A note of gratitude and reflection on our time in Adiala Jail. A thread.
It has been an emotionally overwhelming week on both a personal and political level. We were without any contact with the outside world there but can now tell so many of you have put your sweat, tears and creativity into securing our freedom.
It is hard to express sufficient gratitude for the support & solidarity of our families, friends & allies, from my incredible partner-in-life @jaquelintzin, to the brilliant legal team that argued our case, to my relentless AWP comrades, the leftist, progressive & nationalist..
@jaquelintzin workers and leaders (from HKM, PSC, to MKP, RSF, PkMAP, NP, PTM and others) who protested for us, to the artists that sang and performed music and poetry, to the academics, writers and feminists who spoke out, to the journalists that highlighted our case amid a media blackout..
@jaquelintzin ..to the many ordinary people who campaigned for us despite not knowing us or being personally invested. The numbers are too many to adequately list, hence will try and respond in person to each of you individually.
@jaquelintzin Please know that it was the strength of your inspiring collective effort that led to our release and a citizen-led fightback against the rising use of sedition and terrorism laws to silence dissent.
@jaquelintzin This was an eye-opening experience in many ways. For a week, we were given a taste of what ordinary working people and ethnic minorities experience as a matter of course in this country.
@jaquelintzin I was placed, along w/ the other arrested protestors, most of them young Pakhtun students & workers, in the jail's High Security Barracks (HSB), filled with death row & life prisoners, including those accused & convicted of murder, rape, dacoity & terrorism.
@jaquelintzin We were separated and placed in square 9’x9’ cells including an open toilet with 7 prisoners each. We later learned Adiala was filled to 6 times its original capacity despite having acres of uncovered space (yes, we’ve even reproduced wasteful urban sprawl in our jails).
@jaquelintzin We were barred from meeting visitors or making calls, & held largely cut-off from the outside world, constantly reminded we were living in a ‘jail within a jail’. There was one tap for drinking & clearning in the toilet. Unlike regular prisoners, we were not allowed in the open.
@jaquelintzin Most of the jailers were pointlessly cruel, enjoying ritual humiliation, engaging in arbitrary violence, mocking us abt being enemies of the state. Some, tbf, were decent people, even sympathetic to our views, but unwitting, overworked & underpaid participants in our silencing.
@jaquelintzin Yet the most remarkable thing about the experience for me was the interaction with the prisoners in the overcrowded jail, truly the wretched of the earth, representing a microcosm of the class, ethnic and religious injustices and inequalities that litter Pakistan.
@jaquelintzin This included Inam, a humble Baloch goat-herder from DG Khan who got picked up for his brother’s alleged involvement w/ a banned outfit tortured in a safe house for 6 months to disclose his whereabouts & then implicated in a fake ‘ammunitions possession’ case & thrown into Adiala
@jaquelintzin It included Shah ji, a gentle, soft-spoken wall-painter from Rawalpindi who had been attacked along w/ his family by an opposing party over a property dispute, for which he was himself later arrested & then bizarrely implicated in a 7-ATA (terrorism) case.
@jaquelintzin It included Liaqat, a 23 y/o Pakhtun man, who was born & bred in I-11 katchi abadi (he remembered us from our time there), had spent most of his brutal childhood dragged from one police thana to another, then rendered homeless with his family by the 2015 demolition of the abadi.
@jaquelintzin ..following which he took up a life of violent crime, for which he was finally jailed, now facing decades in prison without ever having lived a normal life. His nickname there was 'Chay chaar' (6'4), a term for those who have permanently taken leave of their senses.
@jaquelintzin It included Satti, a laborer on death row, who had admitted to shooting and killing his young niece’s rapist-murderers and was now serving two life sentences & a death sentence, yet somehow still remained strangely cheerful about his circumstances.
@jaquelintzin He was two cells away from us and we would take turns singing each night, his powerful voice and haunting lyrics giving the prisoners in the block some welcome moments of respite in the dark.
@jaquelintzin There were many other stories like these, of those residing in the underbelly of our decrepit system, abandoned by state & society, victims of economic exclusion, dispossession, imperialist wars, ethnic discrimination, enforced disappearance, & a broken, punitive justice system..
@jaquelintzin ..which has no interest in nor capacity to improve society. It is stories like these that Manzoor brought before us, to remind us of the humanity of those who had suffered the policies and wars of our military and civilian ruling elite.
@jaquelintzin They say prison radicalizes you and I now understand why. It makes you too uncomfortably familiar with the rottenness of the system you live in, unable to turn your eyes away from its grisly failures and their human consequences.
@jaquelintzin I was reminded of the far worse circumstances of others less fortunate than us, long put away & forgotten for the crimes of speaking out & demanding justice and rights, from our dear comrade Baba Jan of AWP Gilgit-Baltistan, now over 7 years behind bars, to Mehr Sattar of Okara..
@jaquelintzin ..jailed since 2016 for leading a non-violent peasant movement, and now Manzoor Pashteen and Alamgir Wazir, young Pakhtun men told that their lived experiences of pain and suffering in conflict & war are too harsh to the sensitive ears of the powerful.
@jaquelintzin We were ostensibly sent behind bars for purposes of intimidation – to warn us & others to back off from supporting those who make inconvenient demands of our state.
@jaquelintzin Yet we return, inspired by the resolute, diverse and multi-ethnic solidarity & resistance you all showed outside, ever more committed to fighting injustice and exclusion in all its forms and transforming the brutal system that excludes and devastates so many lives.
@jaquelintzin As I told Jaq when we finally met, the main thing this experience had taught us was the necessity of prioritizing prison and criminal justice reform in this country.
@jaquelintzin Thank you once again to all who worked tirelessly for our release. The case has not yet been dropped and we will still have to fight the charges of terrorism, rioting and unlawful assembly, among others, in court.
@jaquelintzin We hope you will continue to support us, demand the release of those still unjustly jailed & work with us for a society that allows debate, where all have access to justice, the law is applied equally, political freedoms are guaranteed & the powerful are answerable to the people.
@jaquelintzin The only way we can do this is if more of you are active in this struggle, so that we can share & distribute the burden of collective action, so that eventually these ‘seditious’ ideas of liberty, equality & justice become the ideals & lived reality of the majority in Pakistan.
@jaquelintzin Once again, my deepest gratitude to you all. We must continue to fight with the same fervor for the unheard and voiceless. Onward.
#FreeBabaJan
#FreeMehrSattar
#ReleaseManzoorPashteen
#ReleaseAlamgirWazir
#RepealSeditionLaw
Complete post here: facebook.com/ammar.rashid1/…
#FreeBabaJan
#FreeMehrSattar
#ReleaseManzoorPashteen
#ReleaseAlamgirWazir
#RepealSeditionLaw
Complete post here: facebook.com/ammar.rashid1/…
Addendum: since many are sharing this, I want to make clear I don't intend this reflection as a complaint or accusation against any individual or authority there. I'm not interested in reactive calls for individual accountability, which are often themselves pointlessly punitive.
..it's very easy to see how many enforcers of this system are caught in unfortunate situations in resource-starved & ignored circumstances. What's more important is to create space for actually talking seriously about the problems & their solutions. Just stop silencing debate.
