"This regime is waging a relentless attack on dissent." The Pakistani state picks up, imprisons a visiting Canadian academic for social media posts.

On February 21st, it was reported that a Canadian doctoral student that had arrived in Pakistan on the 13th of the same month, for research, had gone missing in Lahore, Pakistan. Hamza Ahmad, the Canadian researcher, had, according to Dawn News (referencing a police FIR):

booked a cab and left the home between 1am and 2am on February 19 but did not return. He said that the friends searched for Ahmad on their own but were unable to trace his whereabouts.

As Ahmad, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, was believed to have been kidnapped, a case was registered by the police, with the latter on the lookout for “unidentified suspects”, but purported to be unclear as to what a motive could possibly have been.

Pakistani activists and civil society organisations, however, had a fair idea as to why he had been gone missing. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), according to the same article, for example, was“deeply troubled by reports that Ahmed had “gone missing” while conducting “field research” in Pakistan.” The socialist academic and activist Ammar Ali Jan posted on X.com that:

I recently met @Hamzakk in Lahore. He is a PhD scholar from Canada who works on anti-imperialist politics. He is a friend of Palestine & resistance movements in the global south. Yesterday, Hamza was abducted in Lahore. This regime is waging a relentless attack on dissent.

Dr. Jan, it would appear, is right on the mark, given that it would come out a few days later that the day after Ahmad had gone missing, Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) had taken him into custody, leading to his imprisonment. According to Canada’s CBC (which refers to Hamza Ahmad as Ahmad Khan):

The NCCIA’s official report notes Ahmed Khan has been in their custody since Saturday because, during a routine cyber patrol, it found that his X and Instagram accounts were “disseminating misinformation and disinformation targeting state institutions.”

“The nature of these posts is inflammatory and appears designed to incite public unrest, spread animosity, and undermine social order,” the report said. “The propagation of such malicious content poses a significant risk, with the potential to cause severe reputational damage to the state of Pakistan both domestically and internationally.”

He would later be denied bail. According to Dawn News, Ahmad had been:

booked by the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) for targeting state institutions and leadership through “disseminating misinformation and disinformation” under sections 20 (offences against the dignity of a natural person), 24 (cyber stalking) and 26A (spoofing) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act.

During the proceedings, the investigating officer (IO) told the court that the suspect had been uploading “derogatory posts against the state functionaries and state institutions with the intention to harm the reputation of the state functionaries”.

As Amnesty International wrote in January 2025, in the wake of the eventual passing of amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA),

The amendment introduces a criminal offence against those perpetrating so-called ‘false and fake information’ and imposes a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment with a fine. The vague and ambiguous framing of some elements of the offense together with a history of the PECA being used to silence dissent raises concerns that this new offence will chill what little is left of the right to online expression in the country.

As we covered at the end of January, the PECA was weaponised against the human rights lawyers Imaan Mazari and Hadi Ali Chatta. We also quoted the barrister Rida Hosain, who said that “It is about the reality that tomorrow it could be any lawyer, journalist, or citizen who speaks out and challenges state excesses”.

For the most part, it is not clear via Dawn and other Pakistani outlets as to what exactly Hamza Ahmad is supposed have posted, that would earn the ire of the Pakistani state or the armed forces that actually run the country. Then again, as we’ve seen in the past, it doesn't really take much to get under the skin of Pakistani civilian and military authorities. A report by the Toronto Star (which refers to Hamza Ahmad as Ahmad Khan), however, points to a social media “account identified as Khan’s by friends and acquaintances”, which “contains dozens of posts critical of the Pakistani government and top elected officials.”:

They include general criticism of the decision of the Pakistani government to become a member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled Board of Peace.

They are also specifically critical of Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Pakistan Army Chief of Staff Asim Munir and of Bilawal Bhutto Zardai (sic), the son of assassinated prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Zardai’s (sic) name appeared in the recently released Jeffrey Epstein files in relation to a 2011 dinner with the deceased financier and sex criminal.”

