International Secretariat, League for the Fifth International
We have received deeply concerning reports about the enforced disappearance of Muhammad Amin, a 26-year-old socialist activist and member of the International Marxist Tendency’s Pakistan section. Amin was picked up by personnel of the paramilitary force, Rangers, who raided his home in Karachi’s Shah Faisal Colony at 2am on 14th July without a warrant. He remains missing to date. This is in open violation of the Pakistani state’s own laws that require that the arrest of any person must be declared within 48 hours. The League for the Fifth International stands in complete solidarity with the missing comrade and against state repression tactics aimed at activists.
Rangers personnel also harassed Amin’s sister, Saira Bano, who is also a member of the IMT’s Pakistan section, and his mother upon breaking into their home. Since Amin’s disappearance, his mother has been in a critical condition.
Bano tried to get a complaint registered with the local police against her brother’s abduction but the cops refused to comply. Finally, she filed a petition with the provincial high court in Karachi. Their case is slated for a hearing on 7th August.
Amin has been active in the struggle for basic democratic rights that youth in the semi-colonial country are frequently denied, such as the right to good quality education for all and the restoration of student unions. He was also active in the campaigns against online classes. (Working-class students and students belonging to the peripheral regions such as Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir are hit the hardest by online education as most of these regions are denied the basic right of access to the internet in the name of “security”.)
We believe that the current spike in the number of enforced disappearances in areas of Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir are a direct response to the rise of a youth-led movement in the country, whose most vocal expression was witnessed in Balochistan. The state has unleashed its wrath on young activists and socialists as, due to its failure at handling the economic crisis, it is bound to adopt an ever more authoritarian and barbaric character.
We condemn the abduction of Amin as well as numerous other activists, such as AWP Ghotki general secretary Shafqat Hussain and demand that they be released immediately together with all other political prisoners. A welcome development is that protests have been organised in a number of cities in Pakistan for their release. We propose that organisations of the Left must join their forces into a united front of workers’ action for self-defence against these attacks of the state.
Find and release Amin now!
Find and release all missing persons now!
End impunity for enforced disappearances now! Bring to book those who gave and carried out the orders for Amin’s abduction!
Stop targeting socialists and dissenting voices in the country immediately!
All military and paramilitary forces back to barracks now!