When Mohsin Dawar narrowly escaped an elaborate assassination attempt in which his vehicle was sprayed with more than 60 bullets about a month before the 2024 general elections, he saw no option but to slow down his campaign. He was seeking re-election to a National Assembly seat from his hometown of North Waziristan — a restive tribal district of Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and is one of the areas in the country worst affected by Taliban militancy and the war on terror.

On the morning of Jan. 3, Dawar’s corner meetings planned in the village of Tappi, North Waziristan, had to be abruptly cancelled when his vehicle came under attack from around 15 assailants from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He survived the attack because the vehicle was armoured, but the attackers — determined to get him — launched another attack as more militants joined in from across Waziristan.

As Dawar was whisked away to safety at a home in the village, his private security and the police guarding his convoy sought help from the Pakistan Army to fight the attackers. But they received no response or assistance. Despite this, they continued to engage the militants and were able to drive them away after 45 minutes of violent clashes involving live ammunition and heavy weapons. 

“It was a miracle I survived that attack,” Dawar told Dissent Today in a phone interview, saying that his supporters, people from his tribe, and the police were on their own against the militants, with no assistance from the military. After this near-death experience, he had to end his participation in campaign events due to security concerns, relying on his party colleagues and supporters to convey his campaign message.

Dawar, who heads the progressive National Democratic Movement (NDM) that he founded in 2021 along with a group of secular Pashtun politicians, has been vocal against the resurgence of Taliban terrorism in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa during his time in the National Assembly from 2018 to 2023. During an in-camera meeting of the parliament’s National Security Committee held in 2022 to discuss the rise in terrorism in the province, Dawar was reportedly the only member to challenge then-Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Faiz Hameed about the military’s decision to negotiate with the Taliban.

Even before he began his 2024 election campaign, he heard threats and warnings that the Taliban wanted to target him. Following the attack in Waziristan, personnel from the security agencies warned him that this time the militants had sent a suicide bomber who was roaming around his chamber in the town of Miranshah, disguised as one of his many guests and waiting to hug him.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has a bloody history of election violence, with candidates and representatives of secular parties being attacked by militants in the lead up to the polls. Like a number of other anti-Taliban candidates in the province, Dawar had to go to the polls amid this wave of fear, but he and his followers remained determined not to end the campaign.

The former lawmaker could not stay in one city for more than three days and would travel from Waziristan to Peshawar to Islamabad and back, just to thwart another potential assassination attempt. “Due to this, there was virtually no election campaign,” Dawar said, adding that his supporters remained on the ground, but it was hard for the party to counter the opponents’ narrative because of his absence from campaign activities.

These threats, however, were not the only hurdle in their way. Just weeks before the elections, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) altered the electoral scheme in Waziristan, moving 56 polling stations from areas that Dawar believed were his strongholds to less accessible locations. The changes were made at the request of the Islamist Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), one of Dawar’s main opponents, whose candidate would later be declared the winner in this constituency. 

Most of these polling stations were moved to properties owned by or in use by members or leaders of the JUI-F, which Dawar and his supporters feared could be used as leverage against them.

The JUI-F’s request to change these polling stations was initially rejected, but the election officials overseeing the process later accepted the demand abruptly. Dawar says his sources in the civil administration informed him that the relevant officials had to approve the application after being pressured to do so by military officials.

The NDM wrote applications to the district returning officer and the ECP, expressing concerns over this change, but received no response.

Despite this series of setbacks, the newly formed NDM had fielded 17 candidates for national and provincial assembly seats and was eager to navigate its first general election. Dawar said the party had conducted multiple training sessions for its polling agents to thwart rigging attempts. “We considered every scenario [of electoral rigging] and trained our polling agents accordingly.”

But Election Day on Feb. 8 arrived with yet another act of terror: a suicide attack targeting NDM’s three female polling agents in the same village where Dawar had earlier survived an assassination attempt. Although the women were not physically injured, the trauma left them unconscious, forcing them to abandon their duties. 

Dawar later heard reports that the Taliban had taken over some polling stations in the village. “We wrote to the ECP about this attack on our polling agents and the militants taking control of the polling stations, but we did not hear back,” he said. 

As unofficial election results began to emerge, reports surfaced that a Returning Officer (RO) — the main official responsible for consolidating results — was tampering with votes in the constituency and increasing the JUI-F’s count. Dawar went to the RO’s office located in the Miranshah cantonment area and confronted him with information he had received about the tampering. “The RO denied altering the results. But he later disappeared, and we could not find him all day,” Dawar says. The RO’s mysterious disappearance led to unusual delays in the counting process.

Dawar and other candidates stayed the night at the building, waiting to receive an update. On the night of Feb. 9, they were informed that the pending results from the Mir Ali district wouldn’t be received until the next day. Since the counting was delayed until then, candidates were asked to leave the office and return the following morning. At the time they left the RO’s office that night, Dawar was leading by more than 5,000 votes.

But they woke up next morning to a hurriedly issued notification from the ECP for the provincial assembly seat of PK-103, where a candidate who had been trailing by a significant number of votes since the voting day, was declared the winner.

“That’s when we realized they were completely distorting the results,” Dawar says.

Two days before the election, Dawar had issued a video message predicting that election officers may change the final results on Form 45, a crucial document used in Pakistan’s post-electoral process, which discloses the outcomes of the voting procedure at a particular polling place.

“That’s exactly what they later did to us and many other candidates across Pakistan,” he says.

When Dawar and his supporters arrived at the RO’s office in Cantonment area once again that morning, they were stopped at the gate, which was sealed by security forces. 

According to Pakistan’s election laws, candidates and their polling agents are entitled to be present at the location where votes are being counted and gathered. But no candidates were being allowed to enter the premises, in violation of the law.

After being denied entry, Dawar and his supporters began a protest outside the building, demanding access to the RO’s office. “Our concern was that our mandate was being stolen inside,” Dawar said.

As the protesters marched toward the RO’s office, chanting slogans, security forces stationed at the gate suddenly opened fire on them. Dawar was the first to be hit, receiving two bullets in his right leg. Three of his supporters died on the spot from the gunfire, while another succumbed to his injuries at a hospital. 15 other protestors were injured. 

Dawar was rushed to a nearby hospital in Waziristan. As he received treatment for his bullet wounds at the hospital, a candidate from the JUI-F was announced the winner from the constituency. 

