Who’s afraid of Dr Riaz?

Over the weekend, news reports came in that an ‘MQM-London member’ had been arrested by law-enforcement agencies (LEAs) in Karachi. The accused was en route to the Karachi Press Club, where he was scheduled to conduct a press conference on the detention of Dr Hasan Zafar Arif, a 75-year-old retired philosophy professor from Karachi University now associated with the MQM.

The news quickly spread among progressive circles throughout the country that the ‘MQM-London leader’ was none other than Dr Riaz Ahmed, a man whose name has become synonymous with the politics of resistance. On Sunday, it was discovered that he had been charged with possession of an illegal weapon – a move evidently aimed at prolonging his detention. Before delving into how this episode is yet another instance that reveals our moral and institutional bankruptcy, it is important to separate truth from fiction and consider who exactly is the man being seen as a national security threat.

Dr Riaz Ahmed, or comrade Riaz as many know him, is a professor of Applied Chemistry at Karachi University. Moreover, he is a leader of a socialist organisation, a group of committed intellectuals, activists and trade unionists fighting for social transformation, which they argue can only be attained through replacing capitalism with democratic socialism. But these larger ideological anchors tell us little about the struggles he has participated in and helped build, earning him the respect of even those who disagree with his ideological leanings.

Let us point out a few key examples to highlight the kinds of activism Riaz has been involved with. On May 12, 2007, when the MQM-led city government decided to violently suppress Chaudhry Iftikhar’s rally in the city, Riaz led a contingent of students to defy the ban. In the aftermath of the violent events of the day, he published a number of scathing critiques of the MQM, including an attack on the Pakhtun-Mohajir divide, which he felt was being exacerbated by the policies of the party. He was also briefly arrested in 2007 for his constant opposition to the Musharraf regime and its allies in Sindh.

Riaz has been one of the most eloquent and consistent voices from the Mohajir community against the rule of the MQM; this won him many admirers from across the ethnic divide in Pakistan. This also makes it all the more hilariously tragic that attempts were made to link him to the MQM.

During the PPP-led government, the professor emerged as an important critic of the government’s tilt towards the US. In particular, he campaigned vociferously against the use of drone strikes by the US, as well as the economic agenda of the IMF and World Bank – positions that made him controversial among the liberal intelligentsia. Moreover, he increased his work among Pakhtun immigrants, who had been displaced due to the devastation caused by the repeated military operations in the country’s north-west regions. This was another principled yet unpopular decision taken by Riaz, since anti-Pakhtun xenophobia had led many progressive voices in Punjab and Sindh to oppose the entry of ‘extremist’ Pakhtuns – a racist discourse that has continued to increase in intensity.

Two relatively recent issues elevated Riaz from a local irritant to a ‘national security threat’. First, after the LUMS administration had to cancel a          talk titled ‘Un-silencing Balochistan’, a talk on the same theme was held at T2F in Karachi. Right after the talk, the host of the event, Sabeen Mahmud, was shot dead by unidentified men. With the chilling murder, and the fear it induced amongst activists, it seemed like Balochistan’s misery would remain the most repressed story in the country’s collective unconscious. Riaz shattered this silence by holding a public gathering on the issue at Karachi University. Despite multiple attempts to ‘persuade’ him not to host this event, not only did he organise the talk, but also encouraged students and activists to openly share their analysis and experiences of the situation in Balochistan.

Second, after four liberal bloggers went missing in January, Riaz campaigned tirelessly, along with other civil society and left activists, for the release of these individuals. He regularly denounced the growing use of abductions as a technique of governance and to instil fear. In the highly fragmented ideological landscape of contemporary Pakistan, it should be emphasised here that Riaz has been as outspoken in speaking out for the rights of detained young men belonging to Islamist groups and has also gained a reputation as one of the most fearless and active supporters of the Shia victims of extremist violence.

Thus, Riaz has consistently raised his voice for the marginalised, whether they were victims of drone strikes or terrorist attacks, Pakhtuns facing racism or Baloch confronting state-terror, Islamist activists or liberal bloggers arrested/abducted without due process. His latest act of solidarity in attempting to hold a press conference for an old university professor, whose imprisonment has been condemned by Amnesty International for lacking any legal or ethical basis, has to be seen as part of this larger trajectory of activism. This does not make him an MQM ‘leader’, just as opposing drone strikes did not make him a ‘Taliban sympathiser’. It simply makes him a principled and decent man.

Riaz’s true crime is simply that he violated the unwritten, yet most sacred, law prevalent these days in Pakistan – self-censorship. For one can always talk about politicians’ corruption (never extended to other sacred institutions) or the never-ending ‘foreign conspiracies’ against our country. But as soon as we discuss institutional imbalances in the country’s political economy we immediately touch a raw-nerve, since the basic power structure of the state is not only overtly anti-people, but is also considered beyond the ambit of criticism.

What such episodes reveal is how dangerously skewed the relationship today is between the citizenry and the state. The state has at its disposal a plethora of vague categories – including ‘terror’, ‘MQM’, ‘liberals’, ‘blasphemers’, ‘RAW-agents’, ad nauseam – deployed to silence critics. The ambiguity of these terms gives them their menacing power, since their ambit can be broadened or shortened, depending on the task at hand. This implies that, rather than being governed by laws, or even norms, we are increasingly under the rule of arbitrary administrative techniques based on the whims of the administrator on duty.

Handling the country’s largest city in such a whimsical manner, however, should give us much cause for concern, especially since there are serious doubts about the calibre of those at the helm. For example, much of the information about Dr Riaz provided above could easily be ascertained through a simple Google search. This of course leads us to believe that those who tried linking him to MQM-London were either malicious or incredibly incompetent. Neither is pardonable.

Lacking a strategic vision, the state today is not interested in winning the consent of the ruled, but simply demands obedience to a defaulting reality. But often with choices thus made, our LEAs cause embarrassment and exacerbate the crisis for themselves. The loud chants of robotic nationalists will not change the underlying reality that there is a deep ideological and institutional crisis that needs to be acknowledged and understood before we can develop a plan for national rejuvenation. This necessarily implies an open and frank debate about the past and present, to better orient ourselves to the future. Anything short of this will be an abdication of our responsibility to the people, to the country, and ultimately, to ourselves.

The writer is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge and a lecturer at the Government College University, Lahore.

Email: ammarjan86@gmail.com