A year of protests in Lahore: a photoessay by Ahmed Raza Hashmi

It’s a warm winter day. The sun is out. The sky is hazy. It’s 2019. There are about a 100 people marching with flags and fists in the air on the iconic Mall Road in Lahore. The protestors are surrounded by colonial-era architecture and, it would seem by their chant, also by colonial-era oppression.

کل بھی حاکم ظالم تھا

 آج بھی حاکم ظالم ہے

With this chant echoing in the air, it is difficult to not view the history of Pakistan as the history of oppressors and the oppressed. The history books tell us that we achieved freedom in 1947.

With this chant echoing in the air, the question arises: what was achieved?

This is a story of a year of resistance.

13 Apr 2018: March for Mashal

Mashal Khan was a student of Abdul Wali Khan university in Mardan, KPK, Pakistan. He was killed on 13 April 2017, on-campus by his fellow students over false blasphemy accusations. Mashal was 23 years old. He was in Journalism school, and wrote poetry in Pashto.

Progressive Students Collective, alongside other human rights activist organizations, held a march at the Lahore Press Club for the right of life and freedom of expression.

This march was a performance in honor of Mashal’s life and death.

There was a theatrical play by activists; their faces painted red and black; recounting Mashal’s murder. There was the beat of a drum. The sound of Mashal’s name in everybody’s ears. There was a photo of Mashal, held up high, right alongside a photo of Asma Jahangir, Pakistan’s foremost human rights lawyer.

This march was a remembrance of a soul silenced, and a proclamation by souls still loud.

18 July 2018: In Solidarity with Mastung & Peshawar

In the run up to the Pakistan General Elections, suicide bombings ripped through Balochistan and KPK, killing over a 100 people including Siraj Raisani, well-known Baloch politician and injuring more than 200 people. Although various terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for these attacks, this was not the first time Siraj and other Baloch and Pashtun politicians were targeted for assassinations.

On 18 July 2018, Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement held a demonstration at Liberty Roundabout, Lahore, to show solidarity with the Baloch and Pashtun peoples, and to demand the state to take steps to protect all its citizens.

It had rained the day before. It looked like it might rain that day too; the air was still and damp. The sky was unsure what to do. The demonstrators had gathered for a two-fold tragedy: one, the terrible scale of the loss of life, and two, the lack of media coverage of it. While most of the news media was concerned with who was going to win the elections race, the people at Liberty Roundabout that day were concerned with those who had lost their lives in this race, and those who might lose them still.

While the Mashal protest was scored by the beating of a drum and the chant of his name, this one was mostly silent. This demonstration was a lament.

30 Nov 2018: Students’ Solidarity March

On 04 October 2018, Baloch student, Saifullah Jamali killed himself in front of his university’s entrance gate. His family and friends maintain that Jamali was driven to commit suicide because of a professor who bullied him over his ethnicity and repeatedly failed him in class.

30 Nov 2018: The Progressive Students Collective held a protest march at Mall Road, Lahore to demand rights for students and transparency from the administration. They had 17 demands, including but not limited to: lifting the ban on student unions, formation of committees to deal with sexual harassment and gender discrimination, and at least one mental health counselor for every educational institute.

The sun was high, the air was warm, and the crowd was fiery. This march was an exhibition of emotions.

There was camaraderie: the marchers would stop in front of the many educational institutes on Mall Road, and urge their fellow students to come out and join the march. Every new set of comrades to join was met with thunderous applause.

There was anguish: the marchers resented how they’d been treated by their educational institutions. According to them, instead of being educated against prejudice, they’d been discriminated against for their ethnicity, and gender. Instead of being encouraged to be independent thinkers, they’d been indoctrinated against dissent.

There was longing: The marchers’ every chant and clamor was a call to the state to not forget about them. The march ended with a sit-in at Charing Cross; the name reminding everyone of their place in a post-colonial era.

10 Feb 2019: Shehri Tahaffuz March

On 19 January 2019, police open fired at a car in Sahiwal, and killed 4 people (a couple Khalil and Nabila, their daughter Areeba, and their friend Zeeshan). The couple’s three other children were also in the car, but they survived. The police has changed their stance multiple times, first claiming that the parents were kidnappers, then claiming that they were terrorists, then claiming that the police was fired upon first, and lastly claiming that only Zeeshan was a terrorist.

The surviving children and all eyewitness accounts have denied all these claims.
On 10 Feb 2019, Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement held a march at Mall Road, Lahore to show solidarity with the Sahiwal survivors, and against police brutality and to demand the state to protect all its citizens.

With her endless energy, spirited speeches, and powerful presence, Comrade Mohiba Ahmed is a force to be reckoned with. One of the biggest problems with the Pakistani education system, she claims, is that it is producing a politically passive society. But she’s well aware of how easy it is to fall into the trap of being a passive and apathetic observer. She can’t expect anyone to speak up for her rights if she doesn’t do it herself first. Mohiba graduated from Government College University in Lahore, and is now a part of the visiting faculty. She is also a member of Progressive Students Collective, Haqooq-e-Khalq Movement and Women’s Collective.

In a city of 11 million, the resistance is a handful of people. Regardless of the face of the oppressor: be it other people, other institutions or the state. Theirs is a fight for the right to life, a life with dignity and a life in peace.

Join this fight. Show up. Speak up.

To find oppression around you, you need not look beyond the plight of women in your life. Join the Aurat March at Lahore Press Club, on 08 March 2019.