Pashtun rights group accuses Pakistan army of abuses

A Pakistani human rights group that has accused the military of widespread abuses as it battles Islamist militants in Pakistan's rugged border region with neighboring Afghanistan has emerged as a force among the country's Pashtun minority, drawing tens of thousands to rallies to protest what it contends is a campaign of intimidation that includes extrajudicial killings and thousands of disappearances and detentions.

The group's charismatic leader, 25-year-old Manzoor Pashteen, has become the face of the country's oppressed Pashtun, charging that in the name of its "war on terror" the military has used indiscriminate force as it hunts for Taliban hideouts in the tribal regions where the Pashtun dominate, imposing collective punishments like bulldozing the homes of family members of suspected militants and punishing entire villages for extremist attacks.

In this Sunday, April 22, 2018 photo, Manzoor Pashteen, a leader of Pashtun Protection Movement addresses his supporters during a rally in Lahore, Pakistan.  (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

The catalyst for the group's creation was the police killing in January of Naqueebullah Mehsud, a 27-year-old ethnic Pashtun and aspiring model who was shot dead in the southern port city of Karachi, where many displaced Pashtuns have relocated after being displaced by the military operations in the tribal regions. The authorities originally said Mehsud fired first during a raid by security forces on a militant hideout, but later acknowledged he was unarmed and had been targeted simply because he was Pashtun.

His death ignited protests by Pashtuns, who accused Pakistan's security forces of racial profiling, seeing all Pashtuns as Taliban simply because many insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan are recruited from among Pashtun tribesmen.

In this Sunday, April 22, 2018 photo, people attend the Pashtun Protection Movement rally in Lahore, Pakistan. A Pakistani rights group in the country's troubled border region has been protesting police brutality, censorship and disappearances, drawing a police campaign against its members and deepening tensions. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

Within weeks what began as a small group of about two dozen had morphed into a popular movement. Known as the Pashtun Protection Movement, it has drawn huge crowds to rallies where Pashteen leads the charge, accusing the military of detaining thousands of Pashtuns in internment camps for months or even years without charges and intimidating residents at the dozens of checkpoints scattered throughout the tribal regions.

Residents, he said, were scared silent, too afraid to criticize the army tactics.

"Punishment is all about sending a message to keep silent," Pashteen told The Associated Press in an interview in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and home to the majority of the country's ethnic Pashtuns. "When we began we were fed up with life, treated like we were not human. One thousand percent we were sure we would be killed."

In this Thursday, April 19, 2018 photo, Bashro Bibi, a mother of five shows picture of her missing husband in Peshawar, Pakistan. A Pakistani rights group in the country's troubled border region has been protesting police brutality, censorship and disappearances, drawing a police campaign against its members and deepening tensions.(AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad)

Even his father pleaded with him to end his campaign against the military. "He told me that it would be trouble not just for me, but for my family," Pashteen said.

Yet, as his small group of followers took their grievances from the tribal regions to Peshawar and eventually to the capital, Islamabad, "people joined us," he said. "For many years our people have wanted to do something. They were looking for a leader."

Wearing his signature red embroidered cap and a dark, well-kept beard, Pashteen seems an unlikely leader.

Trained as a doctor, he is a pacifist, who refuses — despite prodding from family and friends — to carry a weapon in his car for protection in an area where guns proliferate and are considered a birthright. His protests are peaceful, he said, adding he has just two demands: The establishment of a peace and reconciliation commission to address the grievances of Pashtuns, including extrajudicial killings, and that the thousands of people in detention centers be brought to trial if they are accused of a crime or be released.

FILE - In this Sunday, April 8, 2018 file photo, a Pashtun family from a Pakistani tribal area display pictures of a missing family member during a Pashtun Protection Movement rally in Peshawar, Pakistan.(AP Photo/Muhammad Sajjad, File)

"The military has become a state within a state," Pashteen said.

Public criticism of the army, considered the most powerful institution in Pakistan, is risky and rarely tolerated. At the same time, the ascendency of the Pashtun Protection Movement poses a public relations nightmare for the army at a time when it is ramping up its effort to project success in the tribal areas, claiming to have defeated extremism and boasting that terrorist hideouts have been wiped out.

"The protesters aren't just politely critiquing the military. They're relentlessly assailing it and linking it to terror in ways rarely done before," said Michael Kugleman, deputy director of the Asia Center at the Washington-based Wilson Center. "The protesters, with their focus on indignities and injustices in the tribal areas, are undercutting a narrative the military is trying to project about peace and normalcy returning to the tribal belt after many years of war."

Infuriated by Pashteen's outspoken criticism, the army has accused him of being backed by "foreign powers," a term usually used to refer to neighboring Afghanistan or rival India. The army has also turned its intimidation tactics against his movement, pressuring news organizations throughout the country to ignore it and setting intelligence agents on university professors to try to force them to identify students attending protests. One political analyst was told his weekly column, in which he urged dialogue with Pashteen's movement, could not be published because the newspaper was "under pressure" to remove it.

"The military believes that (if) these protests get any air, they can turn from small fires into massive political conflagrations, so the best tactic is to deprive them of oxygen from the start," said Daniel Markey, director of the Global Policy Program at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. "And, to be sure, they are operating in a challenging and contentious political climate."