Pakistan’s mainstream media conducted marathon transmissions covering the elections, but this incident of election violence targeting a former parliamentarian barely registered in the mainstream media. On the contrary, sections of the media reported it as an attack on the Pakistani military, airing misleading claims from government officials that Dawar’s supporters had attacked security forces and injured policemen.

Miranshah district administration officials had claimed at the time that Dawar’s supporters tried to force their way into the building and injured policemen in the process. However, according to two Waziristan-based reporters Dissent Today spoke to, the local police denied that their personnel were killed or injured in the incident, disputing the official version that held the protesters responsible.

Then-interim Prime Minister Anwaar Kakar repeated these accusations during a media briefing, and most media outlets reported the questionable official version, which cleared the security forces of responsibility for opening fire at the protest.

“I did not expect them to shoot,” Dawar said, adding that he wouldn’t have staged a protest and endangered his supporters’ lives if he had known the security forces would open fire on them.

Three of the men killed in the gunfire were under 30 years of age, while one was in his late 40s.

After initial treatment in Waziristan, Dawar was moved to a hospital in Peshawar for better medical care, where he remained under treatment for four days. During this time, no mainstream politician — including those who were once his allies in the Pakistan Democratic Movement — reached out to him to inquire about his health. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who called him to ask for details about the incident, was the only exception.

A year after this incident, no FIR has been registered for the killing of the four protesters, as authorities rejected Dawar’s application for a case and registered a counter FIR against him and his supporters in response. Their complaint before the election tribunal regarding alleged rigging in the constituency has not been heard either and continues to face delays.

Dawar says he had expected to face hurdles during the election but had not anticipated that the establishment would go to such lengths to keep him away from Parliament. 

His sources among security agencies often tell him that the main reason he is unacceptable to the powers that be is his stance against the Taliban. “Many political forces in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa chose to accept the Taliban as a reality after they gained ground in the province,” Dawar says, but adds that his party will never accept the militant group’s presence in the region.

“We are not willing to compromise on any part of our narrative,” he says.

• Additional reporting by Rai Bhittani in North Waziristan.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post A Year After Elections, Ex-Waziristan Parliamentarian Unable to Find Justice for Fallen Comrades appeared first on Dissent Today.

They were callously made to sit on the floor of the police station’s courtyard all night, despite the city’s cold weather. The arrests were initially undisclosed, but the police later referenced an old FIR from last year related to the May 9 riots and included the vendors’ names in it.

At the anti-terrorism court, where they were later presented with their faces covered, police officers were seen aggressively encircling Pashtun vendors and separating them from their families after checking their ID cards. When Mazari tried to intervene and stop this racial profiling, an officer shoved her as well.

More than 2,000 Pashtun students, laborers, and street vendors—including legal Afghan refugees—have been arrested and are being held in various police stations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, according to a list compiled by human rights lawyers, a copy of which is available with Dissent Today. The arrests were made in the wake of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)’s long march to the capital last month, seeking the release of incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan, which ended following the use of force by law enforcement agencies.

Among the arrested street vendors is a 14-year-old boy who sold clothes to support his family.

Mazari told Dissent Today that police officials have been racially profiling and detaining Pashtun journalists as well, after checking their ID cards. “Several journalists and others have told me they were stopped at check posts, and their phones and ID cards were checked,” she said, adding that those whose permanent addresses were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were arbitrarily arrested.

Following the racial profiling that Mazari and her fellow lawyers witnessed at the anti-terrorism court, they sat in protest with the Pashtun vendors outside the court. “We could see van after van filled with people arrested from different parts of the city arriving at the anti-terrorism court,” she said.

Two of the street vendors whom Mazari is representing were discharged in the May 9 case, but others are still facing charges. Mazari and some other lawyers were initially unable to reach most of the arrested individuals, which means they remained in custody for days without access to defense counsel.

Mazari says this racial profiling is still ongoing and lawyers are receiving reports of similar arrests almost daily.

For former senator and National Democratic Movement leader Afrasiab Khattak, this racial profiling of Pashtuns is reminiscent of the time when they were displaced from tribal areas during the military action against the Taliban in 2009-2010. “At that time, too, the displaced Pashtuns were labeled as troublemakers who would bring terrorism to Punjab and Sindh,” he told Dissent Today.

The ill-treatment of Pashtun residents in Islamabad comes against the backdrop of widespread anti-Pashtun racist sentiments expressed on mainstream and social media during the PTI protest.

A large number of long march participants marched to the capital from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alongside the province’s Chief Minister, Ali Amin Gandapur. The PTI’s use of the provincial government’s resources to facilitate its long march has been criticized, but some federal ministers went too far in their criticism by blaming the Pashtun community for the party’s actions. Federal ministers Ata Tarrar and Mohsin Naqvi implied that most participants in the protest were Afghan and, by extension, terrorists.

Khattak says the government has been violently rounding up Afghan refugees and falsely accusing them of participating in the PTI protest. “I know a dozen Afghan refugees who were detained and tortured at the Counter Terrorism Department and forced to confess that they were part of the long march,” he said, adding that federal ministers demonized Afghans as if they were coming from Afghanistan to wage a war on Islamabad.

Meanwhile, PTI leaders had been invoking Pashtun “ghairat” (honor) in the lead-up to the march to urge the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to support the party’s call for protest and march to Islamabad.

Khattak says that the act of invoking Pashtun “honor” for political objectives is a colonial concept introduced by the British. “This stereotyping of Pashtuns as having a keen sense of honor and valor was part of the colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR), which aimed to confine Pashtuns to outdated tribal values,” he said. “The Pakistani ruling elite adopted this stereotype to continue using Pashtuns as cannon fodder.”

In response to a question, Khattak stated that the PTI is not doing enough to assist those who were arbitrarily arrested following the party’s protest in Islamabad. “The PTI claims that more than 200 people are missing, and it has been weeks since this crackdown. What is stopping them from going to the prisons and ascertaining the identities of the arrestees,” he asked.

Mazari agrees that the PTI leadership did not take an effective position on the racial profiling of Pashtuns. “They represent the Pashtun people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and they have a greater responsibility to speak out against the mistreatment of Pashtuns,” she said.

