Imran Khan: "We Need To Have Peaceful Protests All Over the Country."
Pakistan's former prime minister has been jailed. Here's what he told me earlier this summer.
On Saturday, August 5, 2023, Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, was arrested and taken to a maximum-security prison. He was given a jail sentence of three years over a contested case involving gifts while serving as prime minister.
Khan’s arrest and imprisonment means he is likely to be disqualified from still-scheduled, upcoming elections. Moreover, locking up the most popular politician in Pakistan could prove fatal—for Khan, for the military, and for the country. The world should be watching Pakistan very closely.
In late June, I interviewed Imran Khan by teleconference. He was on house arrest then in Lahore. In one of his last interviews given before he was imprisoned, Khan predicted that he would be jailed soon, that the Pakistani military would try to disqualify him from the elections and reimpose a dictatorship.
“In Pakistan, people are now at a crossroads,” Khan told me. “Are they going to accept this reign of terror, this end of democracy, and just bow down to another dictatorship? In that case, Pakistan has no future.”
Read Imran Khan’s full comments below. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Let’s start with this. Why are you in this position now? If we were talking before April 2022, you would have been the prime minister of Pakistan. Now you are ousted from office, with the military cracking down—so why are you in this position?
It’s because the Army Chief then [Gen. Qamar Bajwa] led a conspiracy. The current prime minister [Shehbaz Sharif] and [former president of Pakistan] Asif Zardari, and the coterie, were all part of it.
The conspiracy was that the Army Chief wanted to get another term, an extension, and he felt the best way to get an extension was if Shehbaz Sharif came to power. Hence, he has this conspiracy. That’s how they manipulated the whole system. The agencies used by the ex-Army Chief, they had my government removed.
It’s not just about me. It’s what’s happening to Pakistan that is a travesty.
Are they trying to make an example out of you?
The military is spreading fear. When my party has 70% support in the country, what they are trying to do is terrorize the people—tell them, ‘Look, even if 70% of you are voting for Imran, we’ve determined that your vote is worthless.’ It’s spreading fear. Through spreading fear they are trying to enslave the people. This is an old tactic.
Are you prepared to negotiate with the military establishment?
Well, negotiate about what? The only thing I want to talk to them about is that the route they have taken is a disaster for Pakistan. What they are doing is rolling back Pakistan’s democracy. Remember, over a period of time our democracy has evolved. We’ve been through martial law, military rule, and we’ve tried everything. And gradually, there’s been a consensus in Pakistan that whatever happens, even a bad democracy is better than martial law, because each time you have martial law, you have to start all over again.
Our democratic institutions evolved over a period of time. After the 2007 Lawyers Movement, we actually had a fairly independent judiciary. Our media, since the 1990s, was trying to assert its independence and even the democratic governments would not allow the media to be free. But gradually, the media and certain heroic journalists, they gradually asserted their independence and in the last 20 years, became very vibrant. Now all that is rolled back.
My political party only emerged because the media was vibrant. Otherwise, how could I have broken a two-party entrenched system, with so much money in their hands? So, my party developed because Pakistan had a free media. All that is now being rolled back.
Many critics suggest that your party was supported by the military when you came to power and that you didn’t adequately play the game that was expected of you. What do you say to that?
Look, the military certainly didn’t oppose us, but they also didn’t make us win the [2018] elections. After the election, the other parties claimed it was rigged, we offered to have it opened up, whereas, in 2013, when the elections were rigged by the establishment, they would not open up the elections. We only wanted 4 out of 133 petitions that challenge the national elections. We only asked for 4 constituencies at random. And they wouldn’t open them up. Because they rigged them [in 2013]. We offered to open them all up in 2018.
On the second point, actually, I tried to work with the military because to think you can wish them away very quickly—they’re entrenched in the system, they’ve ruled directly or indirectly for 75 years, so I worked with them. It is General Bajwa who decided to stab me in the back. I had a working relationship with him but I had two problems with him. Firstly, he did not want accountability for the crooks. He had done a pact with them. After his extension—when I gave him an extension—he had done a pact with them, and he rolled back on all the accountability, which meant that, again, these people were above law. My whole idea was to bring the powerful under the law, yet the ex-Army Chief did not think corruption was a big thing.
