Arman Loni

Mohammad Ibrahim Arman Loni (Pashto: محمد ابراهیم ارمان لوڼی ‎), commonly known as Arman Loni (or Arman Luni), was a professor of Pashto literature, poet, and one of the leaders of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). Arman died on February 2, 2019 after he and his sister, Wranga Loni, participated at a protest sit-in outside Loralai's Press Club. The four-day sit-in had been held by PTM activists to protest against the 2019 Loralai attack, in which eight policemen and a civilian had been killed by gunmen and suicide bombers affiliated with the Taliban on January 29. His family and PTM activists claimed that he was beaten by the police after the sit-in, after which a police officer struck him on the neck with a gun, causing him to collapse and die on his way to hospital. However, the medical superintendent of Quetta’s Civil Sandeman hospital, Saleem Abro, rejected the family's claim and said that the postmortem reports indicated no torture marks on his body. The police similarly claimed that the death was caused by a heart attack. On the other hand, in a parliamentary panel, the Pakistani senators Farhatullah Babar and Muhammad Ali Saif supported the allegations made by Arman's family and said that according to their information, the postmortem noted some critical marks in his brain, indicating that the head injury had caused some blood clots in the brain which led to his death. Mohsin Dawar, a Pakistani parliamentarian and PTM leader, said that an application to lodge a first information report (FIR) for the murder was submitted against the prime suspect assistant superintendent of police (ASP) Attaur Rehman Tareen. The police, however, refused to lodge an FIR, which was criticized by Shireen Mazari, the Human Rights Minister of Pakistan.

At the time of the death, the four-day sit-in in Loralai held by PTM activists to protest against the 2019 Loralai attack had ended temporarily, and after negotiating with the government the participants were peacefully dispersing. According to Arman's sister, Wranga Loni: “Arman was participating in the Loralai sit-in and left after talks with the government. But the police then attacked the protesters. One of the policemen hit Arman on his head, due to which he died on the spot.” Arman's family also blamed the police for barring him from reaching hospital on time.

On March 5, 2019, the standing committee on human rights in the Senate of Pakistan condemned the police for refusing to lodge a first information report (FIR) for Arman's death. The committee ordered the police to lodge an FIR and launch an inquiry against the accused police officers.

More than 20 activists of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, including Gulalai Ismail and Abdullah Nangyal, were arrested by the Pakistani government during protests against Arman's murder. Rabia Mehmood, South Asia Regional Researcher at Amnesty International, stated: “These protestors must be released immediately and unconditionally. They are prisoners of conscience and have done nothing but exercise their peaceful and lawful right to protest against human rights violations and call for end to them. It is shocking that the Pakistani authorities have resorted to such heavy-handed methods even as senior government officials have clearly acknowledged that the PTM has legitimate grievances that must be addressed. To add insult to injury, the crackdown follows the horrific death of Arman Luni, one of PTM’s activists.”

Brad Adams, executive director of the Asian division of Human Rights Watch, said: “Pakistani officials should recognize the country’s diversity as a strength and not a weakness. The government should listen to and engage the concerns of the country’s many communities and allow for peaceful expression of dissent. As a start, the authorities should ensure the investigation into the death of Arman Luni is effective and transparent.”

However, Mujib Rahman Rahimi, the spokesman of Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, criticised Ashraf Ghani and termed his remarks as interference in another country's affairs. Rahimi said that the issues around PTM are "an internal matter of Pakistan. Afghanistan is not in a position which will interfere in others’ affairs. We have many problems and issues inside our country and it is better to address them first." Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Pakistani federal minister for foreign affairs, also rejected Ghani's tweet and called it a "gross interference" in the internal affairs of Pakistan. On the other hand, Amrullah Saleh, the former Afghan interior minister who had resigned to join Ghani's team in the upcoming presidential elections, praised Ghani and called on the Afghan civil society to show "solid solidarity with the peaceful civil activists in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan." Responding to the allegation by Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Saleh said: “We [Afghanistan] have been on the receiving end of terror and Taliban for years sent and exported from your country [Pakistan]. We have just sent back a tweet. There is a gross imbalance in our bilateral trade and tweet.”

Already a political activist of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, Arman joined the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement ("Pashtun Protection Movement") in February 2018, along with his young sister Wranga. Both of them actively took part in organizing the PTM public gatherings, usually traveling to the gathering site a week earlier to help run awareness campaigns among the locals. At the gatherings, Wranga would mostly give speeches from the stage but Arman would usually prefer to be behind the scenes. His family was threatened by Pakistani law enforcement agencies and pro-government tribal leaders (masharān) for their activities in the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement. The Loni tribal chief warned Arman to stop his activities and told him that the agencies would not tolerate it. Consequently, Arman's family was forced to move from Sanjawi to Killa Saifullah, the hometown of Nawab Ayaz Jogezai, the Pashtun tribal chief who offered them refuge. Arman then transferred himself from Degree College Quetta to Degree College Killa Saifullah to live with his family.

After his master's degree, Arman successfully passed the Balochistan Public Service Commission test in 2012 and became a lecturer of Pashto literature at Degree College Quetta. He was the founder of "Pashtun Progressive Writers" (پښتانه مترقي لیکوال , Paṣhtānə Mutaraqī Līkwāl), an organization aimed at nurturing the new generation of Pashtun authors.