As ministers in the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including its chief minister, geared up for their long march to Islamabad in late November, the restive district of Kurram saw hundreds killed in sectarian clashes. The death toll from the violence in the district, which continued for weeks, rose to 130 before a ceasefire was recently achieved. The provincial government has been accused of ignoring the crisis and directing its resources toward the PTI march.

“The chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has done nothing but squander resources of Pashtuns and their manpower for his party’s battle for the throne of Islamabad,” Khattak says. 

But despite this bleak situation, the former lawmaker sees a ray of hope in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Referring to the anti-Taliban protests being staged in the province, Khattak said Pashtun citizens have become politically conscious in recent years and are now refusing to be exploited by the Pakistani state and political elites.

“The Pashtun masses have understood that terrorism was brought to their land by the Pakistani state,” he added.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Faisal Karim Kundi hosted an All Parties Conference (APC) last week to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the province, attended by every political party except the PTI, which boycotted the event. Khattak, who attended the conference, says everyone present condemned the racial profiling of Pashtuns and the demonization of Afghan refugees.

“Pashtun politicians had to take a clear stance [against terrorism in the province] at the APC because they were feeling the public’s pressure to do so,” he said. “The Pashtun masses have decided they would no longer be used as cannon fodder. It is time for politicians and the state to catch up with this public sentiment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Inside the Ongoing Racial Profiling in Islamabad appeared first on Dissent Today.

Mikhail Savostin
In exile since: 2021
Targeted for: Organizing and attending protests against Putin

In 2019, when Mikhail Savostin, an anti-Putin activist, was released after spending more than a year in a Russian prison in the southwestern city of Stavropol on dubious charges of marijuana possession, he realized that he was no longer strong enough to fight the regime. Having faced multiple arrests, torture and experienced a hunger strike in jail, his health had deteriorated. Finally, in August of 2021, Savostin, now 47, left Russia for Cyprus, hoping to win political asylum and start a new life.

The sense of safety he felt after arriving in Cyprus was short-lived, as he began receiving threats less than a year later for his online criticism of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. One morning, as he left his home, he was shocked to see what he described as a “warning” from Russian authorities. A poster had appeared in the city of Limassol, featuring black-and-white photos of prominent Russian dissidents based in Cyprus who had been critical of the Ukraine war, including Savostin. The poster included mourning ribbons and funeral lamps, implying that the individuals depicted were deceased. According to local media, some of these individuals were questioned by the Cyprus police prior to the emergence of the mysterious poster. While Savostin does not know who was behind this act, he believes it was a death threat issued by the Russian authorities as a result of his anti-Putin posts on social media, where he commands a significant following.

After the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian government intensified its crackdown on dissent. The authorities began actively targeting those who criticized the war. Within two weeks of the start of the war, at least 150 journalists were said to have fled Russia. In March of 2022, President Putin enacted a series of new laws criminalizing criticism of the invasion or the Russian army, making dissent even more dangerous.

Savostin was still awaiting a decision on his asylum application in Cyprus when he saw his photo on the poster, and news reports about critics of the war being persecuted added to his fears. In April of 2023, his asylum application was denied by Cyprus, prompting him to flee to the United States through the Mexico border, where he succeeded in getting asylum a month later.

According to Savostin, the authorities in Cyprus facilitate the Putin regime’s crackdown on dissidents by refusing to protect individuals seeking refuge in the country. He believes this is why he was denied asylum despite having a strong case.

Savostin worked as an activist in Russia for more than 20 years, during which time he also ran for government offices. He was once a candidate for deputy in the regional Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia).

Due to his activism, Savostin was jailed twice. The first time was in 1999, when he organized rallies against the alleged exploitation of low-wage workers, and he served a year in prison. Later, in 2018, he was jailed for attending a protest in Stavropol against Putin’s reelection. 

In 2019, the jail doctors misdiagnosed him with lung cancer, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the authorities released him and suspended his three-year sentence, believing he was going to die. “It was a mild illness, but they thought I was dying,” he said. “They didn’t want to be blamed for my death.”

After his release, he no longer had the energy to continue being chased by the police. He resumed some of his less risky activism work but decided to maintain a low profile—a far cry from his pre-arrest life. “I did not want to go to jail again. I have faced the worst conditions,” he told Dissent Today over a Zoom call from his place of residence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “From torture to isolation, I was targeted as if I were one of the country’s most dangerous enemies.”

Savostin now lives in Minneapolis, where a Russian opposition group helped him find temporary housing. He had been active in political and activist circles back home, but is currently unemployed as he waits for his work authorization. “Not having a job makes it even harder to cope with the loneliness you experience after being detached from your country and your people,” he says.

Savostin has an 18-year-old son who is still in Russia and will soon have to enlist in the military for mandatory service. “I wanted to bring him to the U.S. before he turned 18 so that he does not have to participate in the Russian military’s war crimes,” he says.

But Savostin has received little support from human rights organizations in the U.S. in his efforts to bring his son to the country. He is relying on activist groups in Russia that are trying to move to America to bring his son along with them.

He was active on social media until recently; however, Savostin has now toned down his online activism and no longer writes or shares anything critical of Putin, fearing that his son might be targeted as a result.

“This self-censorship is part of my new identity,” he says. “There was a time when I was determined to keep speaking out against Putin’s crimes regardless of the consequences. But now, I don’t have it in me to fight this battle. I don’t want my son to suffer because of me.”

Savostin’s now ex-wife wanted him to return to Russia from Cyprus and assure the authorities that he had given up his activism, in order to guarantee the family’s safety. “But returning to Russia would have meant presenting myself for yet another jail term,” he said. Due to their disagreement on this matter, Savostin’s wife sought a divorce, and the couple parted ways.

As he waits for his work authorization, which has been delayed for over two weeks now, Savostin wonders if he will ever be able to truly adjust to life in the U.S. He does not speak English, which makes it harder to navigate the American immigration system and life in general. 

“The way they are delaying the process of issuing the work permit makes me question why they allow us to enter the U.S. in the first place if they do not have the resources to help us adjust,” he says.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post ‘Self-Censorship Shapes My New Identity’: Exiled Russian Activist Reflects on Leaving Activism Behind appeared first on Dissent Today.

Ahmad and three other delegates who took part in this action had named their small group “Delegates Against Genocide” for the purpose of initiating such disruptions at the convention. According to Ahmad, the area behind her, where a group of men was seen leaning over to attack her and the banner, was designated for the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA). The Union’s General President, Brent Booker, whom Ahmad claims was among the five men who attacked her, had addressed the convention earlier that day. “Three of them were hitting me in the head while two others ripped the banner away from my hands,” she told Dissent Today.

