ISLAMABAD: Islamabad police said on Sunday they had arrested prominent rights lawyer Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, and Ali Wazir, co-founder of the Pashtun ethnic rights movement, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), two days after they addressed a rally organized by the group.
The police complaint on Wazir and Mazari-Hazir’s arrest said they and other leaders of the PTM had violated an agreement with the local administration and marched ahead from an area designated for Friday’s PTM rally at Tarnol Chowk on GT Road. When police stopped the participants from marching onwards to Islamabad, they resisted law enforcers and blocked the GT Road highway for traffic.
“When the PTM and rally participants were asked to open the GT Road, the participants attacked the police, shattered the wind-shields of the official vehicle... forcibly closed shops and while resisting the police, snatched away the official anti-riot kit from ASI Laiq Shah,” the police complaint read, naming several sections of the Pakistan Penal Code under which charges were being framed, including criminal intimidation, rioting, being armed with deadly weapons, robbery, unlawful assembly and assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging their duty.
“Islamabad Capital Police has arrested Ali Wazir and Iman Mazari,” the force said on the X social media platform. “Both the accused were wanted by the Islamabad Police for investigation. All action will be taken in accordance with law.”
Videos widely circulating on social media showed Mazari-Hazir addressing the PTM rally on Friday and criticizing the Pakistani military over enforced abductions, which the army denies being involved in.
Founded in 2014, the PTM campaigns against alleged extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of Pashtuns and other ethnic minorities. Many of its leaders, including co-founders Wazir and Mohsin Dawar, have faced long incarcerations over the years. Though Mazari-Hazir is not formally a member of the group, she has addressed its gatherings as one of the more prominent voices in the country against enforced disappearances.
Mazari’s mother, former human rights minister Shireen Mazari, said woman police and plain-clothed officers broke into their home in the wee hours of Sunday, and took away security cameras as well as her daughter’s laptop and cell phone. She described Mazari-Hazir’s arrest as an “abduction.”
“They just dragged Imaan out. They marched all over the house. My daughter was in her night clothes and said let me change but they just dragged her away,” the former human rights minister wrote online.
“Remember we are only two women living in the house.”
Amnesty International said the circumstances of Mazari-Hazir’s arrest “violate due process and Imaan’s right to liberty and security of person.”
“Her arrest comes after her participation in a Pashtun Tahafuz Movement organized jalsa (public gathering) in Islamabad on 18 August. If Imaan has been detained for her participation at this jalsa, she must be immediately and unconditionally released as this would be a violation of her rights to freedom of assembly, association and expression.”
The latest arrests come at a time when rights groups have raised concerns over what they call a growing number of arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances of political and rights activists in Pakistan.
The country’s most prominent human rights group, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said on Sunday the latest arrests pointed “to a larger, more worrying pattern of state-sanctioned violence against people exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly.”
