The long arm of the establishment?

The trial in London of a Pakistani man, Gohir Khan, on charges of being hired to assassinate exiled Pakistani blogger Ahmed Waqas Goraya based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has elicited a deafening silence from the Pakistani authorities. This is despite the trial proceedings revealing that he received an advance payment of Pounds Sterling 5,000 in a Pakistani bank account and was promised another 80,000 after the ‘job’ was completed. Khan travelled to Rotterdam, scouted Goraya’s home, but since the latter was away, abandoned the quest and returned to London where he was arrested. The accusations are uncontested by the accused, who has taken refuge behind the plea that he never intended to carry out the assassination and was only interested in making some money to straighten out his dire financial situation. Even if this unbelievable defence is accepted, at least two burning questions remain unanswered. If he had no intent to kill, why did Khan buy a big kitchen knife in Rotterdam, and second, is it conceivable that he was so naïve as to think he could get away with the money without carrying out the assassination?

The whole affair stinks to high heaven. On the basis of the facts iterated in court, it appears to be a transnational plot initiated by ‘elements’ in Pakistan. One such, revealed on Gohir Khan’s cell phone, is a middleman called ‘Muds’, ‘Zed’ and ‘Papa’. The conversations between the two are encoded in fishing metaphors. Some background may further clarify.

Ahmed Waqas Goraya and four other dissident bloggers who criticised religious extremism and the military establishment were ‘disappeared’ in 2017 for their pains. They were also accused of the ubiquitous blasphemy charges reserved for such irritants by the powers that be and their ‘religious’ collaborators. Although these five bloggers were eventually released after a storm of protest by progressives across Pakistan arguing that the space for free speech was shrinking in Pakistan, all sought refuge abroad. None of them broke their pregnant silence about their treatment while ‘disappeared’. Goraya returned to The Netherlands, having abandoned perforce his desire to return to Pakistan permanently after having spent a decade in The Netherlands. Despite dissidents taking up the ‘disappeared’ bloggers’ case, hundreds deactivated their social media accounts and pages, even those residing abroad, for fear of adverse consequences for themselves and their families.

Goraya’s is neither the first such case, nor likely to be the last. This is because according to the British press, there is an ongoing crackdown against Pakistani dissidents abroad. One has only to recall the murders of Sajid Hussain Baloch in exile in Sweden and Karima Baloch in Toronto, Canada to accord credibility to these claims. Both were found drowned in mysterious, unexplained circumstances, with the never tiring champions of the rule of law and human rights, both Sweden and Canada, being involved in what appears to be a cover-up.

Those dissidents in exile abroad are precariously placed, the cases of Ayesha Siddiqa and Gul Bukhari being two recently revealed by the British press as having received warnings from the UK police about threats to their life. Journalist Taha Siddiqui who fled to Paris after his attempted abduction in Islamabad is another ‘candidate’. Apart from the above named journalists and writers, similar warnings of threats to life have been issued by the British authorities to the Baloch and Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement exiles and an alleged ‘hit list’ of individual critics of the establishment.

It is difficult, given this and similar information on such ‘cloak and dagger’ campaigns against critics and dissidents abroad, to resist coming to the conclusion that for some time now at least, the campaign of suppression of critical and dissident voices inside Pakistan has assumed an extra-territorial dimension targeting those who fled abroad fearing for their life and safety. In these obtaining circumstances and definitely emerging trends, the deafening silence of the government (apart from the usual spate of denials by the foreign office and government spokespersons of any such activities by ‘revered’ national institutions) speaks volumes.

If there is one characterisation of the Pakistani state that holds water consistently since Independence, it is the amazing lack of confidence and insecurity of the ruling elite and state institutions. The state narrative insists we are one people, with one language, religion, and purpose (?). This has now been translated into the Single National Curriculum intended to rear future generations with this, and just this unquestioned worldview. The problem with this long-standing ideological hegemony effort is that it flies in the face of the facts received from history and present-day ground realities. Pakistan is a multinational state from day one. Attempts to deny and wipe out this reality cost us the loss of half the country and the majority of our population. Continuing with these ‘thought control’ experiments threatens the future of our beloved country. We are not one, but many, diverse peoples, who are not averse to living together in

today’s truncated Pakistan provided there is no attempt to drive us into the trumpeted ‘paradise’ of uniformity at the point of a bayonet.

The more we recognize and embrace our ethnic, religious and other diversities, the more confident and secure a state we will become. The more we allow critical and dissident voices, inside and outside the country, to speak freely, the more our credentials as a secure, confident state will be strengthened. If this sounds utopian to readers, reflect on what the alternative has wrought in our country to date, and what it portends in future.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2022