Killing of Mr. Arif Wazir, a leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM)

The Observatory has been informed by reliable sources about the killing of Mr. Arif Wazir, a leader of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM)[1] in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

According to the information received, on May 1, 2020, Mr. Arif Wazir was attacked by unidentified armed men while he was travelling in a car near his house in Ghwakhwa village in Wanna, the largest city of South Waziristan District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. He was hit by three bullets and was subsequently transported to a local hospital before being transferred to Dera Ismail Khan, and then to Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS). Mr. Arif Wazir died of his injuries at PIMS on May 2, 2020.

A First information report (FIR) was lodged against “unknown people” on May 1, 2020, by police in Wanna.

On April 17, 2020, Mr. Arif Wazir had been arrested by police in Wanna for alleged “anti-Pakistan speech” that he would have made during a visit to Afghanistan the previous month. During his speech in Afghanistan, Mr. Wazir spoke about the impact of war on the lives of Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the need for unity among Pashtuns. The Observatory notes that the accusation of "anti-Pakistan speech" is an expedient label used by Pakistani authorities to target human rights defenders, particularly those associated with the PTM.

On April 27, 2020, four days before he was fatally attacked, the Tank District Court, South Waziristan, had released Mr. Arif Wazir on bail.

The Observatory recalls that Mr. Arif Wazir Wazir, as a PTM leader, was detained six times and intermittently spent more than 13 months in detention. In the past years, PTM members have been regularly targeted by police, which have filed cases against them on charges of committing sedition through their speeches. In 2019, the Observatory reported the following attacks against PTM members and their relatives: the killing of Mr. Ibrahim Arman Loni[2], a PTM core committee member in Balochistan Province; the arbitrary detention of 18 PTM members, including Pashtun and women’s rights defender Ms. Gulalai Ismail;[3] the judicial harassment of Ms. Gulalai Ismail’s family members[4]; the arbitrary arrest and judicial harassment of Mr. Mohsin Dawar and Mr. Ali Wazir, both elected Members of the National Assembly and affiliated with the PTM; and the arbitrary arrest of Mr. Alamgir Wazir, a PTM supporter in Lahore. In January 2020, the leader of PTM, Mr. Manzoor Pashteen was arrested along with 23 other human rights defenders, including PTM members and supporters who were protesting against his arrest, before being released on February 15, 2020.[5]

The Observatory firmly condemns the killing of Mr. Arif Wazir and calls on the Pakistani authorities to immediately carry out a transparent, impartial, and thorough investigation into his killing in order to identify all those responsible, bring them before an independent tribunal, and punish them as provided by the law.