Family members of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan are concerned about the 73-year-old’s health in a Rawalpindi prison and have accused authorities of preventing him from accessing appropriate medical care.
Khan’s London-based sons, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, told DW they had received “little to no information” about their father’s health.
“When we last spoke to him on the phone back in March, he said that he had lost 85% of the vision in his right eye and that despite his complaints, it was neglected for months,” they said.
The brothers added that their father was being held in a tiny cell and has been allowed outside for only one or two hours a day. They also alleged he was kept in isolation from family, lawyers and a personal physician for 10 months before he was briefly allowed to see two of his sisters.
Meanwhile, the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party has planned a protest march on September 27 to exert pressure on the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif for Khan’s release.
Sons demand family access, medical care for Khan
Khan’s sons have urged authorities to allow their father access to a personal physician and to restore regular access to his family and phone calls.
“We are asking the Pakistani authorities to obey the Supreme Court orders immediately and shift our father to Shifa International Hospital so that he can be assessed by independent doctors,” they said.
Khan’s sisters detained as PTI plans new protests
From jail, Khan remains at the center of Pakistan’s political confrontation between the PTI and the country’s powerful military. He remains a popular political figure in Pakistan, despite being ousted from office in 2022 a parliamentary no-confidence vote.
Khan’s three sisters were detained in the Punjab capital, Lahore, on Monday ahead of the planned PTI protest march.
The detention orders cited concerns that the sisters were a threat to public safety and maintenance of public order. All three were ordered to be held for 30 days under a public order ordinance.
Khan’s sons told DW the arrests were intended to intimidate their family and supporters before the planned protest rally.
“Our family members who have been arbitrarily taken into custody must be released immediately,” they said. “The abductions of our family members in the middle of the night, with no reason given, were purely to intimidate them.”
Khan was ousted as prime minister in 2022 and jailed the following year on what he has said are politically motivated corruption charges. His PTI party said it has faced an ongoing government crackdown.
Pakistan government calls for ‘order’
Pakistan’s government has rejected these claims, and said its priority was to maintain public order during the planned protest.
Authorities have stepped up security preparations in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, deploying thousands of police personnel and placing shipping containers and other barriers at key entry points.
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Talal Chaudhry, Pakistan’s interior minister, warned the government would not tolerate unlawful activity or actions threatening lives and property.
“If you are a peaceful citizen, come to Islamabad from any route, come 100 times,” he told DW. “But if you come as terrorists, we will not let you leave.”
In 2024, pro-Khan protests on the streets of Islamabad turned violent. Demonstrators breached high security zones and clashes with security forces left six dead. When Khan was arrested in May 2023, nationwide PTI support rallies also led to violence, with military and government buildings suffering damage. Several people were killed and hundreds injured.
“The right to protest does not give the right to attack,” Chaudhry said.
Arrests could ‘galvanize’ PTI supporters
The PTI has said the September 27 protest will call for respect for constitutional and political rights.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told DW that the arrests would likely further energize Khan’s supporters.
“The arrests will galvanize what is already an angry and anxious Khan support base,” he said.
He added that the detention of Khan’s sisters, who Kugelman said were”prominent advocates” of Khan’s cause, had placed his family at the center of the confrontation between the government and the PTI.
Khan’s base is “concerned about the state of his health, and for his sister to be detained will increase the chance that protesters take to the streets on the 27th,” he added.
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Zulfi Bukhari, a senior PTI leader and close aide to Khan, said the arrests were meant to create fear but would not prevent the party from mobilizing its supporters across the country.
“What they [the government] don’t realize is all they are doing is creating more hatred for themselves among the public,” he told DW.
Bukhari described the current repression as the most severe the PTI has faced. “This crackdown seems the more brutal,” he said, adding that the government was acting out of frustration.
“They are fueling a fire that will soon be out of their control,” he asserted. “They can keep attacking us, and we will continue to resist. This protest will go on, and many more after it,” he added.
As Pakistan’s government faces several challenges, including economic malaise, conflict with the Afghan Taliban and fallout from the Iran war, further domestic unrest would be an unwelcome complication.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
