Pakistani exiles in London who have criticised the country’s powerful military have been told that their lives are in danger, reigniting fears that authoritarian regimes in the UK are hunting overseas dissidents.
Other intelligence services across Europe have sent other warnings to Pakistani dissidents, including rights activists from Pakistan’s Balochistan province, journalists, and members of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, an organisation representing ethnic Pashtuns, according to the Observer.
Mark Lyall Grant, former UK high commissioner to Pakistan and once the UK’s top diplomat to the UN, said that if figures from the Pakistani military had threatened exiles in the UK then this would be taken very seriously by the British government.
“If there is illegal pressure, in particular on journalists in the UK, then I would expect the law enforcement agencies and the British government to take notice of that and to make an appropriate legal and/or diplomatic response.”
Any evidence that personnel from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the military’s security arm, were threatening persons in the UK would not be overlooked, according to Lyall Grant, the UK’s former national security adviser. “If British people or residents in the UK acting lawfully are harassed or threatened by the ISI or anybody else, the British government will take action,” says the statement.
He said the development reflected a broader trend in authoritarian states such as Rwanda, Tanzania and the Philippines among others, becoming sufficiently emboldened to start silencing critics.
Since Imran Khan took office in Pakistan in 2018 with the military’s support, human rights organisations have reported a decline in press freedom, as well as an increase in physical attacks on journalists. Pakistan appears to be shifting from repressing criticism within its boundaries to targeting critics situated outside, which is causing alarm.
Officers even inquired if her husband had been paid money to persuade his wife to return to Pakistan. “It’s that serious,” Siddiqa remarked.
After being kidnapped by security agents in Lahore in 2018, Gul Bukhari, a British-Pakistani YouTuber and blogger who has openly criticised the military, fled to the United Kingdom. She stated, “I feel endangered in London.”
Since the inexplicable killings of two Pakistani dissidents last year, fears among Pakistan’s exile population have been running high. Journalist Sajid Hussain, who covered human rights atrocities in Balochistan, vanished in Uppsala, Sweden, in March 2020, and was discovered dead in a river two months later.
Seven months later, Hussain’s friend Karima Baloch, who pushed for an independent Balochistan, was discovered dead in a lake in Toronto, Canada. Although the Swedish and Canadian governments denied any wrongdoing, other protesters are sceptical.
Baloch’s British-based spouse, Hammal Haider, says he doesn’t feel comfortable in Europe. “Anyone who criticises the Pakistan army could be a target,” he says.
The suggestion, according to Siddiqa, that the UK’s Pakistani community is “extremely infiltrated” by military loyalists aggravates the problem.
A leaked Pakistani government memo last year accused several Pakistani journalists stationed in Europe and the United States of producing “anti-state content” for foreign media under false names. It was a journalist from a minority group living in exile in western Europe who was named. The journalist, who spoke to the Observer on the condition of anonymity, said he had also received a warning notice from the intelligence service.
Exiled Pakistani journalists are being monitored, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). “There are a lot of situations that have not been made public that we are aware of. According to CPJ’s Steven Butler, “these types of threats could only come from Pakistan’s military or intelligence services.”
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