New Delhi: Over the last few days, Pakistan has been witnessing a huge public outrage against its all-powerful military, and particularly Army Chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, in the wake of the mystery-shrouded killing of a renowned Pakistani TV journalist Arshad Sharif in far-away Kenya.
Arshad Sharif was a 50-year-old outspoken critic of the Pakistan Army and staunch supporter of former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
After Imran Khan lost power, Arshad Sharif had fled Pakistan, citing threat to his life.
He had taken shelter in Kenya for safety but could not remain safe even there.
On October 23, Arshad was shot dead by policemen in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
According to a statement issued by the National Police Service of Kenya, Arshad was “fatally wounded by a police officer” while he was moving in a car along with his brother Khurram Ahmed.
It said the incident followed “circulation from Pangani Police of a stolen motor vehicle” and the officers trailing the vehicle towards Magadi alerted police in Magadi who erected a road barrier.
At the barrier, the vehicle “drove through” and “it is then that they were shot at”, fatally injuring Arshad, the statement said.
However, this argument could not be digested by the people in Pakistan, mainly the supporters of Imran Khan and his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), as they are quite aware of the dirty works of the Pakistani military.
The Pakistani public, knowing well that their military and ISI routinely carry out such killings and assassinations, are overtly and covertly putting the blame where it belongs — the Army.
On Twitter, the hashtag #Bajwa_traitor has been trending, with the Pakistani public venting their anger against their Army Chief as well as the chief of notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Gen Nadeem Anjum.
Bajwa is being termed as a “cold-blooded murderer” of Arshad.
The Twitterati are also raising demand for an investigation by some independent international agency, and wanting Bajwa and Anjum to be handed over for thorough questioning.
The Pakistani public is pointing accusing fingers at Bajwa and the ISI chief considering the harassment that Arshad had faced at the hands of the Pakistan Army when he used to host a show on ARY news channel.
The Pakistan Army had even forced ARY off air for some period of time because of Arshad’s show, which was accused of fanning ‘anti-military sentiment’.
After PTI lost power earlier this year, ostensibly because of the machinations of the Army, Arshad interviewed ex-PM Imran Khan’s aide Dr Shahbaz Gill, who made stinging comments against the Army and its role in politics.
This was dubbed by the Army-dominated ‘Establishment’ as something amounting to inciting “armed forces towards a revolt”.
Arshad Sharif, along with a producer and some other staffers of ARY news channel were booked on charges of sedition.
Subsequently, in August, ARY announced termination of services of Arshad.
“ARY Network’s code of conduct for its employees clearly states that any post by an employee on social media has to be in accordance with the company’s policy. Thus, with a heavy heart we would like to announce that after a journey of 8 years together, ARY has parted ways with Arshad Sharif,” said a statement issued by the Network in August.
The suspicion about the role of Pakistan Army and its intelligence agency ISI in the killing of Arshad is not without any basis as they have carried out such operations against strong critics earlier too, especially the journalists.
Months back, the sleuths of the military abducted a renowned journalists and vocal critic of the Army Matiullah Jan in broad daylight in the heart of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
However, the act got caught in a CCTV of a nearby school, thus exposing the criminal military personnel and eventually leading to the safe release of Matiullah Jan.
Matiullah, who was released but not before a day-long torture, openly blamed the military for the act, which was obviously aimed at his elimination, if not exposed and highlighted across Pakistan and the world.
One assassination attempt has also been made on another famous journalist Hamid Mir.
In July last year, a sinister plan of the Pakistani intelligence agencies to eliminate a Pakistani blogger dissident living in exile in The Netherlands has got exposed with the arrest of a person tasked to carry out the killing.
The British police arrested Mohammad Gohir Khan, a Pakistan-born British citizen, following information that he was planning to kill Ahmad Waqass Goraya, a blogger who has been living in The Netherlands since 2007.
While Jan, Mir and Goraya have been lucky, two other critics of the Pakistan Army in Canada and Sweden were not so fortunate.
Goraya had been on the hit list of the notorious intelligence agencies of Pakistan.
In 2017, during a visit to Pakistan, Goraya was kidnapped and tortured for several weeks.
He said a “government institution linked to the army” was responsible for it and immediately returned to The Netherlands.
Subsequently, on February 2 last year, he was assaulted by two men outside his Rotterdam home, after which he told Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that the attack “fits the modus operandi of Pakistani spy agencies.”
Earlier, another Pakistani journalist and Editor of Balochistan Times Sajid Hussain was found dead in mysterious circumstances in Sweden in April 2020, days after he disappeared on March 2.
It was the handiwork of Pakistani intelligence agencies, which carried out a similar killing earlier last year of a woman Baloch leader in Canada, where she was living in exile.
