without a warning. However, both Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir were arrested following the incident, with the state institutions held to no accountability for massacring thirteen people. Ali Wazir’s detention was even more painful considering the fact that he almost lost his entire family to terrorism during the “War on Terror” days.

After months of incarceration and torture, Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir were released in Septemeber 2019. The Speaker of the ruling pro-establishment party did not deliberately issue their production orders. However, Mohsin Dawar did have the opportuntity to speak his heart out after his release, which was shamelessly censored by the State Parliament TV with an ironical segment on “Lahore’s Historical Places.”

Check that particular clip over here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=797188270711265

Mohsin Dawar and Ali Wazir have singlehandedly exposed the authoritarianism with their non-violent political resistance and have given a new dimension to parliamentary politics in a country where the debate on the Assembly floor has been almost rendered useless. Mohsin Dawar has also co-sponsored a bill proposing more representation from the tribal areas, which passed in the lower house. In a country where passing laws through Presidential ordinances has become the norm, parliamentarians like Dawar and Wazir inspire and represent not only the youth but every repressed voice in the country.

Read about my Pakistani Person of the year in 2018 here.