Prime Minister @andyburnham and Foreign Secretary @Ed_Miliband : how much longer will Britain remain silent?
For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents, in a personal vendetta by Army Chief, Asim Munir, which according to the UN, amounts to torture and which is now taking a potentially fatal toll on his physical and mental health.
He has endured 3 years of solitary confinement. For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors.
The international human-rights standards are unequivocal. Under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture.
He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years.
Pakistan’s own Supreme Court has now intervened: ordering comprehensive medical treatment, access to his personal doctor, regular family visits and twice-weekly calls with his sons.
Yet those orders are being defied.
This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human-rights emergency.
He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain. He studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. His relationship with this country stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.
His sons, my two boys, Sulaiman and Kasim, are British citizens. They have been forced to watch their father’s health decline from thousands of miles away, prevented from visiting him, denied visas, publicly threatened by government officials with arrest themselves, and even denied court-mandated regular phone calls.
I have repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. Purported attempts at back channelling have evidently failed. The previous Foreign Secretary @DavidLammy informed me in writing that Britain would not intervene if my sons, British citizens, are arrested when they travel to Pakistan to visit their father.
@FCDOGovUK: Britain must now speak out publicly and unequivocally. Demand that Pakistan comply with its own Supreme Court; restore Imran Khan’s medical access, his right to see his family, end his prolonged isolation and uphold his fundamental human rights.
Pakistan is a Commonwealth country. Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights. Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient.
This an appeal to the new Burnham government to please now do the right thing.
When Queen Elizabeth was watching 18-year-old Imran Khan play at Lord’s, 3-year-old Asim Munir was shitting his pants in slums of Dera Hussainabad, Rawalpindi.
Imran Khan never chased hype. He is the hype.
پاکستانی عوام
ہر بتی کے پیچھے بھنگڑے ڈالنا شروع کردیتے ہیں
چاہے وہ بتی فوج کی طرف سے ہو یا عسکری قیادت کی طرف سے۔ ہر بار دھوکا کھاتے ہیں مگر سُدھریں گے کبھی نہیں! 🤦🏻♂️
Below is an audio recording of @FarisHammadi explaining why he doesn’t criticise Israel (his government).
When we briefly met in Dubai in 2023, he told me he doesn’t believe Palestinians should resist Israeli occupation and that boycotting is a futile act.
Of course, he has very little to say about his government’s ruling elite being neck-deep in facilitating luxury brothels and the human trafficking of white European sex workers (Yousef Al-Otaiba et al)
And of course, he has all the freedom in the world to call every Muslim dai in the West “Ikhwani”, “Khawarij” and “Quboori” (by name), but absolutely no targeted critique of the liberal perennialist heretics that speak so proudly and loudly on behalf of the UAE.
So he can’t criticise Israel or his fellow zanadiqa countrymen, but he can attack Muslims (by name) left, right and centre.
Oh, he also has to clarify to Muslims he meets from the UK in Dubai that he’s not a Zionist. 😂
This is called Dubai Deranged Syndrome.
By Allah (swt), had the UAE not actively put a target on the backs of Muslims in the West, my opposition to them would have been far more tempered
But no. It wasn’t enough to destroy and destabilise Sudan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia, while normalising with Israel and conspiring against neighbouring brother nations.
It wasn’t enough to fund, amplify and export perennialist liberal heresy across the region.
They had to actively fund and ally themselves with those in the West who curse the Prophet ﷺ, defame all that is sacred in Islam, burn Qurans, petrol bomb mosques, and attack our mothers, daughters and sisters on the streets.
It’s now on like Donkey Kong, and I’m on it like a Bentley bonnet — ya khabees, zanadiqa, khawana.
My foot will remain firmly on their neck.