Ahmad had managed to get the sign past security by sneaking it under her clothing, but it quickly caught the attention of the delegates when it was unfurled. Other members of the Florida delegation also tried to stop the action, but the group was determined to display the banner. “We had instructed each other not to give up the banner at any cost,” she said. But when Ahmad fell forward after being hit by the men sitting behind her, the disruption had to come to an end.

Ahmad has made a formal complaint to the DNC regarding the incident, naming the attackers and urging the chair to take action. However, the DNC has yet to release any statement concerning the matter. Ahmad told Dissent Today that Roger Lau, the Deputy Executive Director of the DNC, reached out to her about the assault but indicated that the situation would be managed by law enforcement rather than the DNC.

Allegations of Islamophobia

Videos from the convention appear to show Booker and his colleagues forcibly removing the “Stop Arming Israel” banner from the hands of Ahmad and other members of the pro-Palestine group. Although other delegates involved in this protest were equally engaged, Ahmad, who is Muslim, is the only one who was assaulted, leading her to characterize the incident as an Islamophobic attack.

Liano Sharon, a Jewish delegate from Michigan who held the banner alongside Ahmad, agreed that the fact that she wears a hijab and is visibly Muslim may have been the reason why the attackers targeted her in particular. “What the LIUNA members did was a clear violation of the union’s code of conduct and should be grounds for action against them,” he told Dissent Today, emphasizing that the Democratic Party needs to develop strict codes of conduct to address incidents like this.

LiUNA and the Executive Director of the Florida Democratic Party did not immediately respond to Dissent Today‘s request for comment.

Meanwhile, the Uncommitted Movement, which staged a sit-in outside the venue on the third night of the convention to protest the DNC’s rejection of their request for a Palestinian-American to speak on stage, chose not to participate in this action during Biden’s speech, as they did not support disrupting the convention. Ahmad told Dissent Today that “Delegates Against Genocide” and the Uncommitted Movement employed different strategies to draw attention to Gaza and did not coordinate their efforts.

Discussing their plan to disrupt the President’s speech, Ahmad revealed that many delegates who had intended to protest ultimately decided against it, fearing the revocation of their credentials. However, Ahmad and her informal group—whom she likens to a “secret society” because many members were working behind the scenes—chose to proceed with the protest. “We didn’t care about the credentials,” Ahmad stated, adding that their intention was to “set the tone” for the rest of the convention and encourage others to speak out against the violence in Gaza.

As she had anticipated, Ahmad was denied her credentials the next day by the Florida Democratic Party without explanation. After much ado, she managed to obtain a guest pass on the third day of the convention. “I had to go back and forth, trying to get my credentials back while my head throbbed from all the hitting,” she says. Ahmad suspects that the party wanted to keep her away from the convention after the incident so she would not be able to identify the attackers. However, since the group had informed the press about their plans to disrupt Biden’s speech, the attackers were caught on camera, and she did not have to worry about identifying them.

In July, following a shooting incident at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania, President Biden warned of the dangers of political violence in the U.S. In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Biden stated that political violence must not be normalized, declaring, “There is no place in America for this kind of violence — for any violence. Ever. Period.”

Ahmad finds it ironic that she was struck in the head with “We love Joe” signs during the DNC convention, given Biden’s warnings about the threat political violence poses to the nation. “It’s truly astounding that during a time when President Biden is addressing political violence and the events of January 6, they chose to hit me with a ‘We love Joe’ sign simply because I was holding a sign that said ‘Stop Arming Israel.'”

Despite facing violence, Ahmad says she will continue protesting the Biden administration’s role in enabling Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza. “We are here, and we will not stop speaking out,” she asserted.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Pro-Palestine DNC Delegate Assaulted For Disrupting Biden’s Speech Vows To Keep Speaking Out appeared first on Dissent Today.

Mahrang says she fears for the lives of those who are currently in custody, because the police’s treatment of the protestors has been violent and cruel.

The individuals arrested during the march include family members of missing persons and Zaheer Baloch, a PhD candidate at Quaid-e-Azam University. In a video circulating on social media, Zaheer Baloch can be seen politely requesting the police to allow the march participants to continue their protest. Shortly after, he was arrested.

“Zaheer Baloch and more than 100 participants of our long march are missing. We have not been informed of their location,” Mahrang Baloch told Dissent Today.

On Thursday, Islamabad police faced heavy criticism for their unprovoked use of force against Baloch activists and family members of missing persons who had traveled from Balochistan to Islamabad for the long march against extrajudicial killings and for the recovery of missing persons. To forcefully disperse the sit-in, the police arrested organizers and participants on the night of their arrival in the capital. After their subsequent release on court orders, videos of women and children being forced onto buses arranged by the Islamabad police to be returned to Balochistan against their will went viral on social media, sparking public outrage. Witnessing the mistreatment, the bus drivers refused to transport the protesters back to Quetta and offered their support instead.

Mahrang Baloch told Dissent Today that female and child protesters were physically assaulted by police officers who hurled profanities and labeled them as “terrorists.”

“After witnessing the police assaulting our people to make them leave Islamabad, I asked the women if they wanted to end the protest. However, everyone stated that they would not be pressured into returning to Balochistan and would continue the protest because that is why they had journeyed to Islamabad,” she said.

The organizers have issued a three-day ultimatum to the government to meet their demands, which include the release of all detained protestors from four days ago, as well as locating all missing persons. “It is ironic that those who were demanding the release of missing persons have themselves now gone missing,” Mahrang added.

The protest ultimatum will expire today (Monday), after which the protestors will announce their future plans. “We have and will continue to be peaceful, but the government’s policy of indifference persists,” laments Mahrang.

Caretaker federal ministers Fawad Hasan Fawad and Murtaza Solangi visited the sit-in and assured the organizers of their cooperation. However, according to Mahrang, no progress has been made on the demands and no government representatives have contacted them since the ministers’ visit.

In addition to the recovery of missing persons, the protestors are demanding that the government acknowledge the “fake encounters” conducted by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD). “We possess all the necessary evidence to prove the number of missing persons and those who were killed in these staged encounters,” stated Mahrang.

Who is Mahrang Baloch?

