ANY reasonable person reading the tweets for which Imaan Mazari-Hazir and her husband Hadi Ali Chattha have been sentenced to 17 years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs36 million will express shock at the sentence.
The lack of proportionality is jarring, the lack of necessity obvious, and the overstepping of legality clear. All these violations of Pakistan’s commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have been condemned across the world of international human rights law. This is clear from statements by the UN Human Rights Office, the EU spokesperson, Amnesty International, HRCP, the International Commission of Jurists, Lawyers for Lawyers, and the International Bar Association, amongst other bodies.
The contentious nature of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act has been highlighted for a decade now since even before it was passed, and when it was amended last year. Peca is the second law other than the Pakistan Penal Code that criminalises defamation, although an entire civil defamation law also exists in Pakistan. The abuse of this criminalisation of speech are wide-ranging: political speech, journalism, speech about harassment, poetry, and posts on social media have all been targeted through these laws.
Seemingly, Mazari and Chattha have been sentenced for representing families of missing persons and campaigning against the practice of enforced disappearances. Their sentence under Sections 9, 10 and 26-A of Peca attempts to conflate their advocacy with the crimes of glorification of terrorism, cyberterrorism and the sharing of fake and false information.
The extreme steps taken to quell dissent threaten our future.
Advocacy for presenting missing persons in a court of law has been conflated with the crime of supporting “proscribed individuals”. The message is clear: nobody should question the state’s terrorism policies, or enforced disappearances, and the violation of due process and fundamental rights they involve. Doing so apparently constitutes “sharing false or fake information” under Section 26-A.
All the tweets reported in the case were authored by Mazari, but Chattha has been given the same sentence as her for retweeting the posts, although all posts have been retweeted by thousands of users. This can potentially open the floodgates of cases against people for merely reposting content on social media that sensitive authorities find unpleasant.
Importantly, the judgement was passed after various due process violations in the Peca case, so much so that both the high court and Supreme Court had to step in. With a pending transfer application against the judge that pronounced the verdict, a foreign policy crisis with Iran for being called a terrorist state by the judge, which led to the unlawful editing of the verdict, and the pronouncement of the decision without completion of the cross examination of the two accused by prosecution witnesses makes this case ripe for quashment upon appeal to the high court.
But what about the damage this case has done? Will parliament finally have the courage to review the notorious and draconian Peca law? Will the judiciary finally give decisions against the state’s persistent requests to imprison peaceful activists and political workers? Or is the state willing to let go of tariff concessions under GSP-Plus from its biggest export market — the EU — in order to violate citizens’ rights even if it is at the cost of the economy? Importantly, will bars across the country unite for judicial independence and protection of lawyers’ right to work independently?
The couple’s conviction appears to be part of an attempt to ensure a monopoly over narratives, even if that means imprisoning peaceful lawyers and rights activists and those who speak for them. The precedent that it sets is intended to have a chilling effect, but the widespread condemnation of this conviction shows the tradition of resistance in Pakistan where more than one dictator has lost power due to the collective voice and resistance of the citizenry.
The state must take steps to bridge the trust deficit with its citizens. The extreme measures taken to quell dissent by arresting activists and obliterate political opposition, including the PTI and other groups, is a threat to our future. We already have the highest rate of emigration and brain drain due to draconian policies and their impact on the economy, such as internet slowdown and censorship.
The diverse views of all Pakistanis must be respected, rather than making unsuccessful violent attempts to gain monopoly over truth, which only alienates the citizenry further.
The writer is director of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.
X: @UsamaKhilji
Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2026
