Islamabad: Terming his father and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) founder Imran Khan’s detention “arbitrary”, Kasim Khan has raised serious concerns at the ongoing United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in Geneva over the Pakistani authorities’ treatment which he said breaches international human rights conventions.
During the UNHRC session, Kasim Khan said that Imran Khan’s case was not an “isolated incident” but it was the “most visible example” of a much wider pattern of repression in Pakistan since 2022. He spoke about the detention of political prisoners, trial and conviction of civilians by military courts and journalists being “silenced, abducted or driven into exile,” Pakistan’s leading daily Dawn reported.
Kasim Khan, who said that his father was being held in solitary confinement, also spoke about the general elections held in Pakistan in February 2024, reiterating PTI’s allegations that polls were rigged. He said that Pakistan had made commitments under the GSP-plus framework to uphold international human rights conventions, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture.
He said that Imran Khan is not allowed to meet his family and being denied medical care. He also highlighted that the trial of civilians in military courts violated treaty obligations, Dawn reported.
“My brother and I are not political people. We never wanted to come before bodies like this. [But] my father’s life demands that we take action. We cannot stand by as his health deteriorates and he is kept away from us. If the situation were reversed, we know he would not stop fighting until we were free. That is the very least we can do for him,” he added.
Kasim Khan stated that he had spoken to his father on March 21, who asked him to convey a message. In the message, Imran Khan accused Pakistan’s judiciary of compromising its integrity and targetting his wife.
“Yesterday I spoke to my father. He asked me to relay the following message: ‘The judges in this country should be ashamed of themselves. Time and time again we have gone to the judiciary. But they have sold their souls for their paid personal privileges. They have sold their integrity. They know they cannot break me, so they turn to my wife. How they can allow this inhumane treatment to Bushra BiBi, simply to blackmail me. She spends 24 hours a day in isolation, except for 30 minutes with me per week – and even that is often ignored. It is unIslamic to harm women, children and the elderly – and their motives are plain and clear. The judges are responsible for the justice in a society. They should be ashamed of themselves,” Kasim Khan wrote on X on March 22.
Imran Khan, who has been in prison since August 2023, is serving a 14-year jail sentence at the Adiala jail in a £190 million corruption case and also faces several other cases. Imran Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi is also serving a seven-year sentence in £190 million corruption case.
(IANS)
