Founded to protest Pakistan ‘disappearances’, group now sees supporters go missing

KARACHI: As they were about to enter the office of the Commissioner of Karachi for a meeting to discuss a rally planned in Pakistan’s largest city, leaders of a Pashtun-led rights movement were intercepted by armed men accompanied by paramilitary Rangers.

“A car with men in plainclothes pulled up in front of us and men with guns got out and told us to stand still,” Said Alam Mahsud, an organiser with the Pashtun Tahafaz Movement (PTM), told Reuters.

He said three PTM activists with him were put in a truck and taken away by the armed men, as uniformed Rangers stood by. They returned two days later saying they had been interrogated, threatened, punched and kicked by the unidentified men, then handed over to the Rangers, who released them.

PTM, which drew nearly 10,000 people to its Karachi rally, was founded in January in protest against alleged extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention and ‘disappearances’ of young Pashtun men. Leaders of the emerging movement have blamed Pakistan’s military for these abuses, in an unusually direct challenge to the country’s most powerful institution.

Now, PTM’s activists themselves have started disappearing, according to Mohsin Dawar, one of the movement’s leaders.

PTM organisers again blame the powerful military, saying the movement’s growing popularity in major cities, even amid a local mediablackout,hasleftthesecurity forces feeling threatened.

The military’s press wing did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations. In the past, the army has said it does not detain individuals without evidence.

Officials from the paramilitary Rangers, which are part of the security forces and have broad powers in Karachi, also did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did the office of the Karachi Commissioner, who is the head of the city government.

In the past month, PTM says dozens of its activists have been detained across the country, while newspaper columnists have had articles on PTM rejected. Some students and academics say they have been threatened and universities forced to call off talks about Pashtun inequality.

In the week leading up to the Karachi protest, PTM’s leadership said Rangers and unidentified security officials detained and interrogated more than 100 of its supporters and kept nearly 30 workers in custody.

“The amount they are trying to stop us, it shows they are scared,” student activist Manzoor Pashteen, who has become the face of the movement, told Reuters. “I don’t think they know they are our guardians, their behaviour is that of criminals.”

Despite the apparent crackdown, the protest in Karachi drew nearly 10,000 people. Pashteen himself was stopped from boarding a flight from the capital, Islamabad, to Karachi after the airline told him his ticket had been cancelled, he said. — Reuters