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Tortured Dr. Shahbaz Gill may become George Floyd of Pakistan

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Abdus-Sattar Ghazali
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Global human rights organization Amnesty International has expressed concern over the torture on Dr. Shahbaz Gill, the Chief of Staff of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan.

In a tweet, Amnesty International South Asia said it is concerned about the allegations of torture being made by the lawyers of Shahbaz Gill. It called for an immediate, effective and impartial inquiry investigating these claims.

Imran Khan has also expressed grave concern over the torture and mistreatment of Shahbaz Gill.

A local court in Islamabad on Friday suspended Dr. Shahbaz Gill's physical remand and ordered shifting him to Islamabad hospital. The court said Gill was not in good health and was brought from the hospital to court on a wheelchair. He was also prevented from wearing an oxygen mask and showed signs of breathlessness. Police refused to allow him wearing a mask in court, leading to a brief altercation with his lawyers.

Dr. Gill's video went viral on social media where he was repeatedly asking the police to give him mask because he is an asthma patient and losing breath.

A prominent Youtuber Imran Riaz Khan, who has 3.36 million followers, in a special program on the torture of Shahbaz Gill, pointed out that Gill's torture episode reminds him the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 - May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Derek Chauvin, one of four white police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, while Floyd was crying like Gill "I can't breathe."

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson last month sentenced Derek Chauvin to 21 years in prison for violating George Floyd's civil rights, telling the former Minneapolis police officer that what he did was "simply wrong" and "offensive." Judge Magnuson sharply criticized Chauvin for his actions on May 25, 2020, when the white officer pinned Floyd to the pavement outside a Minneapolis corner store for more than 9 minutes as the black man lay dying. Floyd's killing sparked protests worldwide in a reckoning over police brutality and racism. On March 12, 2021, the Minneapolis city council approved a settlement of $27 million to the Floyd family following a wrongful death lawsuit

Former prime minister and Pakistan Tehreek Insaaf (PTI) party Chairman Imran Khan has said that Dr. Shahbaz Gill was subjected to mental and physical torture as well as sexual abuse after he was arrested by the Islamabad police in a sedition case last week.

"All the pictures & videos show clearly [Shahbaz] Gill was tortured both mentally & physically incl[uding] sexual abuse - most too gruesome to relate. He was humiliated to break him down," the former premier wrote on his official Twitter handle while sharing a video of Gill wherein he can be seen pleading for an oxygen mask.

Pakistan People Party (PPP) senator Mustafa Nawaz Khokar on Thursday said to have seen visual evidence of "physical torture on Shahbaz Gill, calling the US-client Shehbaz Sharif-led government "complicit" and "spineless" for failing to stop such an atrocity.

"[I] have seen very disturbing pictures of physical torture on Shahbaz Gill," Khokhar, whose party is a part of the coalition government in Centre, tweeted. "No matter how much you disagree with or dislike him, a man's dignity should not have been violated like this.

"Shame on us. Include the so-called Pakistan Democratic Movement in it too. Serving democracy by torturing political opponents. What a farce," he added.

In a video statement, PTI leader and former federal information minister Fawad Chaudhry said that the party had collected evidence of torture including pictures and doctors' certificates "which was being handed over to authorities concerned".

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Author and journalist. Author of Islamic Pakistan: Illusions & Reality; Islam in the Post-Cold War Era; Islam & Modernism; Islam & Muslims in the Post-9/11 America. American Muslims in Politics. Islam in the 21st Century: (more...)
 

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