Dr. Mahrang Baloch, 31, is the daughter of Abdul Ghaffar Langov, whose mutilated body was discovered in the coastal town of Gadanni in 2011. He had gone missing in 2006, and Mahrang has been actively protesting against enforced disappearances ever since.

According to Mahrang, when her father was finally presented before a judge seven months after his initial disappearance, he had been severely tortured and his teeth were broken. Langov was released in 2009, only to be kidnapped once again seven months later from a hospital where he was caring for his sick wife. Two years after that, he was found dead in Gaddani.

“My father was extrajudicially killed. No court in Pakistan had declared him a terrorist or criminal. He died as a missing person,” she asserted.

In 2017, Mahrang’s 21-year-old brother was abducted. Although he was released after three months, the hostility she encountered from authorities throughout her search for him strengthened her determination to begin a movement against enforced disappearances.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Unfazed By Police Violence, Mahrang Baloch Continues To Lead Islamabad Protest Against Enforced Disappearances appeared first on Dissent Today.

After blasphemy-convict Junaid Hafeez’s appeal against his death sentence was finally fixed before the Lahore High Court (LHC) earlier this month, his new lawyer, Saif ul Malook, appears to be mishandling the case, Dissent Today has learnt.

Hafeez, a progressive academic who served as a lecturer at the English Literature department of Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, has been in solitary confinement since 2013 after he was arrested on allegations of blasphemy. In 2019, a trial court in Multan convicted him of blasphemy, sentencing him to death, in a verdict that was termed unfair by human rights groups.

Hafeez’s first counsel, Rashid Rehman, was gunned down in Multan in 2014 amid death threats and a hateful campaign against him by lawyers associated with Barelvi extremist groups.

Differences between Hafeez’s lawyers

During the first hearing of the appeal against the death sentence on April 5, Malook asked the judges to adjourn it because he was “not prepared” and wanted to first meet his client in prison. However, Hafeez’s lead counsel, Asad Jamal, who has been representing him since 2014 after Rahman’s murder, insisted that the hearing should continue as he was prepared to argue.

When one of the judges asked why the case was shifted to Lahore from Multan, Jamal responded that he had petitioned for the case’s transfer to Lahore due to its peculiar history. Before the judge could say anything, Malook interjected, bringing up the murder of the previous counsel, Rahman.

According to Jamal, Malook’s mention of Rahman’s murder had had an “adverse impact” on the judges. “Judges are likely not to hear such a case in which there is so much at stake – including their lives. Mention a murder in a blasphemy appeal and the result is most likely postponement and no relief,” he told Dissent Today, adding that he wanted some progress during the first hearing because the appeal had reached the high court after more than three years.

Jamal briefly presented his arguments before he was asked by Justice Farooq Haider about a specific document from the case file. “It took me 10-15 seconds to locate the document from the case files, because of which the judge told me even I was not prepared, and postponed the hearing.”

The tone set by Malook, at the start of the hearing, Jamal believes, left a negative impression on the judges.

Surprisingly, both lawyers have not discussed the case with each other so far, and are clearly not on the same page. Jamal claims he reached out to Malook before the hearing, asking what their strategy would be, but the latter did not respond.

Saif ul Malook did not respond to Dissent Today’s request for comment.

Extremist groups back in action

Meanwhile, the lawyers who were involved in the campaign against Rashid Rehman prior to his murder have once again become active in the Junaid Hafeez case.

Advocate Zulfiqar Sidhu, who led the campaign against Rashid Rehman ahead of his murder, is an influential lawyer and was made assistant advocate general during the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government in 2018. He recently submitted his power of attorney on behalf of a witness against Junaid Hafeez who was an associate professor in Agronomy at the university. Advocate Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry, who is the president of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Lawyers Forum (a group that voluntarily prosecutes blasphemy-accused and assists anyone filing a blasphemy case), also recently joined hands with Sidhu and will be contesting Junaid Hafeez’s appeal against the death sentence.

Jamal terms Malook’s act of building “unnecessary hype” around the case as the reason for their renewed interest.

Saif ul Malook’s entry into the scene

On March 12 last year, Malook announced on Twitter that he met Junaid Hafeez and would be representing him in his appeal against the death sentence. But Junaid Hafeez had not
signed the power of attorney for Malook then, as it was signed on March 26, 2022.

Met Junaid Hafeez in central prison Multan today a death convict on blasphemy allegations. He is in good health and spirits. He appointed me his lawyer for his appeal in Lahore High Court.

— Saif-ul-malook (@Saifulm32731039) March 12, 2022

According to sources, Junaid Hafeez had initially declined Malook’s offer to represent him during their first meeting in Multan jail, but Malook made the announcement on Twitter anyway. It was 14 days after Malook’s tweet that Hafeez signed his power of attorney (a copy of which is available with Dissent Today), reportedly when Hafeez’s father convinced him to do so.

Sources further reveal that Malook had first tried to convince Hafeez to give him the power of attorney in January of 2020, but he had declined then too. Malook then held meetings with Hafeez’s father in Multan, who eventually convinced Hafeez to let Malook represent him.

‘Hearing may be further delayed’

Although the hearing has now been postponed till May 29, Jamal anticipates further delay because the judges were not clear. “Had the case been at least partially heard on April 5 instead of being postponed, it would have been fixed the week after,” he says.

Aside from the postponement of the hearing, Jamal also disagrees with Malook’s use of social media to release information about the case, given its precarious history and the involvement of extremist groups. Malook had tweeted about the April 5 hearing a day prior.

“Given the sensitivity around blasphemy laws, lawyers releasing such information in advance of the hearings is counterproductive,” Jamal says.

Loopholes in trial

Hafeez’s trial leading to his conviction and death sentence was marred by several loopholes, none of which have been duly addressed. During the trial between 2013 and 2019, seven judges hearing the case were transferred or distanced themselves from the case, raising questions on the fairness of the trial.

Hafeez’s first counsel, Rashid Rehman, was gunned down in Multan in 2014 amid a hateful campaign including direct death threats against him by lawyers associated with Barelvi extremist groups. His murder alone was enough to hamper a fair trial, as the extremist groups and lawyers allegedly behind the incident wield significant influence in Multan, where the case was being heard.

