THE public’s faith in the criminal justice system cannot be nurtured with brazen abuse of power. Six months after the fateful May 9 carnage, every political detainee is morphing into a symbol of injustice. The state’s policy of working in the shadows, through law enforcers, intimidation of political activists and media curbs must be reconsidered as the scale of repression has come to signal a danger to liberty. This was also clear in PML-N Senator Saadia Abbasi’s speech on Tuesday when she raised the issue of the prolonged confinement of PTI lawmakers and demanded production orders of fellow PTI senators who were either in jail or hiding to evade arrests. She also said her party endured immense hardship in the past but it did not keep her from raising her voice for those one rarely speaks of, which would include the embattled party’s incarcerated women workers and activists. Indeed, PTI would do well to learn from the gesture as even political rivals have fundamental rights and a powerful response to oppression is to shine a light on political victims.

Freedom of affiliation and conviction is not peripheral in a democracy. But the fact that this is arguably the largest number of women imprisoned for the longest duration in Pakistan’s stormy political life hints at a pervasive malaise. Are these women caught in the storm of PTI’s stand-off with the establishment and their own beliefs? The sequence was seen again on Monday with the court’s notice to the FIA on a post-arrest bail petition of designer Khadija Shah in the inflammatory tweets case; it will either continue with eventual ‘rearrest’ or close with a press conference. Reportedly, over 63 PTI women workers were arrested till July and last month’s letter from Kot Lakhpat jail explained the tragedies faced by 18 of them. Moreover, politician Yasmin Rashid’s long captivity underscores the sense that invisibility has become a means to sustain fear. Even darker is the realisation that imprisoned women in the Zia era were leaders or prominent politicians, fewer in number and held for a shorter time. Rights and transparency must be espoused to prevent a mockery of justice and democracy. The state of women behind bars, away from children and kin, is proof that the post-May reaction is past the confines of the law.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2023