Later on, the issue was about his foreign policy—certainly the last six months. I mean, I wanted Pakistan to have an independent foreign policy. And his idea—he was playing on a different agenda. When he wanted us to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine, and all I said was, “India hasn’t condemned them. India is part of the Quad with the U.S.” And we need cheap oil, because the commodity super-cycle meant energy prices had gone through the roof, and India was getting cheap oil from Russia at a discounted rate, so we had already spoken with the Russians and we too would have gotten it at a discounted rate, but then our government went.
Look, my point was, Why should we be involved in other people’s conflicts? We’ve already lost 80,000 Pakistanis when we joined the U.S. War on Terror. A country that has 100 million vulnerable people—the top priority should be the people of the country.
Do you think your trip to Russia on the day of the invasion of Ukraine was a mistake? Do you regret that trip?
Well, how was I to know that? I arrived the night before and the next morning, Russia would invade Ukraine. I mean, had we known they were going to invade, obviously we would not have gone.
I’ve heard about human rights abuses committed against your party, against women in your party. Could you tell me more about that? Some of that news isn’t making it here.
There’s a reign of terror unprecedented in our history. Even during the worst of martial law, we didn’t experience anything remotely close to what is going on now. Firstly, they have completely muzzled the media. I mean, the media has been ordered to not even take my name—electronic media, print media, my name can’t be mentioned. That’s never happened before. Secondly, they have completely discarded even the verdicts of the judiciary. The judiciary announced elections, as per the Constitution, 14th of May in Punjab, the government just discarded it. There are massive human rights abuses. 10,000 of my workers are in jail. Every day they pick up more people and put them in jail.
They are blaming all this on 9th of May [ed: violent protests against the Pakistani military] – but 9th of May, there’s no independent inquiry into what happened. We think it was a set-up. They used 9th of May. The way I was picked up, was it necessary? Do you need a commando operation to pick up a 70 year old man? Why pick me up from the high court precinct with commando action and beating up people and breaking doors and treating me like a terrorist? Why do that? Because that was going to have a reaction.
I think they deliberately did it so there would be a reaction, then they would do this crackdown. The entire political leadership of my party is in jail. They can only come out if they renounce my party.
What is your message to President Biden and the United States?
My message to Biden is, look, no foreign country can fix the problems of any country. For instance, trying to bring democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq—it’s not possible. That’s not how it works. Countries fix their problems from the inside. But the U.S. has a big responsibility, because it talks about human rights, democracy, rule of law, speaks out against custodial torture—well, all those things are happening in Pakistan. Democracy is being rolled back. There is no rule of law. There is custodial torture. Abuse of human rights. And especially the way women have been treated. The way peaceful protestors have been shoved in jail, beaten up, tortured.
At least, the professed Western values—when they talk about what’s happening in China to Uyghurs, to Hong Kong, or Russia—what about this? At least they should be consistent with what their professed values are.
What’s your message to the wider world?
The same. To the democratic world, which believes in democracy and freedom—I mean, democracy means freedom, that’s why we believe in democracy. Elections don’t bring in democracy. It’s actually rule of law that brings democracy and freedom.
In Pakistan, we have the law of the jungle now. Anything goes. Anyone can be picked up. This is what I imagine happened in Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany. This is what’s happening right now. They pick up anyone. They smash their houses. Vandalize their houses. If the person is hiding, they will pick up their servants, their relatives, shove them in jail. It’s unheard of what’s happening now.
What happens if anything happens to you? If something is done to you? And what is your ultimate end game?
I’m convinced they’ll put me in jail soon. This reign of terror that’s going on is to make sure that the people are so scared that when they pick me up this time, there’s no reaction from the public. That’s why they’re picking up all our workers and terrorizing them. All this is going on to prepare the ground for when they put me in jail.
In Pakistan, people are now at a crossroads. Are they going to accept this reign of terror, this end of democracy, and just bow down to another dictatorship? In that case, Pakistan has no future. We are looking now at disaster. We are headed for the abyss. The economy has tanked. There’s a flight of capital from Pakistan—not just dollars, but human capital. About a million people have left the country, some of our best people. They see no hope. The way it’s going, if we stay passive and allow this to happen, I think there’s no hope in this country.
We have only one way. We need to have peaceful protests all over the country and not accept this reign of terror if we want to survive as a democratic country.
Thank you very much.
I’m Omer Aziz, the author of Brown Boy: A Memoir, a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard, and Publisher of Notes From The Margins. This publication is fueled by passion and supported by readers. You can share and subscribe below. Thank you for reading.
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