In an uncivilized turn of events, the chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Imran Khan was manhandled at the Punjab University Campus today. He was later arrested by the police. A group of students kept him detained on the campus and later turned him over to the police. According to Dawn’s Report:
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan was arrested from outside the Punjab University’s new campus on Wednesday after he had been manhandled and detained in the campus allegedly by activists of the Islami Jamiat Talaba. Imran Khan had gone to the university at the invitation of a joint action committee of students.
The visit had been approved by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of Jamaat-i-Islami, to which the IJT is affiliated. On his arrival at the campus, the PTI chief was confronted reportedly by a group of IJT activists who kicked him around and punched him. They took him to a room in the Centre for High Energy Physics and detained him there for about 45 minutes.
This is an interesting (and sad) turn of events. Imran Khan‘s party and the mother party of IJT are both partners in APDM. Imran and Qazi have been seen together in many media photo shoots for the past year or so. Will today’s action by IJT guys will cause long term bad-blood between the two parties? It is left to be seen.
We strongly believe that inspite of political differences, no person deserves physical bashing and humiliation as was met out to Imran. Political differences should never be taken to such extreme where people use force to get their point across. It is wrong. Shame on those who manhandled him. I was recently reading an article on political bashing in the Wall Street Journal. It had a punch line which just kept resonating with me. It read:
Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.
Details on Imran‘s manhandling can be read here, here, here and here.
Another interesting article on IJT by Abbas Athar; http://www.express.com.pk/epaper/Article.aspx?news ID=1100301989&Date=20071120&Issue=NP_LHE
Imran Khan’s arrest is a national shame for us all, he is arguably the only credible politician in Pakistan’s political scene. His arrest will remain an unforgivable sin committed by the current regemie. They have hurted the whole country by the inhumane behavious extended towards this figure of national pride. Imran Khan should be freed immediately with a public apology from the Punjab Government.
How to Save Pakistan By Imran Khan
http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/2007/11/19/how-to-sav e-pakistan-by-imran-khan/
Is this what we should do sit back and watch someone go to hunger strike, who made a cancer hospital for us, our governments could never think of , who has brought laurels to the country by being the chancellor of a foreign uni, someone who is constructing a college for the backward areas, who plans a similar hospital in another city, someone who could have enjoyed a luxurious life but is in jail not for his personal gains, just for the love of country and not to talk of his cricket success.., yeah surely we deserve the treatment we are getting.
“It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal, that turned a family-loving husband into a man without home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a momnk, I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that I could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free. Freedom is invisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.” (1995, p.175)
Nelson Mandela in his biography ‘Long Walk To Freedom’
A man who demanded “Insaaf” for a common man has been made into an example, so one ever dares to ask for such a commodity in Pakistan.
Is Imran Khan’s treatment by the authorities any different than what is meted out to a defiant peasant by an almighty feudal?
Will we always live like second grade citizens in our own country? How many Imran Khans are needed to be dishonoured before our collective conscience is jolted out of a deep slumber?
Imran khan has given face to those countless innocent men and women who have been wasted in our jails for the crimes they never committed and also the ones whose ‘courage’ had become their biggest crime!