ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Hundreds of politicians and supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party have been detained in the crackdown that followed the federal emergency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in a wave of arrests reported this week by Dawn, Al Jazeera, NPR and Amnesty International, among other outlets tracking the crisis.
The detentions are the human side of a political sequence Zark News has covered since Sunday, when President Asif Ali Zardari declared a state of emergency in the northwestern province, suspended the PTI-led provincial government and placed the province under direct federal control, citing a sharp rise in militant violence, according to Reuters.
Khan’s three sisters and hundreds of supporters, including party leaders, were arrested ahead of a planned march on Islamabad to demand his release and medical treatment, according to Reuters. In clashes on Tuesday, police fired tear gas and, according to party officials, live rounds at supporters in the province, according to Reuters. Five people were injured, and police said 50 people were detained in that unrest and would face terrorism and sabotage charges over damage to government property, according to Reuters. The party said responsibility for a fire at a government database office in Bara should be established by investigation, according to Reuters.
PTI says the emergency is a pretext for a political takeover that strips the party of its only provincial government and its budget resources, according to Reuters. The federal government says the provincial administration failed to tackle militancy in a province bordering Afghanistan that has seen a sharp rise in attacks, according to Reuters. Both claims remain contested, and Zark News reports them as the positions of the two sides.
Rights concerns have grown alongside the arrests. Amnesty International has urged Pakistani authorities to ensure emergency rule does not undermine human rights or become a pretext for suppressing dissent, and has called for restrictions to be necessary and proportionate, according to its statement summarized in news reports. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has urged the federal government and PTI to resume meaningful dialogue, according to Reuters.
Khan, 74, a former cricket star who served as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been in prison since 2023 on corruption and other charges, which he denies and says are politically motivated, according to Reuters. His family says his health is worsening, according to Reuters. His wife, sisters and scores of activists are also under detention, according to Reuters.
PTI challenged the emergency at the Peshawar High Court on Wednesday, according to Reuters, a step Zark News reported on October 15. No ruling on that challenge was reported in the latest accounts, and the detentions add a separate legal front: the cases now facing hundreds of individual party members and supporters.
What happens next turns on three tracks at once: the high court’s handling of the emergency challenge, whether detained leaders and supporters are released or formally charged in significant numbers, and whether dialogue calls from rights bodies gain any response from either the federal government or PTI. Zark News will treat official detention totals as claims until they are confirmed by court or police records reported by credible outlets.
