ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party criticized the state on Friday for “abducting” a senior member of its media team ahead of a planned public rally on the outskirts of Islamabad, accusing it of focusing more on quelling dissenting voices than on dealing with the problem of militant violence in the country.
PTI leaders have frequently complained of being targeted by intelligence agencies since the fall of its administration in a parliamentary no-confidence vote against Khan.
However, it began to face a major crackdown last year in May after violent protests followed the former premier’s brief detention on corruption charges, with people carrying PTI flags vandalizing government buildings and military properties in different parts of the country.
In the most recent development, the party said one of the members of its media department, Rizwan Ahmad, had been illegally taken away by the state agencies.
“Rizwan Ahmad, Senior member PTI Media Department has been abducted by agencies a short while ago,” Omar Ayub, a top PTI leader, said in social media post. “This action by the agencies is just to silence his voice.”
“The agencies are not doing their job of countering terrorism and the latest assassination of Senator Hidayat Ullah Khan is an example, but they are busy silencing the voices of PTI that dare to speak the truth,” he added, referring to killing of a Pakistani lawmaker in the northwestern Bajaur district in a blast that killed four others.
PTI has complained of Ahmad’s disappearance only a few days after its announcement to hold a protest demonstration in Islamabad on June 6 against new taxes imposed in the recent federal budget amid rising cost of living in Pakistan.
Only a day earlier, Amnesty International condemned such incidents against PTI workers and their family members, pointing out that they had been “forcibly disappeared since June 2024.”
“Two brothers of PTI member Azhar Mashwani, Professors Mazhar-ul-Hassan and Zahoor-ul-Hassan, and Shahbaz Gill’s brother, Ghulam Shabbir, were disappeared on 6 June and 9 June respectively,” it said. “The whereabouts of all three individuals remain unknown.”
Ex-PM Khan’s party accuses state agencies of ‘abducting’ media team member ahead of Islamabad rally
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Ex-PM Khan’s party accuses state agencies of ‘abducting’ media team member ahead of Islamabad rally
- Omar Ayub says the state is focusing more on suppressing dissent than dealing with militant violence
- Amnesty International has also said PTI workers and their family have been ‘forcibly disappeared since June’
Imran Khan not a ‘national security threat,’ ex-PM’s party responds to Pakistan military
- Pakistan’s military spokesperson on Friday described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat”
- PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan says words used by military spokesperson for Khan were “not appropriate”
ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party on Saturday responded to allegations by Pakistan military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry from a day earlier, saying that he was not a “national security threat.”
Chaudhry, who heads the military’s media wing as director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), spoke to journalists on Friday, in which he referred to Khan as a “mentally ill” person several times during the press interaction. Chaudhry described Khan’s anti-army narrative as a “national security threat.”
The military spokesperson was responding to Khan’s social media post this week in which he accused Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Asim Munir of being responsible for “the complete collapse of the constitution and rule of law in Pakistan.”
“The people of Pakistan stand with Imran Khan, they stand with PTI,” the party’s secretary-general, Salman Akram Raja, told reporters during a news conference.
“Imran Khan is not a national security threat. Imran Khan has kept the people of this country united.”
Raja said there were several narratives in the country, including those that created tensions along ethnic and sectarian lines, but Khan had rejected all of them and stood with one that the people of Pakistan supported.
PTI Chairman Gohar Ali Khan, flanked by Raja, criticized the military spokesperson as well, saying his press talk on Thursday had “severely disappointed” him.
“The words that were used [by the military spokesperson] were not appropriate,” Gohar said. “Those words were wrong.”
‘NATURAL OUTCOME’
Speaking to reporters earlier on Saturday, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif defended the military spokesperson’s remarks against Khan.
“When this kind of language is used for individuals as well as for institutions, then a reaction is a natural outcome,” he said.
“The same thing is happening on the Twitter accounts being run in his [Khan’s] name. If the DG ISPR has given any reaction to it, then I believe it was a very measured reaction.”
Khan, who was ousted after a parliamentary vote of confidence in April 2022, blames the country’s powerful military for removing him from power by colluding with his political opponents. Both deny the allegations.
The former prime minister, who has been in prison since August 2023 on a slew of charges he says are politically motivated, also alleges his party was denied victory by the army and his political rivals in the 2024 general election through rigging.
The army and the government both deny his allegations.
