AUDIO: Harrowing Phone Calls Expose Global Campaign of Repression

 

Drop Site: This past year was busy for Salman Shabbir, an Australian citizen of Pakistani descent, who runs a small Twitter account called Citizen Action, focused on promoting democratic reform in Pakistan. In February, Pakistan’s military-backed government oversaw elections widely denounced as rigged, and aimed at keeping the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan out of office. The apparent stolen election galvanized Pakistan’s global civil society to action.

In the U.S. Congress, Reps. Greg Casar, D-Texas, and Susan Wild, D-Penn., lobbied by members of the Pakistani diaspora, began circulating a letter condemning the vote as fraudulent and demanding an outside investigation. Shabbir, who still had much of his family in Pakistan, did his part, circulating a petition online in support of the letter, and gathering nearly 5,000 signatures. The letter itself eventually attracted the signatures of 31 members of Congress, enough to attract attention at the highest levels of the Pakistani government.

Shabbir followed that up with another petition aimed at the European Union, arguing that Pakistan’s human rights record meant it had broken the pledge it had made to the EU in exchange for favorable trade terms. That petition also caught on, leading to a press conference and angry claims from the Pakistani government that the EU trade agreement was in danger of being undermined by its political opponents.

It also led to something much more sinister.

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Image source: Public Domain