Imran Khan's Message at the International Virtual Convention
Dear Participants of the convention: thank you for attending this event.
With Israel's brutal assault on the people of GAZA, slaughtering of thousands of children, women, journalists, doctors - effectively a genocide of the Palestinians; disturbance in international maritime waters and continued war in Ukraine, the world is heading towards a grave international crisis.
Pakistan is also embroiled in internal conflict never seen before in the history of Pakistan. The entire state machinery is bending the law and the constitution of Pakistan just to keep me and my party out of the electoral process. In doing so they have made mockery of the law and destroyed not just the political but the moral fabric of our society.
It started when the military establishment became agitated with my push for an independent foreign policy and my refusal to provide bases to USA. I was categorical that we would be a friend to all but would not be anyone’s proxy for wars. I did not come to this view lightly. It was shaped by the huge losses Pakistan had incurred collaborating with America’s “war on terror”, not least the 80,000 Pakistani lives lost.
Ever since my removal, several crackdowns have been made on my party workers and leadership. The most brutal crackdown started after the false flag operation of May 9th, 2023. There are over 200 “cases” on me and I have been incarcerated for over 180 days now. Women workers have also been jailed, most of whom are mothers and housewives. This scale and nature of the State’s attack on women has never been seen in our country.
Under the grand scheme hatched in London, I and my party are to be kept out of the electoral process. When all else backfired, now through a botched judicial process, our election symbol has also been taken away leaving our candidates to run as independents under hundreds of different symbols.
This continued political disturbance in our country has wrecked the economy and alienated our regional friends. During my time we devised a foreign policy based on regional economic connectivity.
We were aggressively pursuing this vision via reaching out CIS states, Russia and renewed relationship with China. We offered facilitation to bring Iran and Yemen closer to Saudi Arabia.
In my UNGA speech, I explained to the world the importance of Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him, for Muslim Ummah and helped introduce the UNGA resolution that has established 15th March as an international day against Islamophobia.
We facilitated US and Afghanistan for Doha talks for a peaceful exit of US from Afghanistan. But due to sudden exit of Ghani regime, things quickly deteriorated and we saw chaotic scenes of US withdrawal. I am told that at certain level Biden administration blames me for the messy US withdrawal but this is far from the truth.
Our Government policy vision was regional economic connectivity. I extended my friendship hand to India in the very first speech after winning the elections but at every point RSS led Modi regime shut us down. And after the illegal alteration of the status of Indian Occupied Kashmir & its transformation into the world’s largest open prison, by a belligerent Modi regime, it was clear that their intention was not normalization.
Kashmir is a cornerstone of our foreign policy and we took a firm and principled stand on this issue despite the challenges. Despite pressures, Pakistan went ahead with withdrawal of Ambassador to New Delhi relaying a clear message that normalization of relations was contingent upon peaceful resolution of Kashmir dispute.
What is needed for Pakistan is a strong truly representative democratic government and a democratic framework governed by rule of law and our Constitution.
I would like to call on all who believe in democracy and peace to stand by us and speak out against the present massacre of democracy and rule of law being carried out in Pakistan.
I thank you all for attending the conference.
Pakistan Zindabad.