AUDIO: Harrowing Phone Calls Expose Global Campaign of Repression

Harrowing Phone Calls Expose Global Campaign of Repression

Story by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain. 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, 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.

It is often for reasons of sovereignty, and not necessarily concern for the well-being of people like Shabbir, that the matter raises serious concerns for high officials from Australia, to the U.K., United States, and Canada. Recent years have seen an increasing willingness of countries like Pakistan and India to crack down on dissent inside the borders of allied nations including the United States.

"Australians would be alarmed to learn of foreign governments using coercive measures against Australia citizens and their families," said Andrew Wilkie, a member of Australia's House of Representatives, responding to Shabbir's case. "Such stories do emerge from time to time and involve a number of foreign governments. The Australian Government must not tolerate this and instead make it perfectly clear that this is appalling conduct and must stop."

American citizens—even ones with celebrity status in Pakistan—have not been spared from this dragnet. Salman Ahmad, a Pakistan-American physician and well-known musician with the Pakistani rock band Junoon, said that he has faced violence targeting his family in Pakistan, including the abduction and torture of his brother-in-law last year. Ahmad is a supporter of imprisoned former prime minister Khan, and his family was targeted as a result of his activism. Like Shabbir, he also received demands to hand over his internet passwords and other personal information.

Ahmad has since begun appealing to members of the U.S. Congress for support, as well as filing submissions with several United Nations Special Rapporteurs to intervene to protect him and his family members from further harm.

"My family and I feel like hunted animals. The psychological torture is made worse by the physical threats to our lives and businesses," Ahmad told Drop Site. "We're taking on the ISI because we're dead anyway."

A spokesperson for the State Department said they couldn't comment publicly on individual cases involving private citizens or residents, but added, "the Department takes allegations of abuse or mistreatment of U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and international visitors by foreign entities very seriously. We coordinate closely with other federal, state, and local authorities to engage local communities on their concerns, and always encourage individuals with safety or security concerns to raise them with law enforcement."

A number of other individuals who spoke to Drop Site News described threats and violence targeting themselves and family members in recent months, as the Pakistani military has fought a desperate battle at home and abroad to suppress discontent over the February elections and deteriorating economic situation in the country.

These attacks on dissent have drawn increasing attention from U.S. lawmakers.

“These reports of abductions, beatings, and mistreatment of Pakistani citizens are horrific and unconscionable. The Pakistani government must release all political prisoners and end repression against political opponents,” Congressman Greg Casar, D-Texas, told Drop Site, particularly disturbed that Shabbir was targeted for petitioning on behalf of a resolution Casar sponsored. “I’ve urged the State Department to use diplomatic tools, including visa bans and the withholding of security assistance to help secure the release of political prisoners and prevent future arrests. The U.S. must hold our ally Pakistan to the standards established by international law.”

In a video shared on social media in June, California Rep. Ro Khanna also denounced incidents of repression targeting Pakistani-Americans, including alleged physical surveillance in the United States, while calling for sanctions on Pakistan's powerful military chief Asim Munir.

“The reports of members of the Pakistani diaspora being surveilled and followed in recent weeks is deeply concerning. The U.S. should investigate these claims and stand firm against any surveillance or intimidation of those living in our country," Khanna told Drop Site. "We should explore sanctions if this continues and over the military’s alleged rigging of the elections in Pakistan."

New York resident Wajahat Khan. Photo courtesy of Khan.

“Stop Doing Work With So Much Anger”

A major plank of the Pakistani military crackdown at home has focused on the press, which has been effectively muzzled by threats and violence over the past year. Not satisfied with silencing the media at home, the military is now aiming to shut down critical coverage abroad as well—including in the United States.

On an evening last November, as Wajahat Saeed Khan, a veteran Pakistani journalist and permanent resident in the U.S., and his partner were preparing dinner in their kitchen in an apartment on New York's Upper West Side, when a call from an anonymous number began to ring on her phone. Picking it up, Khan's partner was greeted by the voice of an unfamiliar man who immediately began listing off names and home addresses of her relatives living in Pakistan, the country where she had been born.

In shock, she demanded to know who was calling.

"We know who you are, and you know who we are," the voice replied, she recalled, before indicating that their real target was Khan. "Maybe you should tell your gentleman caller to relax, and to stop doing his work with so much anger."

Khan, a former NBC bureau chief in Kabul, runs a popular YouTube channel discussing Pakistani politics. The threatening phone call was just one of many received by him and people close to him, threatening him over his continued reporting on developments in Pakistan. In May, his brother-in-law was forced into hiding in Pakistan after Khan received a call from a friendly source inside the military establishment warning him that he was to be imminently abducted by the military.

The threats have not been limited to Pakistan. Khan says that he has faced physical surveillance at public events in the U.S., as well as suspected hacking on his phone and other devices. The attacks have rendered even his close friends and family fearful of talking with him.

"My friends and family in Pakistan cannot pick up the phone and have a real conversation with me," Khan said. "My best friend can't even talk to me – he just sends me music videos. Recently, he sent a video for a Guns' and Roses song with the title, 'Patience.'"