The extremist campaign initiated against Rehman continued even after his murder. On May 8, 2014, a day after his murder, unsigned pamphlets were distributed in Multan, saying Rehman met his ‘rightful end’ for trying to save someone who ‘disrespected’ Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). “We warn all lawyers to be afraid of God and think twice before engaging in such acts,” the pamphlet had said.

This series of events, among others, explains why Junaid Hafeez was convicted and given the death sentence despite the prosecution not having a strong case against him. Earlier during the trial, there were times when it appeared that the case against Hafeez would be thrown out due to serious discrepancies in the prosecution’s version.

In December 2014, seven months after Rehman’s murder, Shahbaz Paracha, a judge who was hearing the case, had told defense counsel Jamal that he wanted to adjudicate the case without delay. “Hafeez specially sent a message asking me to attend the hearing on Dec. 13, 2014, but I was not prepared to cross-examine the witness then. I informed the judge that since I didn’t have the complete case file, I would not be able to cross examine the witness. He told me to read the court file instead,” Jamal says.

“The judge had told me to return to the court in two days, and when I sought more time to prepare the case, he said he could grant me time till the 17th. ‘Return to the court on the 17th. I want to decide the case,’ the judge had said, as he looked me in the eye.”

Jamal says he could see that the judge had realized that the case was baseless, and that he had to somehow clean the stigma of Rashid Rehman’s murder. It was in his court that Rehman had been threatened with dire consequences if he continued to represent Hafeez.
“I knew that judge Paracha was going to acquit Junaid Hafeez sooner than later,” Jamal says.

But two days ahead of the hearing on December 17, 2014 – when Hafeez’s acquittal was likely – the judge was transferred to Faisalabad and the case was delayed. According to the defence counsel, all judges who showed their inclination to acquit Hafeez were transferred. Seven judges were transferred between December 2014 and December 2019 when the verdict was delivered. The trial was delayed due to the transfers as well as non-appearance of witnesses.

What exactly is the case against Junaid Hafeez?

The initial complaint against Junaid Hafeez as recorded in the FIR had stated that he was the admin of a secret Facebook group called “So-called Liberals of Pakistan” and was guilty of blasphemy because he did not delete a blasphemous post shared in the group by an unidentified user “Mullah Munafiq”. But according to the prosecution’s evidence submitted in the form of printed Facebook posts, the secret FB group as well as the alleged account by Hafeez’s name had continued to be operated even after Hafeez’s arrest on March 13, 2013, indicating that he was neither in control nor operating them.

About 6 months after Hafeez was arrested, the prosecution brought on court record new witnesses who claimed to have seen Hafeez commit blasphemy while addressing a launch ceremony of a British-Pakistani author Qasra Shahraz’s two books about women’s status in society. The complaint also stated that said books contained blasphemous content, and were an attempt to “provoke women against Islam”. But during the cross examination when the prosecution’s witness, a student at BZU, was asked by defense counsel Asad Jamal about the contents of the book, it emerged that he could not properly read English. He then changed his statement, and said he was “informed” by some other students that the books were blasphemous.

‘Misogyny at the heart of conspiracy against Hafeez’

The blasphemy case against Hafeez, Asad Jamal says, was part of a conspiracy hatched by a group at Bahauddin Zakariya University and was originally meant to simultaneously target the head of the department, Shirin Zubair, but she survived the vicious attack due to her status and connections.

Professor Shirin Zubair, head of the university’s English language and literature department, was a candidate in the varsity’s syndicate elections in 2013. Had she won the elections, she would have had a better chance to later become the Vice Chancellor of the university where she had served for almost 30 years – something a group of male faculty members, who were opposed to her promotion because of her gender and her liberal worldview, did not want.

“Since Shirin Zubair reposed trust in Hafeez because of his academic excellence, the group that wanted to get rid of her thought she could be intimidated into stepping aside with such a campaign against him,” Asad Jamal told Dissent Today.

Following the blasphemy complaint against Hafeez, Shireen withdrew her candidature and eventually left the country. Those who hatched the conspiracy to keep a woman from reaching the post of Vice Chancellor were successful.

The defense counsel had in 2015 tried to get Shireen to appear as a witness for Junaid Hafeez, but she was not willing to come forward due to security concerns.

‘Students who accused Hafeez of blasphemy were never in his classes’

The original complainants in the case were two BZU students of English department Rana Akbar and Muhammad Rafique, who had graduated and left the university in 2012. But the complaint was registered in the name of a police sub-inspector. Later on, Professor Hakoomat Ali, a faculty member of the Agronomy department along with a group of four students of Islamic Studies and Physics departments, also became witnesses.

Interestingly, none of the five students who appeared as witnesses against Junaid Hafeez had ever been his students. Four of them studied at different departments, while one of them was from the English department, but had never taken a class with Hafeez or been his class fellow. In his cross-examination, he had told the court that he had never seen Hafeez utter anything blasphemous. But he went on to claim that Hafeez was running a “blasphemous campaign of liberal views” in his classes and on social media. On further questioning, he had informed the court that he was neither connected with Hafeez as a friend on Facebook nor was he a member of the secret group, but still “knew” that Hafeez was operating it.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Extremist Groups Back In Action As Blasphemy-Convict Junaid Hafeez’s Appeal Against Death Sentence Reaches LHC appeared first on Dissent Today.

“I have left my case to Allah because I have no hope for justice. I cannot fight them,” she told Dissent Today, in her first public interview after her release.

Shehzadi was the sole breadwinner of her family, and her abduction not only took an emotional toll on her parents and brothers, but it also deteriorated their financial situation. Her 18-year-old brother, deeply upset by his sister’s disappearance, committed suicide in 2016. “I cannot hold back my tears when I think of his death. What was his crime?” she says.

Shehzadi was abducted in 2015 from the Chaudhry Colony area of Lahore by masked men whom she claims were personnel from intelligence agencies. Hers was the first known case of a woman journalist’s abduction in Pakistan.

At the time of her abduction, Shehzadi was reporting on and following the case of an Indian citizen, Hamid Nehal Ansari, who had gone missing from the Kohat city of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in 2012.

After failing to obtain a visa, Ansari had illegally crossed the border from Afghanistan to meet a Pakistani woman in Kohat with whom he had formed a romantic relationship over Facebook. Initially, Pakistani authorities denied that Ansari was in Pakistan, but after Shehzadi pursued the case before the Missing Persons Commission, the then deputy attorney general had to acknowledge that Ansari was in the detention of the Defense Ministry pending trial by a military court.

