Pakistan: Abduction and enforced disappearance of Ms. Gulalai Ismail’s father

The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources about the abduction and enforced disappearance of Mr. Muhammad Ismail, father of Ms. Gulalai Ismail, and the threats and harassment against her family members. Ms. Ismail, an ethnic Pashtun and woman rights defender, is the founder of the Youth Peace Network and co-founder and Chairperson of the Aware Girls NGO, an organisation aiming at strengthening the leadership of young people, especially women and girls, enabling them to act as agents of change for women empowerment and peace building. Ms. Ismail has led a campaign against extrajudicial killings in Pakistan and was awarded the 2017 Anna Politkovskaya Award by the organization Reach all Women in War (RAW).

According to the information received, on October 24, 2019, Mr. Muhammad Ismail was abducted by unidentified men in black clothes outside of the High Court of Peshawar, where he was due to present himself as a bail condition. At the time of publication of this Urgent Appeal, his fate and whereabouts remained unknown.

During the night of October 17 to 18, 2019, armed police officers – some in police uniform, and some in plain clothes with their faces hidden- knocked at Ms. Gulalai Ismail parents’ house asking for Mr. Muhammad Ismail to come out of the house, which he refused to do. The police officers stayed outside the house for an hour before leaving.

The Observatory recalls that on July 12, 2019, a First Information Report (FIR) was lodged against Ms. Ismail and her parents by the Counter-Terrorism Department in Peshawar, accusing them of having received “financial support from terrorist organizations”. Ms. Gulalai Ismail’s parents received a Bail Before Arrest (BBA) from the court and as a condition of that BBA, must present themselves to the court every week. Without any official notification, Ms. Ismail’s parents have also been placed on the Exit Control List, and the immigration services refused to issue a new passport to Ms. Ismail’s mother.

The Observatory condemns the suspected abduction and enforced disappearance of Mr. Muhammad Ismail, as well the ongoing harassment against Ms. Gulalai Ismail’s relatives, which seem to be only aimed at punishing Ms. Ismail for her human rights work. The Observatory calls on the Pakistani authorities to immediately disclose Mr. Muhammad Ismail’s whereabouts and fate, to give him access to his family and lawyer, and to unconditionally release him.

Background information:

Since October 2018, Ms. Gulalai Ismail has been placed on Pakistan’s Exit Control List and prevented from leaving the country.

On February 5, 2019, Ms. Ismail and other Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) [1] members were arrested outside the National Press Club in Islamabad while they were taking part in a protest to denounce the killing of Mr. Ibrahim Arman Loni, a teacher and PTM core committee member in Baluchistan Province. Ms. Ismail was first taken to G9 Women’s Police Station in Islamabad before being moved to an unknown location, until her release on February 6, 2019 [2].

Ms. Gulalai Ismail was forced into hiding after facing charges of “defamation” (Section 500 of the Penal Code), “sedition” (Section 124-A of the Penal Code), “promoting enmity between different groups” (Section 153-A of the Penal Code) and other charges under Section 6/7 of Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act. The charges stemmed from a speech she gave at a rally in Islamabad, in which she called for justice in the case of a 10-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in May 2019 and denounced the authorities’ inaction to bring the perpetrator(s) to justice [3].

Moreover, Ms. Ismail’s relatives have faced repeated acts of harassment and intimidation by security forces since two First Information Reports (FIRs) were filed against her by the police in Islamabad on May 22 and 23, 2019. For instance, on May 24 at dawn, the police raided her family home in Islamabad and threatened her family members. The family’s residence was again raided on May 27. Again, on July 4, 2019, a large group of men in civilian clothes raided three times Ms. Ismail’s house in Islamabad and threatened to harm Ms. Ismail’s younger sister if the former did not cease her work as an activist. Security forces also took away the family’s driver, interrogated him, and subjected him to physical acts of ill-treatment for about eight hours before being released.