New Delhi: A missing Pakistani poet has led the Islamabad High Court to issue a warning to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The failure to ensure Ahmad Farhad’s return, the court said, could result in the summoning of Sharif and his cabinet members.
After Farhad’s wife filed an FIR claiming the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had abducted him, the court directed the ISI to produce the poet, challenging the agency’s denial of involvement in his disappearance. The Pakistani government denied Farhad being in the ISI’s custody.
The court further added that Sharif would be called to question the dominance of spy agencies over the law.
“I want the person at any cost, don’t take the situation to the level that makes it hard for the institutions to exist,” the IHC judge said.
Speaking to ThePrint from Lahore, human rights activist Amjad Salim Minhaj, who has been protesting against Farhad’s arrest, said, “It is not the state’s job to pick dissenters. This is against the law of the land. If he has done something wrong, he should be tried in court and not be abducted in this manner.”
Who is Ahmad Farhad?
The 38-year-old is a prominent poet and journalist from Bagh district of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Until the day of his abduction, he was reporting extensively on the protests happening in PoK.
چالیس لاکھ آبادی والے کشمیر کے لاکھ سے ڈیڑھ لاکھ سرپھروں نے حکومت کو گھٹنے ٹیکنے پر مجبور کیا ۔
فوج ایجنسیاں حکومت مشینری اور تمام وسائل بے بس ہو گئے ۔
پیچھے ایک بھی سیاسی جماعت نہ تھی اور ایک خالصتا عوامی تحریک تھی
دوسری طرف دو تہائی اکثریت والی جماعت کا مینڈیٹ دن دیہاڑے چرا…
— Ahmad Farhad (@AhmadFarhadReal) May 14, 2024
Farhad was returning home from a dinner on 14 May, when unknown people abducted him. His wife Syeda Urooj Zainab, who told Al Jazeera she saw “four men, wearing dark-coloured clothes, pushed him in a big four-wheel-drive vehicle”, filed a petition in court asking for his release. Two days later, she received a WhatsApp message from her husband asking her to withdraw the petition.
“I could tell he was being coerced into sending the message. He asked me to withdraw my petition, and he would return home. He also said he is away for some private business, but it was clearly a forced statement,” she was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.
Asif Bashir Chaudhry, the secretary of Rawalpindi & Islamabad Union of Journalists and a senior correspondent with Geo News, told ThePrint that Farhad had been reporting extensively on the PoK protests but had quoted wrong figures in a video where he had claimed that 13 people had died in the clashes. According to Dawn, four people were killed. Chaudhry said he was not sure if Farhad had been picked up because of that video but added that the union condemns the illegality of the abduction.
“Perhaps it was the video, or maybe not but we condemn the abduction and we call for the release of Farhad. Whatever be the case, it should be dealt with judicially in a court of law. To abduct someone over a wrong piece of news is uncalled for and is illegal,” he added.
Across social media, activists, journalists and human rights bodies too erupted in support of Farhad and asked for his release.
“Kashmiri poet Ahmad Farhad has been missing for over a week. We know who abducted him, & we know why — because he dared to speak truth to power. What we don’t know is when he will be released. The brutality of this state needs to end,” Nida Kirmani, a sociologist and a professor in Pakistan tweeted.
Ammar Ali Jan, a politician and activist, too demanded his release and wrote that his abduction “is a response by the state for its humiliating defeat at hands of Kashmiri people.”
The disappearance of Farhad has been strongly condemned by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which has called for his immediate release.
Pakistani journalist Mansoor Ali Khan, in his show, said that while the abduction of Farhad was unwarranted, putting the blame on the entire government was a stretch. He also said that the Punjab government’s recently passed defamation law would further impact the freedom of journalists.