After Shehzadi’s recovery in 2017, Ansari’s case was once again brought into focus, and he was subsequently released in 2018.

Opening up about the details surrounding her abduction and release, Shehzadi told Dissent Today, “I had been facing surveillance from agencies ever since I began working on the Hamid Ansari case.”

“I have left my case to Allah because I have no hope for justice. I cannot fight them.”

Shehzadi started reporting on the case after she got in touch with Ansari’s mother in Amritsar on social media and was moved by her ordeal. She went to Kohat and met Ansari’s Pakistani friends who had hosted him before he went missing. “I visited all those places where Ansari had stayed,” she says. “After thoroughly investigating the family’s claims about his disappearance, I was convinced that Ansari was in official custody, but they were not declaring it.”

Shehzadi says it was not just her journalistic instinct but the plight of Hamid’s mother and the way she was begging for her son’s release that made her want to pursue the case.

Acknowledging Shehzadi’s efforts in finding the truth about Ansari’s whereabouts, the then head of Missing Persons Commission, Justice (r) Javed Iqbal, had appointed her a member of the investigation team, ordering the investigators to keep her in the loop.

Shehzadi says her involvement in the case was what led to her abduction. “I was pursuing the case on humanitarian grounds because I found myself sympathizing with Ansari’s mother who was desperate for her son’s recovery, but the security agencies could not comprehend this.”

‘IF YOU COOPERATE…’

Two days before she was abducted, Shehzadi was interrogated by plainclothes officials of a secret agency who ambushed her outside Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)’s office in Lahore and asked her to go with them. “They told me if I cooperated with them, they would not harm me. I agreed to go with them.”

Shehzadi was interrogated about the Nehal Ansari case while being kept blindfolded for 12 hours, after which she was allowed to go. She thought cooperating with the authorities meant she would now stay off their radar, unaware that this 12-hour interrogation was just the beginning of her long nightmare.

Two days later, on August 19, 2015, Shehzadi was abducted by gunmen who covered her mouth and dragged her in a car when she was on her way to her office. During the two-year long captivity, Shehzadi was kept in Lahore and later Quetta, and faced both physical and mental torture. “They considered Hamid Ansari an Indian spy and thought I must also be a spy since I was invested in his case.”

Shehzadi’s email and WhatsApp records were seized by the personnel, but they could find no evidence proving she was working as a spy for India.

BEING TORTURED AND HEARING TORTURE SCREAMS

Describing the cell where she was kept, Shehzadi says it was a basement that had prison bars. She recalls hearing screams of men being tortured in other cells. “There were many abductees, but we were all kept separately. I was the only woman there,” she says, adding that the physical and mental torture she endured at the hands of her captivators would often make her numb. But within a few months of her abduction when no evidence against her was found, her abductors told her they would release her soon.

“They told me a senior investigating official would come and ask some questions after which I would be released, but they kept delaying it. I was told I would be released in three months, and later they said it would take six months,” she says, adding that the abductors did not know how to release her without attracting media’s attention.

Describing the cell where she was kept, Zeenat says it was a basement that had prison bars. She recalls hearing screams of men being tortured in other cells.

STRANDED AT CHAGAI BORDER

Even after being finally released from the Lahore torture cell, her ordeal was far from over. After a little over a year, the intelligence officials in whose custody she was in Lahore took her to the Afghanistan border in the Chagai district of Balochistan, and left her at a refugee camp set up in the mountains. Shehzadi spent three months at the camp with Afghan refugees. “There was no electricity and direct water access,” she recalls. The area did not have mobile services either. “To distract myself from what I was going through, I mingled with the Afghan children there and taught them how to read and write.”

Three months later, when the refugee family she was staying with decided to return to Afghanistan, they wanted her to go with them. But Shehzadi did not want to leave the country. To avoid having to go to Afghanistan with them, Shehzadi left the camp and began running far from the area. “I did not know the direction I was going, but I kept running.”

Her feet were bleeding from constant running, and she could hear the roars of wild animals. After running for hours, she reached a Levies and Frontier Constabulary (FC) checkpoint in the Dalbandin city of Chagai district. She was given water and food by the Levies personnel, but when they googled her and found out that she was a journalist, they took her to District Commissioner’s House. “The DC asked questions as if I were a criminal,” she says. Shehzadi was held at the DC office until the intelligence personnel who had kidnapped her from Lahore came to Quetta and threw her in yet another torture cell.

“Just when I had thought I would be freed, I encountered the same men who had abducted me in the first place. “It was like dé·jà vu. Similar prison bars that I saw everyday in Lahore. Same questions. Same torture.”

Shehzadi regretted running away from the refugee camp. “I thought to myself I shouldn’t have run. I was better off with the Afghan children,” she says, as her voice breaks recalling the ordeal.

After six months of hostile interrogation in Quetta, she was finally allowed to go. “They told me a team of higher-ups from Islamabad will come and meet me before I am released.” The officers from Islamabad, she says, were apologetic and said they would compensate her for the treatment meted out to her.

“They said they would pay for my higher education and give my brother a job. But I told them to take me to Lahore. I wanted nothing from them.”

She was then taken to Rawalpindi where they asked her to get psychological treatment. Shehzadi was eager to go home, but the officers insisted she stay in Rawalpindi to get medically examined. Her family had by this time relocated to Faisalabad from Lahore under financial duress, and she finally reunited with them in Faisalabad after completing her therapy in Rawalpindi.

“They said they would pay for my higher education and give my brother a job. But I told them to take me to Lahore. I wanted nothing from them.”

LIFE AFTER RELEASE

Shehzadi remained low profile for over three years after her release, during which time she got married in Faisalabad. “My mother was worried for my future, so I tied the knot out of compulsion,” she says.

Shehzadi has recently begun working at a newly-launched media channel in Lahore, where she is barely paid the minimum wage. While she attempted to get back into journalism, she has not been able to regain the stability she had before her abduction.

Asked if the promises of compensation made to her by intelligence officers at the time of her release were fulfilled, Shehzadi says those were empty words, and she received no compensation.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Over 2 Years In Torture Cells: How Journalist Zeenat Shehzadi Survived Enforced Disappearance appeared first on Dissent Today.

Yousufi had been receiving death threats from unknown individuals via text messages prior to his murder, but was given no security by the government. Mohammadi says he decided to leave Pakistan after his friend’s murder because he had been receiving similar threatening messages and feared he would be next.

