Dead but not counted: Hidden victims of Pakistan’s latest political clash

 Anees Shehzad’s death certificate says he died from a pelvic injury and gunshot wound.

He was killed while protesting alongside thousands of supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan in the capital, Islamabad, on November 26, following clashes with security forces. Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) insists that he was among a dozen civilians killed in police firing that day.

However, according to the government, no protester was killed, not even Shehzad, 20.

A week after PTI members laid siege to Islamabad and were subsequently dispersed in a late-night operation by law enforcement agencies, the government and the PTI are locked in a tense standoff over conflicting accounts of the number of casualties during those clashes.

While some PTI leaders initially said hundreds of supporters had been killed, party chairman Gohar Ali Khan later said the number of dead protesters stood at 12.

Attaullah Tarar, the federal information minister, mocked that discrepancy in a message on social media platform X on Tuesday. “These bodies will only be found on TikTok, Facebook and WhatsApp. They are playing politics of jokes and lies with the nation,” Tarar wrote in his message in Urdu.

Earlier, on November 28, during a press interaction with foreign media, Tarar maintained that there were no deaths during the protests.

He cited statements from Islamabad’s two largest public hospitals — PIMS and Poly Clinic — stating they had received no bodies. “The health department has issued two separate statements confirming this,” he said in response to a question from Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera spoke to the families of four PTI supporters, including Shehzad, killed in the clashes with security forces, and also reached out to Tarar, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and Rana Sanaullah, the political adviser to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, to seek their comments on the claims and counterclaims. However, no one in the authority responded.

The PTI has now released the names of the 12 supporters it says were killed between November 24 and 26, with at least 10 reportedly suffering bullet wounds. Among them was Shehzad, from Kotli Sattian, a small town in Punjab province.