How anti-terror law swallows a movement

On 6 October 2024, the federal government declared the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement a proscribed organisation. No charge was read out. No trial was held. The decision took the form of a notification under Section 11B of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, and it took effect the moment it was published.

What Section 11B allows

Section 11B gives the federal government a power it uses rarely and, critics say, loosely: the power to proscribe an organisation on information it considers credible. The law does not require a criminal conviction, a court finding, or even a public statement of the evidence. Once an organisation is listed, membership becomes an offence, and so can its meetings, its slogans and its fundraising.

The practical effect is that the state does not have to prove anything about the movement. It only has to name it.

A movement without an armed wing

The PTM has marched, sat in, petitioned and campaigned. Its stated demands are the recovery of the disappeared, the clearance of landmines and equal rights for Pashtuns. Amnesty International and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan both noted, when the ban was imposed, that the movement had not been linked to violence and had worked through constitutional means.

That is the uncomfortable core of the case: a peaceful movement was treated with the tools designed for armed groups.

What the ban changes for an ordinary member

Before the notification, attending a jirga or sharing a slogan was politics. After it, the same act can be framed as support for a proscribed organisation. Families describe being questioned about who attended which meeting. Lawyers say the ban shifts the burden: a person must now prove they are not a member.

Article 10-A of the Constitution guarantees a fair trial and due process. A designation made by notification, with no hearing, sits uneasily beside that promise.

Why bans defer, rather than answer, demands

Proscription does not recover a single missing person or clear a single mine. It changes the question from "where are they?" to "are you allowed to ask?" For the families still waiting, that is not an answer. It is a way of buying time.