(please note that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s last name has been misspelled as “Zardai” above)

Asim Munir, whom US President Trump called his “favourite field marshal”, was given “lifelong legal immunity” as field marshal and greater powers, via a “constitutional amendment that gives him sweeping authority over all military branches and limits the independence of the country’s highest court.” As Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy, and Senior Fellow at King’s College, London, put it in the NYT article at the time (November 2025), “It’s not going to be martial law...but, in effect, it’s an even more direct military rule.”

Ahmad Shafique Huque, Professor of Political Science at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, said that this sort of legislation ie "electronic crime prevention acts" is par for the course for military dictatorships:

They try to jump at every potential case where there might be people speaking out about what is going on in the system,” he said. “There is a gap between the rules and reality, and many people fall between those gaps.”

As an academic with the Lahore University of Management Sciences and its School of Humanities and Sciences told the Toronto Star,

“I strongly disagree with many of Hamza’s political views, but what I despise most is that he has been picked up for them,” he wrote.“We spoke candidly for an hour and left with a better understanding of where the other was coming from. This is why dialogue matters and why reaching across the political spectrum is essential.”

Indian police use AI to track down and expel minorities.

Artificial intelligence, when used in the context of border control, surveillance, and policing, does not merely classify; it alienates. It converts human beings into risks, accents into evidence, and languages into signs of guilt.

The quote above is from Dehumanisation, powered by AI by The Hindu's Frontline, which investigates and discusses the development and implementation of an AI tool, developed between the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB or IIT Bombay) and the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra, to "detect and identify so-called “illegal” Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya refugees.” The AI-based system "detects" via the examination of:

“accent, tone and word choices” to identify and deport Bangladeshi Muslims and displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar. The system is intended for use by law enforcement as a preliminary screening mechanism prior to document-based nationality verification.

Ostensibly framed as an exercise in objective technology implementation - with a 60% success rate, which means that 40% detections are in error - the words of Devendra Fadnavis, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and a member of Indian's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). On January 11th, he claimed that “We’ll free Mumbai from Bangladeshis. We’ve deported the highest so far. With AI, we’ll identify and deport 100% Bangladeshis.” This rams home the crux of the point of the authors of Frontline’s Dehumanisation, powered by AI, as well the Tech Policy article India Is Using AI to Police Identity and Expel Minorities, wherein:

...the tool is in fact grounded in linguistic profiling that risks reinforcing xenophobia, prejudice, and racial discrimination. Its deployment raises serious concerns under international human rights law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

As per Dehumanisation:

The tool developed by IIT Bombay and the Maharashtra government attempts to detect suspected “illegal” Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingyas by examining speech patterns, tone, and language. The very concept of this tool is problematic. It must be remembered that language is defined by geography and migration, and not religion or citizenship. For example, the Bengali language is spoken over an enormous geography that includes West Bengal and several states in Northeast India. Millions of people who migrated from East Bengal before and after Partition speak dialects that are identical to the ones spoken in Bangladesh.

The claim that an AI tool can detect an “Indian” Bengali and a “Bangladeshi” Bengali is not only wrong but also dangerous. It reinforces the completely wrong and nefarious belief that language variations are directly correlated with nationalities and religious identities. What is most disturbing is that the IIT Bombay team has refused to divulge the data that will be used for this tool.

Both pieces highlight that the AI system developed between IIT Bombay and the Maharashtra government operate within a global context, wherein governments across the world, particularly in the Global North, are racing to implement AI-based biometric and behavioral pattern recognition systems on masse. Indeed:

As early as 2017, the German Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) deployed DIAS, a tool for accent and dialect recognition, following the Syrian refugee crisis, to validate asylum claims.

