Over 5,000 supporters of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is currently jailed on corruption charges, began a march toward the capital city of Islamabad on Sunday.
The government asked them to cancel the march due to terrorism concerns, but when that did not work, nervous officials barricaded the city with shipping containers to hold the protesters at bay.
Khan, a former cricket star, was removed from the prime minister’s office by a vote of no confidence in April 2022. He launched a political comeback that was derailed by charges of corruption and an assassination attempt, and wound up jailed in 2023 on a host of charges. More convictions have been added since then, kicking his prison sentence up to at least 17 years, with further cases still pending.
Khan and his supporters in the populist and Islamist Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party insist all of the charges against him are political frauds concocted by the Pakistani elite to keep him out of office. His supporters physically interfered with attempts to arrest him back in 2023 and they have staged several large marches to demand his release since then.
Sunday’s march originated in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, PTI’s political stronghold. The chief minister of the provincial government, Sohail Afridi, and local party leader Junaid Akbar Khan walked at the head of the march.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is over 170 miles from Islamabad, so the march is not expected to reach the Islamabad suburbs until Thursday. Rally leaders said they would plan their next move once they come within 50 miles of the capital city.
The march was originally scheduled to begin on September 27, but it was delayed after the government offered to address some of PTI’s concerns. Those negotiations fell through, in part because PTI leaders said their requests to speak with Khan in prison were not granted, and their demand to give him emergency medical treatment was refused.
Khan, now 74 years old, is reportedly in poor health and PTI says the authorities are defying court orders to have him examined at a private hospital.
Two rounds of last-ditch negotiations between PTI and the government were held over the weekend, but they also failed to reach an agreement.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif made an appeal for the march to be postponed, citing the danger of ongoing terrorist attacks from the militant Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and allied groups, but the organizers insisted on departing from the city of Gandhi Chowk on Sunday as planned. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa borders on Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been fighting border skirmishes with the Afghan Taliban regime over accusations that Kabul is aiding and abetting TTP terrorism.
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi claimed PTI leaders scuttled the negotiations on purpose, and said they would be held accountable for any deaths or injuries resulting from the march.
Tens of thousands of police mobilized from Islamabad to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, leading to accusations from PTI that the government planned to intimidate protesters or use violence to break up the march.
Opposition leaders have accused Sharif of planning to impose “emergency rule” or martial law to keep the demonstrators away from Islamabad, and some government officials have not been shy about threatening to invoke such powers.
“If imposing an emergency becomes necessary to save the province, then we will certainly impose it,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Karim Kundi said on Sunday. Some federal officials have accused PTI of allowing TTP militants to join the march and make their way into Islamabad.
Interior Minister Naqvi said PTI would not be allowed to shut down the national capital or interfere with business operations. He recently suggested that if PTI continues to organize disruptive events and refuses to cooperate with national counter-terrorism policy, the central government might remove it from power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“We will finish it once for all,” he said ominously on Sunday.