He’s back. Close to five months under illegal incarceration, anchorperson and YouTuber Imran Riaz Khan is finally back with his loved ones. He’s skin-and-bones and obviously psychologically rattled, but he’s back.
This is good news, yes. But it is unfortunate for the bar for good news to be so low in this country. Who is to account for his disappearance in the first place? Who is to account for the mental anguish of his family and friends? And, this should never be forgotten, who is going to account for the despondency that it caused in his large loyal viewership?
That heads won’t roll in the case of the disappearance of such a prominent political talking head (the biggest, if social media viewership were to be taken as an index) then what hope do the nigh anonymous Baloch students and Pashtun anti-militancy activists have?
Speaking of whom, there are a number of videos of Imran Riaz’s from the past where he condones this sort of behavior by the intelligence agencies. If people have been picked up by our respected agencies, he used to muse out loud, then they must have done something wrong. Such cavalier disregard for the human rights that our constitution grants our fellow citizens did come back to bite him, as karma often does.
It is a sign of an intellectual, no, it is a sign of a morally sound human being to call out such atrocious practices before they happen to them or their loved ones. And Imran Riaz Khan has fallen short of that by more than a few miles. But it probably won’t stop here. Maybe he will – as some of the PTI’s leaders already have – take to proving his patriotic credentials by coming out even more strongly against the missing persons.
Holding atrocious people to high standards is itself an exercise in futility. But the anchor, as well as his supporters and his well-wishers in the media owe it to the country to at least follow up his own particular case and make sure there is at least some reckoning for his ordeal.