Successive governments both in the centre and the province, Mohammadi says, failed to protect the community from the violence including large-scale suicide attacks and targeted killing. According to a 2019 report by Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights, at least 509 Hazaras have been killed in the country for their faith since 2013. Amid the state’s apparent failure to protect them, most Hazaras who had the means to go abroad left the country and built new lives abroad.

In January last year, following the murder of 11 Hazara coal miners in the Mach district of Balochistan, then-prime minister Imran Khan said he would not be “blackmailed into visiting” protesting family members of the victims — a comment that generated widespread criticism. Mohammadi says every government has been indifferent to the plight of the Hazara community.

He added that the government had asked the Hazaras to use only one of the roads in the city, citing it as a security measure. “But these measures were in vain. It was as if our targeted killing did not matter as long as the rest of the city was safe,” he says.

For Liaquat Ali, another exiled Hazara based in New York who worked as an editorial cartoonist back home in Quetta, the realisation that Pakistan is no longer safe for him came much earlier. “I knew what was coming for our community when in 1999 Minister for Education Sardar Nisar Ali was attacked by gunmen near his office,” he says.

The minister, who belonged to the Hazara community, survived the attack, but his driver and bodyguard were killed. A few months after the incident, Ali moved to New York where his brother already lived.

How Hazaras were seen as a liability in their own hometown

Ali recalls feeling a sense of hostility from non-Hazara communities in Quetta during the wave of violence. “They thought we were a liability to them,” he says.

In June 2012, a blast ripped through a van from Balochistan University of Information Technology in Quetta, killing four students. 11 others including non-Hazara students were injured in the attack. Liaquat Ali’s niece was on the bus at the time of the attack. “She managed to survive because she was in the backseat,” he says, adding that she was a third-year medical student and was passionate about becoming a doctor. She moved to the US along with her family after this attack and had to abandon her education as well as her dream to become a doctor.

In the wake of the van attack, the city’s all-women Sardar Bahadur Khan University callously asked Hazara students to take a separate bus. Muhammadi says the university’s announcement was not a one-off, and this sentiment against Hazaras was common in the city. “My son who was then a first-year Intermediate student was often told by his non-Hazara peers that they fear being targeted because of him.”

Life in exile

While Hazara exiles have found safety away from home, memories of persecution continue to haunt them. Mohammadi remembers breaking down into tears when he heard his son, who now lives with him in New York, speak to a journalist about how he was ostrasised by his classmates in Quetta due to his Hazara identity.

Asylees fleeing violence are often advised to use mental health resources and visit trauma centres after escaping their countries. But most Hazaras who ended up in New York never got a chance to seek psychological help as they struggle to make ends meet in an expensive city.

When Liaquat Ali moved to New York in 2000, he worked menial jobs to pay the bills. His first job in New York was at a grocery store where he could only stay for a week. “The owner did not pay me the amount he had promised at the end of the week, saying that I was under training. I quit after realising I was being exploited,” he said.

Since Ali had a background in the arts, he eventually utilised his graphic design skills and began offering designing services in New York. He set up a small design business in 2002 and his clientele grew in no time. He has since expanded the business and now owns a manufacturing company.

But most exiles are not as fortunate. Mohammadi says he had an easy lifestyle in Quetta in terms of financial security, but has still now found a stable job in the US. He occasionally works as a translator for Persian-language news outlets and sometimes as a cashier at grocery stores.

‘Hazaras can never trust the Pakistan embassy’

The embassy of their country of origin is usually the first point of contact for diasporas when they need assistance, but exiled Hazaras don’t trust the Pakistan embassy. Liaquat Ali organized a number of protests in New York against persecution of the community, including the one outside United Nations headquarters in 2003, which was the first demonstration held for Hazaras abroad. Supposedly due to his activism, he faced hostility from Pakistani authorities on more than one occasion.

“In 2010, I received a call from a staff at the Pakistan Consulate in New York who threateningly asked me where I live and what I do. He kept reminding me that I have a family back in Pakistan, as if trying to warn me against protesting the persecution of my community.”

When Ali arrived at the Karachi airport for a visit to Pakistan in 2012, he was stopped by the authorities who told him his Pakistan visa was “fake”. Ali feared he might be arrested if he travelled to the country on National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP), which is why he used his US passport and had to get a visa from New York before travelling to Pakistan. “I told them this visa has been issued by their own consulate in New York. How could it be fake? But they refused to listen to me.”

He then went to Dubai to get a fresh visa, and visited the Pakistan consulate daily for 10 days. The officials kept delaying the process and at one point refused to grant him the visa while refunding his application fee. After much ado, he was finally granted a Pakistani visa from Dubai, but it stated that he would not go to Cantonment areas. The Head of Chancery at the consulate told him they were reluctant to issue him a visa because Afghan Hazaras falsely claim to be from Pakistan to get Pakistani visas.

“I knew all along that the mistreatment I faced at the airport and later at the consulate was due to my Hazara identity, and the head of chancery confirmed it,” he says. “This is why as asylees we can never trust the Pakistan embassies and consulates.”

Pakistan’s Consulate in New York did not respond to request for comment.

Abandoned by fellow countrymen abroad

Hazara exiles mostly mingle within their own ethnic community, and are not connected to the rest of the Pakistani diaspora in New York. They do have some support from progressive Pakistani activists and journalists based in the city who were also forced into exile due to violence and threats, but the larger Pakistani community does not see them as one of their own.

“It was only three or four years ago that the Pakistani community in the US found out who we [Hazaras] are,” says Ishaq Mohammadi, adding, “They previously thought we were an ethnicity from Gilgit or some other region.”

He recalls how a group of Pakistanis shouted “ghaddar!” (traitor) while passing by a protest demonstration organized by Hazara activists outside Pakistan consulate in New York. “We stayed loyal to the motherland despite being butchered en masse, yet we are termed traitors just because we ask not to be killed,” he laments.

A version of this article first appeared on Dawn.

Ailia Zehra

The writer is a journalist and the Founding Editor of Dissent Today. She covers politics, human rights, and religious extremism. She tweets at @AiliaZehra.

The post Pakistan’s Persecuted Hazaras Build New Life Abroad, But Memories Of Violence Still Haunt Them appeared first on Dissent Today.