Imran sends a message from prison as world rallies to his cause
PL on the international campaign to help Imran Khan
The banning and unbanning of the Free Imran Khan t-shirt at the Sheffield Shield final in Melbourne this week was a timely reminder that the cricket community must stay focused and insistent if we are to counter Pakistan’s attempts to have Prisoner No. 804, disappear from our minds and hearts.
Last week, Imran managed to get a public message out following a rare call with his sons, who cannot get into Pakistan to visit their father.
After the call to the two men in the UK, Kasim posted a message Imran asked him to relay regarding the treatment of his wife, Bushra Bibi, who was sentenced alongside him to 17 years’ jail in December.
“The judges in this country should be ashamed of themselves. Time and time again we have gone to the judiciary. But they have sold their souls for their paid personal privileges. They have sold their integrity. They know they cannot break me, so they turn to my wife. How they can allow this inhumane treatment to Bushra Bibi, simply to blackmail me. She spends 24 hours a day in isolation, except for 30 minutes with me per week—and even that is often ignored. It is un-Islamic to harm women, children and the elderly—and their motives are plain and clear. The judges are responsible for the justice in a society. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Speaking later at the UN Human Rights Council, Kasim criticised a campaign to “silence” dissent in Pakistan, saying “my father, Imran Khan, has been in prison for nearly 1000 days, he is the primary target of a regime that treats dissent not as disagreement but as a grave crime to be crushed. I’ve not seen my father in over three years, he’s held in a solitary confinement cell built for death row inmates. The United Nations warn the inhumane conditions could amount to torture.”
Keeping international pressure on Pakistan is important. Greg Chappell recently gathered a collective of former international cricket captains who signed a letter calling for better treatment of the former Pakistan captain.
Cricket Australia, which responded quickly after security banned Luke Brown from wearing the Free Imran t-shirt on the first day of the Sheffield Shield cricket final, is understood to be considering a way to get the International Cricket Council to further pressure the Pakistan authorities.
On Friday, in Pakistan, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, Sohail Afridi, condemned the government and launched the ‘Imran Khan Release Peace Movement’, which he plans to extend across the country. Social media footage suggested an encouraging turnout at one of the events in Peshawar:
A day earlier, a number of speakers in the UK’s House of Lords criticised the Pakistan authorities for their treatment of the 73-year-old, among them Lord Bruce of Benachie, who said the regime wanted the world to be distracted from its abuse of the former PM:
Regardless of the merits and demerits of the case against Imran Khan—I will come to that—his treatment is disgraceful and inhumane by any standards. Solitary confinement is never a good experience and rarely justified, and refusing family or legal humanitarian visits is, frankly, a disgrace. It is against fundamental principles. As I think everybody has mentioned, denying his sons the right to travel to visit him is a denial of fundamental human rights. They are British citizens, so we have some responsibility to support them.
I am afraid that all of that suggests that the regime is anxious to divert attention. I do not think that it will succeed in that. It does not want the situation to be highlighted, but this debate is proof that it will be highlighted.
On Tuesday, his sisters and supporters met outside Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail where he has been incarcerated since August 2023, demanding the right to visit their brother, which was again denied despite orders from the Islamabad High Court.
His sisters and a group of supporters of the former Prime Minister have gathered on a weekly basis despite authorities using force to break up their protests.
Back in London, Imran’s two sons spoke with Mike Atherton about their father’s situation and the regime’s determination to keep his plight buried and his face unseen.
“What they [the authorities] fear I think is public attention; they just want to keep everything quiet; keep them silently hemmed in and just slowly whittle away any kind of strength from the movement. You can see that in their petty tactics when people challenge the conditions [that Imran is in]. They try and silently remove small liberties. Like he’s not allowed any new books or they will turn off the power in the cell,” Kasim said.
“He’s come so far mentally and spiritually that I think in his mind he sees this as a trial he has to go through. I don’t think he’s affected in a way he would have been even, say, ten years ago. He’s in a place where he thinks if it has happened this way then that is how it has to happen, despite how harsh and brutal the conditions are and how detrimental they are to his physical well-being.
“There would be these blackouts. He’d say the first two days were brutal but from then he just got into this kind of meditative state and learnt how to meditate and go inside of himself. Funnily enough these torture tactics have taught him how to stay in there for longer.”
This week, historian William Dalrymple joined the campaign, retweeting Osman Samiuddin’s excellent piece, which originally ran on the Pulitzer Center webpage:
Cricket fans and players may feel deeply about such things, but international cricket defaults to gutless on such matters, as Usman Khawaja discovered two years ago when he attempted to make a benign statement about human rights. When Aamir Jamal learned showed up to training for Pakistan with Imran’s prison number, 804, on his hat at training. In that instance, the player received a considerable fine from the PCB, the same PCB that had Imran Khan edited out of its historic highlights package.
Everyone can play a part in keeping the focus on this issue.
It was heartening to hear from those out there who have contacted their local members. Et Al subscriber Mick Bourke wrote to his local representative, Mary Aldred, who rose to the occasion and wrote to the High Commissioner for Pakistan, Mr lrfan Shaukat.
If you wish to contact the Australian representative of the government that has incarcerated Imran and his wife, well, there’s no time like now:
Here is the High Commissioner’s email address:
Email: hc@pakistan.org.au
And here is a petition for the Australian government:
https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN9537
And here is the t-shirt they couldn’t ban (link in merch):
Maybe an English speaking cricket and democraxy loving nation could behind the scenes could start seeking asylum for the husband and wife...
Brilliant.