Pakistan: It’s Not “Terrorism” To Publicly Announce Court Cases Against The Authorities
No objective observer would ever agree that a citizen announcing their intent to exercise the legal right bestowed to them by their constitution to file a court case against their authorities for alleged abuse constitutes a genuine “terrorist” threat.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was ousted by a US-orchestrated but domestically driven post-modern coup in early April as punishment for the Eurasian dimension of his independent foreign policy, just had a “first information report” (FIR) filed against him under the country’s Anti-Terrorism Act. He might therefore soon be arrested simply because he publicly announced court cases against the authorities who he suspects of contributing to the alleged abuse of chief advisor Shahbaz Gill, who was arrested earlier this month on national security pretexts. Amnesty International’s South Asian office also recently tweeted its concern about his deteriorating physical condition while calling for an ”immediate, effective, and impartial inquiry investigating these claims”, though it’s gone unheeded.
Whatever one’s opinion might be about the former premier’s interpretation of the scandalous sequence of events against him one-third of a year ago, publicly expressing one’s intent to legally hold the authorities accountable for the suspected abuse of someone who’s arguably a political dissident has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with “terrorism”. Such a serious issue must be resolved in the court of law, but that can only happen if the judiciary is truly independent, though some fear that this isn’t the case in Pakistan. The fact that former Prime Minister Khan just had a FIR filed against him on “anti-terrorist” grounds simply for the public declaration of the legal rights that he planned to exercise as a citizen proves that national security pretexts are being exploited for fascist ends.
Pakistan’s post-modern coup authorities can’t have their cake and eat it too: either they fully align with their American patrons’ legal and political standards connected to what that declining unipolar hegemon expects from self-professed “democracies” like the one that they claimed had replaced the former premier’s so-called “fascism”, or they abandon all pretenses of abiding by these demands and double down on their dark descent to fascism. It’s unclear exactly what US strategists think about this latest turn of events, but the most responsible among them might presumably be concerned that it’ll only further destabilize the country and thus endanger their proxy project there. Moreover, the blatant exploitation of national security pretexts for justifying this crackdown discredits the US by association.
America’s so-called “rules-based order” is nothing but rhetoric for disguising the arbitrary implementation of double standards in order to advance its subjective interests at others’ expense. Nowhere is this clearer than Washington having yet to condemn Islamabad for its political persecution of former Prime Minister Khan at the time of this analysis’ publication. Evidently, the policymaking faction that approves of this fascist crackdown on faux national security pretexts presently has more influence than those well-intended patriotic dissidents who disagree. Similarly, the multipolar school of thought in the Pakistani Establishment still has yet to regain the influence that it lost to its pro-American peers after April’s events as proven by their inability to dissuade them from this brazen abuse of power.
No objective observer would ever agree that a citizen announcing their intent to exercise the legal right bestowed to them by their constitution to file a court case against their authorities for alleged abuse constitutes a genuine “terrorist” threat. This is especially the case if the citizen in question is the former premier whose party has indisputably become the most popular one in the country after it just defeated the ruling party on its home turf in a landslide last month during regional by-elections. For these reasons, there’s no doubt that the authorities are politically persecuting former Prime Minister Khan, but “The Power Of The Pakistani People Will Defeat Their Unpopular Imported Government”.