Liberty Investigates, the investigative journalism unit based out of the British human rights organisation Liberty, reported last year on a contract awarded to the infamous Palantir Technologies corporation - whose tech has been used by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, and by the US and Israel in the ongoing devastating attack on Iran - by British police:

to develop a surveillance network that will incorporate data about citizens’ political opinions, philosophical beliefs, health records and other sensitive personal information.

Documents obtained by i and Liberty Investigates show Palantir Technologies has partnered with police forces in the East of England to establish a “real-time data-sharing network” that includes the personal details of vulnerable victims, children and witnesses alongside suspects.

Trade union membership, sexual orientation and race are among the other types of personal information being processed.

Anthrophic's large language model (LLM) Claude has been used by the US military, working alongside Israel, in:

assessing intelligence, simulated war games, and even identifying military targets — in short, helping military leaders plan attacks that have already claimed hundreds of lives.

This includes the deliberate attack on a girls' school in the Iranian city of Minab, with 165 schoolgirls and staff slaughtered.

The problem is not merely in the errors of these systems but in their moral logic. They presume that some lives are inherently guilty, that some populations must always prove their right to exist. They undermine the very basis of citizenship, belonging, and human dignity. If left unchecked, AI will not merely aid the state but become its most efficient tool of oppression.

Pakistani Journalists in Exil, sentenced to life imprisonment, in absentia.

In late February, Reporters sans frontières (RSF) reported on the January 2nd sentencing in absentia of four Pakistani journalists, in exile overseas, to life imprisonment, by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court (ATC), accused of “inciting violence”. This charge by the Pakistani state comes about due to the four journalists reporting from overseas on the May 9th, 2023 protests in Pakistan that took place in the wake of the arrest of Imran Khan, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, and former head of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, and whose continued imprisonment and declining health have led to civil society organisations to call for his immediate release.

The four journalists, according to RSF, have been accused of “inciting” violence, stirring up societal “unrest” and promoting “hostility” towards the armed forces and state institutions.

(That sounds familiar, no?)

RSF also stated that:

These exiled journalists have been subjected to a broad, unrelenting campaign of persecution in recent years by the Pakistani state and intelligence services including legal harassment, the cancellation of their Pakistani passports, having their bank accounts frozen, intimidating phone calls, threats against their relatives who remain in the country and the disclosure of their personal data, also known as doxxing. They have even seen posters plastered around the country portraying them as “traitors to Pakistan.”

There are echoes of the 2017 kidnapping of four Pakistani bloggers and an activist by the Pakistani state. Since released and in exile, the five were attacked online by "cyber activists" for being against Pakistan, and for allegedly being blasphemous (a charge that can result in the death penalty in Pakistan). In 2020, one of the bloggers, who currently lives in the Netherlands, was attacked outside his Rotterdam home, and in 2022 a Pakistani Briton was accused of being paid to assassinate him, with the alleged involvement or backing of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the nation's powerful and infamous intelligence agency. In 2022, the respected Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was shot and killed at a roadblock in Kenya. A critic of Pakistan's military leadership who went into exile after being accused of sedition, in 2024 Drop Site News reported that the Kenyan police's defence for shooting Mr. Sharif, that the vehicle which he was in drop through the roadblock without stopping, was rejected by a Kenyan judge, and that the judge:

ruled that he was tortured before his murder, according to court documents reviewed by Drop Site. In a scathing ruling, the court, in a decision released last week, further ruled his death was a violation of his human rights. 

Célia Mercier, who heads RSF's South Asia Desk, said that:

Anti-terrorism laws cannot be used as a pretext to stifle the free flow of information and they should not be spreading fear beyond borders by targeting people in exile. Sentencing these four Pakistani journalists to life imprisonment for their publications essentially equates the act of keeping the public informed with terrorism: this is an extremely serious abuse of power that constitutes the criminalisation of voices critical of those in power. RSF calls for these verdicts to be overturned and for an end to the use of anti-terrorism laws against the media. We also call on American and British authorities to protect the journalists in exile on their soil.

Sources:

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