Imran Khan not the only one silenced as Pakistani military stifles dissent
Caroline DaviesCorrespondent in Pakistan
Imprisoned former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has not received any visitors for more than five weeks, according to his party.
His family says this is partly to prevent his words from reaching the outside world. They blame the country’s military leader, Field Marshal Asim Munir, an accusation the government rejects. It says the meetings were disrupted because Khan broke prison rules prohibiting political discussion.
While Khan may be silenced, he is far from the only one under pressure.
Journalists, analysts and human rights advocates say the room to disagree with the state is increasingly limited – and the risks greater.
Last weekend, human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari and her husband were found guilty of sharing anti-state posts on social media.
The couple will spend 10 years in prison.
Khan’s family is very clear about efforts to erase him from the public mind.
“There are two names you can’t have on television. You can’t say anything nice about Imran Khan, and you can’t say anything bad about Asim Munir,” his sister Aleema Khanum told the BBC. She was speaking at a recent demonstration by supporters a few kilometers from her cell in Adiala prison in Rawalpindi.
It has been more than eight weeks since Khan last saw a member of his family, more than five weeks since he met with a lawyer, and that lasted only eight minutes, according to his party.
“This is the only way we have right now to create enough pressure for us to be allowed to meet with him,” Khanum said at the protest. “It’s his right to meet his lawyers, it’s his right to meet his family, it’s his communication with the outside world.”
This communication from Khan has often been very critical of the government and military leader of Pakistan. After meetings inside the prison, Khan’s comments were often posted on his X account, attributed to him and giving instructions to his party and supporters.
“They are unable to block his voice because people want to hear him, they read his messages, they don’t abandon him,” Khanum explains.
But for now, with meetings on hold, so are these messages.
Khan, imprisoned since August 2023, is convicted in several corruption cases that he says are politically motivated.
The government and military reject allegations that he is being held in solitary confinement. Talal Chaudhry, interior minister, called him “Pakistan’s most privileged prisoner”, equipped with sports equipment and a cook.
After a post quoting Khan appeared on his
“One could argue that the military is actually running the country on many levels now that Pakistan is moving closer to authoritarian rule,” says Michael Kugelman, senior South Asia researcher at the Atlantic Council.
“This is the worst repression ever known under civilian rule.”
The Pakistani military, often referred to as “the establishment”, has been an ever-present factor in the country’s politics, including during periods of military dictatorship.
Initially, Khan and the army seemed close; many believe their support helped bring Khan to power and the opposition at the time initially accused him of being under the influence of the military while he governed. Khan’s party denied this report.
By the time he was ousted in a vote of no confidence in 2022, Khan had not only fallen out with the military rulers but also blamed them for his removal from power.
In November 2025, a constitutional amendment granted Munir lifelong immunity from prosecution and surveillance by all Pakistani defense forces.
Many saw this as a further sign that the military’s influence over Pakistan was at its peak under a civilian government.
The current government denies that it is the army which is calling the shots.
“Civil government is [taking] decisions. We are all working hand in hand,” Chaudhry said, adding that the defense force chief is “doing a wonderful job”.
Security sources said: “The army has always maintained that it operates within legal limits.”
But Michael Kugelman and others see a connection between the military’s involvement in politics and the space they have to express themselves.
“This is intrinsically linked to the strength or weakness of a democratic government and its relationship with the military,” says Munizae Jahangir, journalist and co-chair of the Human Rights Council of Pakistan (HRCP).
“If the military is more dominant, there will be less space for protest, there will be less space for dissent, there will be less space for free speech.”
Among those already imprisoned, Mazari is among the most prominent. A lawyer who has worked on some of Pakistan’s most sensitive cases, she and her husband Hadi Ali Chattha were found guilty of “disseminating and propagating narratives that align with hostile terrorist groups.”
The government defended its conviction; in response, Pakistan’s information minister posted on X: “What you sow, you will reap!” »
“Attempts to characterize violations of the law as democracy or human rights are completely misplaced,” Chaudhry said.
Other human rights defenders told the BBC they faced limits in how they operate.
HRCP claims its staff were harassed in phone calls and prevented from holding roundtable discussions in hotels unless they obtained prior authorization. The government says this is “to ensure security”.
“They [Pakistan’s authorities] “We control the mainstream media to a large extent,” said Geo TV journalist Azaz Syed. He claims that even stories directly related to the military – including one he recently did on a defense housing company – have resulted in phone calls from unknown numbers with warnings not to go any further.
Jahangir says editors even asked him not to cover certain topics.
“Editors don’t do this for fun. They fundamentally believe in free speech. They do it to survive,” she says.
Journalists from other media outlets who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity said a culture of self-censorship was now common in newsrooms.
“There have been times in the past when there was complete censorship,” one said. “Now there is self-censorship, which in many ways is worse because we are misleading the public.”
The BBC has contacted the military for comment.
Security sources told us that the ISPR, the military’s communications arm, “does not regulate media content, freedom of expression, or interfere with civilian journalism, and does not exercise authority over public discourse beyond its legal communications role.”
The Dawn newspaper – Pakistan’s oldest, founded in 1941 by the country’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah – has suffered a financial blow to its reporting. In December, Dawn Media Group said it was subject to an unexpected ban on government advertising, first in its newspaper and then on its television and radio channels, a move that the Council of Newspaper Editors said was “financially crippling the organization.”
“While some within the state may think that punishing media outlets that refuse to toe the line can stifle critical voices, in the modern era this is nearly impossible,” the editorial board said.
Information Minister Atta Tarar denied that Dawn had been denied publicity by the government.
Pakistani authorities introduced the changes, saying they were necessary to combat what the military has often called “digital terrorism”; spreading what they see as “anarchy and false information” to undermine the state. The country’s constitution protects the right to freedom of speech and expression subject to reasonable restrictions, security sources told the BBC.
“It is false to claim that Pakistan suppresses freedom of expression,” says Chaudhry. He cites the dangers of using social media for financial fraud and terrorist recruitment. “We want to regulate social networks, the whole world regulates [it]”.
But others say they can be used to limit journalists’ ability to report.
“Changes to the law have now made criticism of the security establishment and the justice system an explicit crime and definitions of national interest have become even vaguer. Fines are surprisingly high and sanctions have been disproportionately increased,” says Adnan Rehmat, a media analyst based in Islamabad.
He says there are the official rules, and then there are other unspoken rules: “It’s really hard to know what the boundaries are, they’re constantly changing.”
Syed sees the current situation as a continuation of the operation against the media. Jahangir also sees a certain level of historical continuity. “I can’t say it’s been the worst time, but let’s say times haven’t gotten better for us.”
Although Attempts to limit and intimidate criticism have already taken place, some believe there is a new approach this time.
“It feels like something has changed,” says Azeema Cheema, an Islamabad-based research director specializing in conflict, fragility and violence. “Because now you use the courts. You use the institutions, not extra-institutional measures.”
Those operating online outside Pakistan are also in the crosshairs of authorities. In early January, seven Pakistani journalists and YouTubers, including two former army officers, were tried in absentia and sentenced to life imprisonment for digital terrorism. The prosecution accused them of “war against the state” and “incitement” in relation to the protests that took place on May 9, 2023 after Khan’s first arrest.
In an article on X, one of the convicts, Adil Raja, said that “speaking truth to power is now called digital terrorism in Pakistan.”
Syed and Cheema cite this case as a particularly striking example of harsh sentences.
“There is a growing realization that the state is excessively willing, and shamelessly, to wield a blunt hammer,” says Cheema.
This is what many of our interlocutors are trying to calculate.
Additional reporting by Usman Zahid