Following the threats, Khan says he was visited in New York by the FBI, who advised him to remain vigilant when conducting his daily affairs and maintain security as best he could on his digital devices. There are fears that the pressure campaign could escalate from threats and attacks on family members in Pakistan into direct violence targeting individuals abroad—including in the U.S.

Over the past several years, a number of Pakistani dissidents have died in murky circumstances abroad. Among them was Sajjid Hussain, a Pakistani journalist who had been granted asylum in Sweden and found dead in 2020, as well as Karima Baloch, a dissident human rights activist who died in Canada the same year. In 2022, a British man was found guilty in a murder-for-hire plot targeting Waqas Goraya, a Pakistani blogger living in exile in the Netherlands and vocal critic of the government. And last year, prominent Pakistani journalist Arshad Sharif was murdered in Kenya after likely being tortured, a Kenyan court concluded.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani scholar and author of the seminal book on Pakistan's military-based political economy, Military Inc., received similar threat while in the United Kingdom around the time of the deaths of Hussain and Baloch. "I got a letter from the Met police that there is credible information about a threat to my life and that I shouldn't return to Pakistan," Siddiqa said. "They are legally mandated to inform people whom their intelligence shows are facing a credible threat, but they did not give me details about who or where the threat was coming from. Later, when I investigated on my own, I was informed by my contacts that a contract had been given to an Afghan warlord to have me eliminated when I return to Pakistan." Siddiqa has not gone back to Pakistan since.

Much of the recent repression targeting members of the Pakistani diaspora has hit supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, or PTI, the political party founded by imprisoned former prime minister Khan. Khan was removed from power following private U.S. pressure and then jailed on corruption and espionage charges widely viewed as politicized, and aimed at keeping him from contesting elections earlier this year. As part of its crackdown on the party, the Pakistani military has extensively targeted family members of PTI supporters and officials, including the families of individuals now living in the U.S.

Shahbaz Gill, a former cabinet member in Khan's government, relocated to the U.S. following the takeover by the military and its civilian allies. Unable to reach Gill directly, in June unidentified armed men kidnapped his brother in Pakistan. His whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

"An anonymous number called me in the U.S. and threatened that if I do not stop my commentary about Pakistan, I will not see my brother again," Gill said. "This is nothing more than an attack on our fundamental rights and the very idea of free expression by a fascist regime."

U.S. Embrace of Pakistan

At a congressional hearing on "transnational repression" held earlier this year, testimony was heard from experts on the targeting of members of a number of diaspora communities in the U.S. and elsewhere. The hearing was prompted in part by a series of targeted killing attempts targeting members of the Indian diaspora in Canada and the United States, one of which resulted in the murder of a Sikh political dissident outside the city of Vancouver last year.

At that hearing, John Sifton of Human Rights Watch pointed out the chilling effect of such efforts by foreign governments, who are increasingly emboldened to level threats and take retribution against individuals living in the West. "Transnational repression leads to self-censorship. Even if some reporters and human rights defenders continue their work, others cannot afford to do so," Sifton said. "As a result, intended research and reporting on a government’s human rights record does not happen."

Despite the objections of some members of Congress over increasing repression and the rigging of elections this February, the U.S. has continued to embrace the military-backed Pakistani government. This July, the U.S. military conducted joint military exercises with their Pakistani counterparts, while State Department officials have announced plans for a new $101M aid package for the country. Following the deposal of Khan last year, classified documents later also revealed that U.S. officials had helped the new Pakistani government shore up its economic position with an IMF loan, in exchange for the provision of Pakistani-made arms to the Ukrainian military.

Amid this ongoing support, U.S. officials have remained mostly mute on the deteriorating democratic situation in the country, including brutal attacks against Pakistan's press and civil society. In comments last month expressing support for ongoing Pakistani counterterrorism operations, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller praised the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, stating that, "The U.S. and Pakistan share a common goal in enhancing regional security."

Salman Shabbir's brother was ultimately released by his captors. But that reprieve came only after a harrowing day of abduction and torture carried out with the express purpose of silencing Shabbir's political activism.

Shabbir has registered a case with Australian law enforcement, which has been in touch with him about the kidnapping incident. The Australian High Commissioner in Pakistan, Neil Hawkins did not respond to request for comment from Drop Site.

Shabbir's family now lives in trepidation about the possibility of further attacks by individuals working on behalf of the Pakistani government, while Shabbir himself has had his own political speech in Australia effectively restricted—an experience shared by a growing number of Pakistani-Americans. While calling on international and Australian officials to intervene in defense of human rights and free speech for dual-citizens and their families, Shabbir remains furious at Pakistani authorities for their actions, as well as their hypocrisy in attacking their own civil society in the name of stability.

"They told me to be quiet so that there could be 'stability' in Pakistan, but it is their own actions that are causing instability," Shabbir said. "I told them that what they were doing was illegal, counterproductive, but they mocked me when I mentioned the law and forced me to listen to them torturing my brother on the phone."