Standing up Against Taliban is still Dangerous in Pakistan: Rights Activist Facing Death Threats

Find­ing a threat­en­ing hash­tag on social media is enough to give any­one sleep­less nights. But for civ­il soci­ety activist Jibran Nasir the #HangJi­bran­Nasir on Twit­ter only made him more deter­mined to stand up and be heard.

After Decem­ber 16, 2014 which has become the dark­est day in Pakistan’s his­to­ry, when ter­ror­ists alleged­ly mem­bers of Mul­lah Fazlullah’s led Tehreek-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP) attacked an Army-run boys school in Peshawar and killed more than 141 peo­ple, most­ly chil­dren,peo­ple like Nasir have tak­en up the task to protest against ter­ror­ism.

In an unprece­dent­ed move, Nasir and oth­ers from Pakistan’s civ­il soci­ety ral­lied against TTP, which is most­ly respon­si­ble for the deaths of more than 50,000 peo­ple in acts of ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan. And as expect­ed, Nasir is fac­ing severe crit­i­cism from rad­i­cal ele­ments in the Pak­istani soci­ety for his stand against Tal­iban and oth­er banned out­fits.

The whole coun­try went into mourn­ing after the Peshawar mas­sacre. But soon this mourn­ing turned into rage when Moulana Abdul Aziz — a rad­i­cal cler­ic of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) — cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly refused to con­demn this bar­bar­ic act while talk­ing on a talk show.

Aziz went on to term the Peshawar mas­sacre as a response to the mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Pakistan’s North Waziris­tan trib­al region.

Nasir led a group of peo­ple and orga­nized protest demon­stra­tions and can­dle vig­ils for vic­tims of the Peshawar school attack out­side Lal Masjid.

A large num­ber of peo­ple from all back­grounds respond­ed to Nasir’s call and joined him in the demon­stra­tion out­side the mosque. This led to the banned Ahle Sun­nat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) to fil­ing a com­plaint against the pro­tes­tors, declar­ing them a threat against the mosque. More than 10 civ­il soci­ety mem­bers were arrest­ed as a result of this FIR.

How­ev­er, this did not scare the demon­stra­tors away. It only led to more peo­ple com­ing out to sup­port Nasir and final­ly an FIR was reg­is­tered against the Lal Masjid cler­ic Moulana Abdul Aziz in a local police sta­tion in Pakistan’s cap­i­tal Islam­abad.

As a large num­ber of peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed this brave step, it enraged the TTP with the Ehsan­ul­lah Ehsan (a spokesman of the TTP splin­ter group Jamaat ul Ahrar) lash­ing out at Nasir, threat­en­ing him not to lead a cam­paign against Moulana Abdul Aziz.

Jibran refused to cow­er down, and he replied that places of wor­ship should not be used for incit­ing vio­lence.

Some sup­port­ers of the con­tro­ver­sial cler­ic have start­ed a mali­cious cam­paign against Jibran Nasir on social media, accus­ing him of con­spir­ing against Islam. And as cam­paigns run on social media, this one is also based on many false­hoods and unver­i­fied data.

A Face­book page has been cre­at­ed using the name of a famous con­ser­v­a­tive Pak­istani ana­lyst Orya Maq­bool Jaan, which is post­ing var­i­ous pho­tos try­ing to start dif­fer­ent con­tro­ver­sies against Nasir.

In one such cam­paign this FB page has post­ed a pic­ture of Nasir with MQM leader Haider Abbas Rizvi. The sig­nif­i­cance of this pho­to­graph is to estab­lish that Nasir as an agent of Shites as Rizvi hails from this sect.

This is also an attempt to coax the larg­er Mus­lim sect — Sun­ni — into believ­ing that Jibran’s protests are in fact a Shite con­spir­a­cy against Lal Masjid, and there­fore against the inter­ests of Sun­nis.

The same Face­book page post­ed anoth­er pho­to, false­ly quot­ing Jibran as say­ing that “for­mer Pun­jab Gov­er­nor Salmaan Taseer is my hero and his guard Mum­taz Qadri who assas­si­nat­ed him on the charges of blas­phe­my should be hanged.”

Com­ment­ing on this, Nasir said that some peo­ple are shar­ing his pic­tures with female cousins and this could endan­ger them.

He has con­veyed secu­ri­ty con­cerns with the Fed­er­al Infor­ma­tion Min­is­ter Per­vez Rasheed and he says it is now the government’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the mem­bers of civ­il soci­ety.

Nasir’s stance went beyond the bound­aries of civ­il soci­ety and it was also mir­rored by the very vocal polit­i­cal par­ty Mut­tahi­da Qau­mi Move­ment (MQM) that also orga­nized protests against Moulana Abdul Aziz.

MQM’s Chief Altaf Hus­sain accused Lal Masjid affil­i­at­ed sis­ter sem­i­nary Jamia Haf­sa of force­ful­ly detain­ing stu­dents (females) and demand­ed that the gov­ern­ment raze the mosque.

As expect­ed there was retal­i­a­tion from the oth­er side. And in a video mes­sage, Lal Masjid’s Moulana Aziz threat­ened Altaf Hus­sain and his par­ty, terming them as ene­mies of Pak­istan. The MQM reg­is­tered an FIR against the moulana for threat­en­ing par­ty chief Hus­sain. A few days lat­er, civ­il judge in Islam­abad had issued a non-bail­able arrest war­rant for Moulana Aziz but till writ­ing this he has not been arrest­ed yet.

Now it remains to be seen whether the gov­ern­ment lives up to the expec­ta­tions of peo­ple like Jibran Nasir, who have spo­ken up at their own per­son­al risk in a coun­try where any­one can be killed. Is the gov­ern­ment up to the task to pro­tect cit­i­zens? Will it be able to take any mea­sures to con­trol ter­ror­ism in Pak­istan? Only time will tell. Till then, brave voic­es will con­tin­ue to be raised.