Khan ki Shahzadi🇵🇰

Prime Minister @andyburnham and Foreign Secretary @Ed_Miliband : how much longer will Britain remain silent? For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents, in a personal vendetta by Army Chief, Asim Munir,  which according to the UN,  amounts to torture and which  is now taking a potentially fatal toll on his physical and mental health.  He has endured 3 years of solitary confinement. For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors. The international human-rights standards are unequivocal. Under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture. He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years. Pakistan’s own Supreme Court has now intervened: ordering comprehensive  medical treatment, access to his personal doctor, regular family visits and twice-weekly calls with his sons. Yet those orders are being defied. This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human-rights emergency. He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain. He studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. His relationship with this country stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and  include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university. His sons, my two boys, Sulaiman and Kasim, are British citizens. They have been forced to watch their father’s health decline from thousands of miles away, prevented from visiting him, denied visas, publicly threatened by government officials with arrest themselves, and even denied court-mandated regular phone calls.  I have repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. Purported attempts at back channelling have evidently failed. The previous Foreign Secretary @DavidLammy informed me in writing that Britain would not  intervene if my sons, British citizens, are arrested when they travel to Pakistan to visit their father.  @FCDOGovUK: Britain must now speak out publicly and unequivocally. Demand that Pakistan comply with its own Supreme Court;  restore Imran Khan’s medical access, his right to see his family, end his prolonged isolation and uphold his fundamental human rights. Pakistan is a Commonwealth country. Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights. Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient. This an appeal to the new Burnham government  to please now do the right thing.

We all know that the reason you are refusing their visas and recommending they travel on NICOP cards (which they don’t have presently) is because that way they will have no British protection if you choose to arrest them on arrival.

My sons Sulaiman & @kasim_khan_1999 applied for visas in January (again… ) to allow them to visit their father @ImranKhanPTI in Pakistan. The Pakistan consulate states that online visa processing normally takes 7–10 working days. It has now been 60 days. This despite the public promise that they could safely travel there to see their father after 4 years, made by both Defence Minister @khawajaMAsif to @mehdirhasan & PM spokesperson @mosharrafzaidi to @SkyYaldaHakim Meanwhile, they are not allowed to speak to him on the phone, nor send him a letter. They haven’t seen him since 2022 after he was shot in an assassination attempt. This is an appeal directly to Pakisan’s PM @CMShehbaz to please allow Imran Khan’s two sons to see their father asap, particularly since, by all accounts, his health is in decline.