Harrowing Phone Calls Expose Global Campaign of Repression
Animation by Aisha Ghali
This past year was busy for Salman Shabbir, an Australian citizen of Pakistani descent, who runs a small Twitter account called Citizen Action.
by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain
This past year was busy for Salman Shabbir, an Australian citizen of Pakistani descent, who runs a small Twitter account called Citizen Action, focused on promoting democratic reform in Pakistan. In February, Pakistan's military-backed government oversaw elections widely denounced as rigged, and aimed at keeping the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan out of office. The apparent stolen election galvanized Pakistan's global civil society to action.
In the U.S. Congress, Reps. Greg Casar, D-Texas, and Susan Wild, D-Penn., lobbied by members of the Pakistani diaspora, began circulating a letter condemning the vote as fraudulent and demanding an outside investigation. Shabbir, who still had much of his family in Pakistan, did his part, circulating a petition online in support of the letter, and gathering nearly 5,000 signatures. The letter itself eventually attracted the signatures of 31 members of Congress, enough to attract attention at the highest levels of the Pakistani government.
Shabbir followed that up with another petition aimed at the European Union, arguing that Pakistan's human rights record meant it had broken the pledge it had made to the EU in exchange for favorable trade terms. That petition also caught on, leading to a press conference and angry claims from the Pakistani government that the EU trade agreement was in danger of being undermined by its political opponents.
It also led to something much more sinister.
In March, Shabbir's brother, lives in Pakistan, was abducted from his home by around half a dozen men in black. Concerned for his wellbeing, Shabbir posted about the abduction on his Citizen Action account. The very next day, he received a call from his brother's phone number.
When he answered, he was briefly relieved to hear his brother's voice on the other end of the line. But almost immediately, another man took the phone.
"Where is your brother?" the voice asked ominously.
"Some people picked him up last night," Shabbir responded.
"Now listen to me, and don't try to pull a trick or be clever. If you do, you will create problems for your brother."
Shabbir asked the man to identify himself. The man said he would, but first he had a few things to say. In a mix of Urdu and English, he told Shabbir that he should stop meddling in Pakistani politics. "You should mind your own business. You didn't think it appropriate to keep Pakistani nationality and took Australian nationality, then you should not be indulging in Pakistan's affairs."
Shabbir said, "Ok."
"Now tell me, who runs Citizen Portal?" the man asked, referring to Shabbir's Twitter account he had used to organize the petitions.
"I do."
"Who runs OP-Voters? Overseas Pakistani voters?"
"I run it."
The man told him to send the username and password for the Twitter account. Shabbir told him he couldn't do that.
"If you don't send it, we have your brother with us, and you will be responsible," he warned him.
"Ok," Shabbir said. The man hung up. Shabbir later learned that his brother had been taken to a nearby jail, held in a traditional cell, making clear to him that his brother’s abductors were agents of the state and not some rogue private criminals.
Later that evening, the phone rang again, and his brother's voice was on the other end. The two shared a tender greeting, before his brother told him directly: "Salman, brother, this bro has got me here and I am in a lot of trouble and I request you to please do as they say."
"What are they asking?"
"You are speaking against the government of Pakistan—don't do it, otherwise I would run into trouble," he relayed.
Shabbir asked him where he was, but his brother didn't know; he had been blindfolded. Shabbir asked if he'd been fed—and whether he'd been tortured. His brother only answered the first question, saying that he'd been given food. Shabbir asked again if he'd been tortured. Following a pregnant pause, his brother said simply, "No."
"Ok, I won't speak against the government. All good?"
"Sir, do you have another demand?" his brother asked one of the abductors.
The same man from the previous call came on the line. He said he no longer needed the username and password. Instead, in the next minute, he must delete the post announcing his brother had been abducted, and replace it with one saying it had all been a mistake.
He said he would only do so once his brother was safely home. The abductor countered: Just delete the tweet now, then put up a new one when he's home. Shabbir hesitated to comply with these demands, demanding that his brother be taken home first. "Salman, they will torture me," his brother pleaded.
Shabbir appealed to the man to release his brother and told him that what he was doing was illegal—calling it "transnational repression of an Australian citizen."
The man was uninterested in the legalese. "Right now, I have abducted your brother, next time I will bring your whole family."
After a pause, the man on the phone, or somebody with him, began to beat his brother – doing so specifically so that Shabbir could hear. "Did you hear that?"
"Yes, I heard."
"You hear it?"
In an audio recording of the call reviewed by Drop Site, Shabbir's brother can be heard being struck with a blunt object. His screams are unmistakable.
"Now tell me what nonsense you were uttering," the man says. "Now what were you saying before this, about being an Australian national." Australia, the man was telling him clearly, could not or would not protect him or his brother.
"I said, what you're doing is transnational repression, there are international rules against this."
"To hell with your rules." As the beating continued, the man ordered Shabbir to "become completely silent" about events in Pakistan.
"Ok," Shabbir told him, promising to delete the tweet and cease criticizing Pakistan if he took his brother safely home. From there, a surreal negotiation unfolds, as Shabbir and the man discuss how much time he must remain silent on Twitter and what topics are off limits. He eventually gives his name as Hamza, but declines to answer the question of whether he works Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared ISI.
Photo by ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images
“Be Completely Silent”
"Transnational repression" is indeed the correct term for what was done to Shabbir: A government—or individuals working at the behest of a government to target its rivals —cracking down on the political activity of people who live outside its borders. The act goes beyond a typical human rights abuse because it not only violates the rights of its immediate target, but also challenges the sovereignty of the nation the victim calls home.
When Saudi Arabia sent a hit squad to murder American journalist and resident Jamaal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the killing was seen not just as an act of aggression against the free press, but as a slap in the face of both Turkey and the United States.