Political chaos has marred much of the last year in Pakistan. Its prime minister was unseated on corruption charges, and handed a lifetime ban from participating in politics. Pashteen's attacks on the military come as Pakistanis prepare to go to the polls later this year and could undermine the army's traditional ability to influence the elections.

"The army tends — also something we've seen before — to want to control or manage political outcomes as much as possible," Markey said.

The journalists' advocacy group, Reporters without Borders, issued a statement last week complaining about the military's efforts to muzzle Pakistan's media and nearly 100 Pakistani journalists signed a petition condemning censorship.

"After a week with several cases of overt press censorship in Pakistan, Reporters Without Borders ... reiterates its solidarity with the country's journalists and deplores the way the military continues to impose its diktat on the media," the statement said. "The latest subject to be placed off limits is the Pashtun (Protection) Movement, which has been organizing protests in defense of Pakistan's Pashtun minority and denouncing human rights violations by the military targeting Pashtuns."

Mosharraf Zaidi, whose column was pulled by a local English language newspaper, said the supporters of Pashteen's movement are mostly young and educated. They have known only war and chaos, he said, and most know or are related to someone who has been killed or taken either by militants or the military.

Zaidi said he had hoped Pashteen's movement "would prompt an honest discussion about our (decades-old) relationship with violent extremism."

JERUSALEM (AP) — They are shown handcuffed, their faces blurred. The confession videos, broadcast on Iranian state media, feature dramatic background music interspersed with clips appearing to show protesters attacking security forces. Some showcase gruesome homemade weapons that authorities claim were used in the attacks. Others highlight suspects in grainy security footage, appearing to set fires or destroy property.

Iran alleges these confessions, which often include references to Israel or America, are proof of foreign plots behind Iran's nationwide protests. Activists say they are coerced confessions, long a staple of Iran's hard-line state television, the only broadcaster in the country. And these videos are coming at an unprecedented clip.

Iranian state media has aired at least 97 confessions from protesters, many expressing remorse for their actions, since the protests began on Dec. 28, according to a rights group that is tracking the videos.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says that based on testimony from prior detainees, the confessions often come after psychological or physical torture — and can have serious consequences, including the death penalty.

“These rights violations compound on top of each other and lead to horrible outcomes. This is a pattern that’s been implemented by the regime time and time again,” said Skylar Thompson, the group's deputy director.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not return a request for comment from The Associated Press. Iranian officials have described the protests as “riots” orchestrated by the United States and Israel. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said the violence must be foreign-influenced because Iranians would never set mosques on fire.

The nearly 100 confessions broadcast over just two weeks is unprecedented for Iran, Thompson said.

By comparison, from 2010 to 2020, there were around 350 forced confessions broadcast on state media, according to the activist groups Justice for Iran and the International Federation for Human Rights, the last major study compiled by activists. The rights group Together Against the Death Penalty said there were 40 to 60 confessions aired in 2025.

Additionally, Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty reported at least 37 televised confessions of people facing the death penalty in the weeks following the 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the country’s morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab to the liking of authorities. More than 500 people were killed and over 22,000 detained during the monthslong protests and security crackdown, the last major protests in Iran.

A 2014 U.N. Special Rapporteur human rights report on Iran found that among interviews with previously detained individuals, 70% said coerced information or confessions were used in their hearings. In nearly half the cases, the trial lasted just a few minutes.

After the Amini protests, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in January 2023 strongly condemning “the Islamic Republic’s policy of forcing confessions using torture, intimidation, threats against family members or other forms of duress, and the use of these forced confessions to convict and sentence protesters.”

In 2024, Iran executed 975 people, the highest number since 2015, according to a report by the United Nations. Four of the executions were carried out publicly. Iran carries out executions by hanging. According to the U.N. report, most people in Iran are executed for drug-related offenses or murder.

In 2024, security-related offenses, such as espionage, accounted for just 3% of the executions.

Thompson said she is “gravely concerned” over a surge in executions connected to the latest protests, adding that many of the video confessions are serious security-related offenses that carry the death penalty.

Tehran is known to have executed 12 people for espionage since the 12-day war in June between Israel and Iran. The most recent execution for espionage was last week, when Iran said it executed a man who was accused of spying for Israel’s Mossad spy agency in exchange for cryptocurrency. The state-run IRNA news agency said the man confessed to the spying charges.

The use of televised, coerced confessions dates to the chaotic years after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. State TV aired confessions by suspected members of communist groups, insurgents and others. Even Mehdi Bazargan, Iran’s first prime minister after the revolution, warned at one point he could be detained and put on television, “repeating things like a parrot.”

Among coerced confessions that gained international attention was in 2009 by then-Newsweek correspondent Maziari Bahari, who was also imprisoned for several months. He directed a documentary, “Forced Confessions,” and wrote a memoir about his ordeal.

Since the protests began on Dec. 28, 18,100 people have been arrested and more than 2,500 have been killed, the vast majority protesters, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency. The organization relies on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities.

The Iranian government has not released overall casualty figures for the demonstrations. The AP has been unable to independently assess the toll.

Even before the protest movement exploded, human rights organizations and Western governments have condemned Iran’s increasing use of capital punishment, particularly for political and espionage-related offenses. Activists argue that many of the convictions rely on coerced confessions, and that trials often take place behind closed doors, without access to independent legal representation.

In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)

FILE - This frame grab from footage circulating on social media shows protesters dancing and cheering around a bonfire as they take to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, File)