Imran Khan's sons, Sulaiman and Kasim, told DW from London that their father has lost 85% of the vision in his right eye and that authorities have ignored months of complaints. He has been held in a small cell in Rawalpindi, allowed outside one to two hours daily, and was kept in isolation from family, lawyers, and a personal physician for ten months before a brief visit from two sisters. The sons are demanding compliance with existing Supreme Court orders to transfer Khan to Shifa International Hospital for an independent medical assessment. The interview lands days before PTI's planned September 27 protest march on Islamabad, intended to demand Khan's release and what the party frames as respect for constitutional rights. In advance of the march, authorities detained Khan's three sisters in Lahore under a public order ordinance, citing threats to public safety. The detention orders mandate 30-day holds. PTI leaders, including senior aide Zulfi Bukhari, described the arrests as the most severe crackdown the party has faced, designed to intimidate Khan's family and broader support base. Pakistan's state minister for interior, Talal Chaudhary, told DW the government's priority is maintaining order. His framing was blunt: peaceful citizens are welcome in Islamabad, but those who come "as terrorists" will not be allowed to leave. The government points to the 2024 Islamabad protests, which saw demonstrators breach high-security zones, six people killed, and significant property damage. The May 2023 arrest of Khan similarly triggered nationwide violence targeting military and government buildings. The pattern is now well-established. The military-civilian coalition governing Pakistan treats PTI mobilization not as political dissent but as a security threat requiring pre-emptive containment. Shipping containers block Islamabad's entry points. Thousands of police have been deployed. Family members are detained under public order statutes that require no judicial review for 30 days. The effect is to raise the cost of participation for ordinary supporters while giving the state plausible deniability — these are public safety measures, not political repression. Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center told DW the detentions will likely galvanize an already angry Khan support base. The logic is straightforward: detaining Khan's sisters, who are prominent advocates for his cause, puts the family at the center of the confrontation and raises the emotional stakes for supporters already alarmed about Khan's health. The government's crackdown may suppress turnout on September 27, but it simultaneously validates PTI's narrative that Pakistan is governed by force rather than law. The broader context makes this confrontation more dangerous than its predecessors. Pakistan is simultaneously managing economic malaise, conflict with the Afghan Taliban, and spillover from the Iran war. Domestic unrest absorbs security resources, damages investor confidence, and narrows the government's room to maneuver on every other front. The military establishment's bet — that it can contain PTI through escalating repression without triggering a crisis it cannot manage — has not yet been tested to failure, but the margin for error is shrinking. What makes this extractive rather than merely authoritarian is the asymmetry: the state captures all the benefits of Khan's removal from power (no opposition leader, no accountability pressure, no electoral threat) while distributing the costs — surveillance, detention, medical neglect, economic disruption — across Khan's family, PTI's rank and file, and Pakistani citizens who bear the consequences of a government that governs by containment rather than consent.
