Slain Pakistani rights activist’s funeral reinforces calls for peace

Washington — Thousands of people gathered for a glimpse of the funeral procession of the slain Pakistani rights activist Gilaman Wazir as his casket passed through towns and cities from Islamabad to his native village in the restive Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan about 250 miles away.

The procession was not covered by Pakistan’s mainstream media.

A member of the Pashtuns’ rights movement — Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, or PTM — Wazir (his name in documents was Hazrat Naeem) advocated for the rights of his people on digital platforms, using prose and poetry to convey his messages in short reels and TikTok videos and on social media platform X.

He was attacked in Islamabad on July 7 and succumbed to head injuries after four days. Police officials told VOA they have not found the men involved in the attack. PTM says it will investigate why he was killed.

Wazir’s activism on digital platforms incurred Pakistan’s anger when he was working as a laborer in Bahrain. Interpol arrested him in Bahrain at Pakistan’s request in 2020, and he was handed over to Pakistani authorities the same year.

“He was doing labor work in Bahrain. He was deported through Interpol and was put in jail. He was then kept in an internment center. He was bitten by dogs and was given electric shocks,” PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen said in his address to mourners gathered for a view of Wazir’s casket in different towns on July 11 and 12.

Pakistani officials have not responded to Pashteen’s charges.

Wazir has a series of reels, Facebook posts and TikTok videos that describe in his own poetry, in Pashto, his ordeal in the prisons.

PTM claims Wazir was picked up again by Pakistani authorities in July 2023, in Peshawar, but government officials did not confirm his whereabouts for about six months. He was later handed over to police and was released in late January 2024.

PTM says he was on the Exit Control List till his death. Anyone on the list is subject to restrictions on their movements outside the country.

Pakistani television networks and media outlets often cover protests and funeral processions, but there was silence in the mainstream media on the killing of Wazir.

Afrasiab Khattak, former head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told VOA there is a ban on covering PTM activities in media. An army spokesperson told the media in April 2019 to stop reporting on the group.

"When the media cannot report the news about killings, like Gilaman's, or the dead bodies of Baloch, or missing people, then there will be questions,” said Peshawar-based author and academic Irfan Ashraf.

Social media platforms have filled the vacuum of information about Wazir. The hashtag #GilamanWazir was trending on the social media platform X in Pakistan on Thursday. Pakistan has banned X in the country, but more than 32,000 tweets mentioned Wazir in one day. Among others, former Afghan Presidents Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani offered condolences on Wazir’s killing in their tweets.

Government leaders in Islamabad have made no comment on the issue.

PTM staged huge pro-peace rallies after Islamabad announced last month it was launching a new military operation against terrorism. Wazir and Pashteen questioned the dividends of Pakistan’s dozen-plus previous military operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Khattak said there is a trust deficit between the state and the people.

“The government is like a thin layer of onion on the face of [the] military. The army makes the decisions, and people don’t trust the generals,” he said.

Tens of thousands of people attended Wazir’s funeral in North Waziristan on Friday. They chanted against the Pakistan army, and some waved the three-color Afghan national flag, a message to Islamabad that they don’t accept Taliban in Kabul.