AMONGST the many comments generated within the Pakistani body politic by the Nobel Committee’s decision to award its annual Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai, perhaps the most intriguing one goes something like this: ‘Pakistan is finally in the spotlight for a positive reason’.

A variation of this theme pitches Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy alongside Malala as having established a ‘good’ image of Pakistan that flies in the face of the ‘bad’ one nourished by the Taliban and those of their ilk.

Certainly the ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ image debate is necessary, and we would do well to start with asking who is doing the framing. For instance, why do we need to wait for an ‘international community’ more adept at waging imperialist wars than resisting them to pin ‘peace’ awards upon us before we start to feel gratified about those who should make us proud? Similarly, should we take at face value the terrorism ‘experts’ who reduce the globalised political economy of war to a Pakistan-specific problem?

Pakistan’s third face goes beyond the good vs bad debate.

Perhaps most importantly, does the ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ binary exhaust all representations of Pakistan? To my mind, Pakistan has a third face that is neither. It can easily be argued that it is this face that is the most representative one of all.

Notwithstanding Asif Zardari’s claim that all political prisoners in Pakistan were released under the previous PPP dispensation, there are more than just a handful of dissidents under lock and key in the country’s notorious prisons. I am not talking about right-wing militants, whom even after arrest find it easy to free themselves from captivity (as last year’s Bannu jailbreak proves). It is progressives who are put away for long periods without anyone to chant their names or engineer dramatic releases.

Late last month a political worker from Hunza who goes by the name Baba Jan was sentenced to life imprisonment by an anti-terrorist court. His crime? According to the charges against him, Baba Jan repeatedly threatened peace in the Hunza Valley; he is specifically accused of leading a violent mob against local authorities and burning down several government buildings in early 2011.

The truth is decidedly less incriminating. Baba Jan rose to prominence in January 2010 following landslides in the Gojal Valley region of Hunza. He was calling attention to the impending disaster around the Attababad Lake which otherwise spilled into the Hunza river but had started funnelling water upstream following the landslide. Baba Jan attempted to pre-empt mass flooding, inundation of villages and loss of life and property. In the event the authorities paid no attention and the inevitable destruction came to pass.

In subsequent months, Baba Jan and many companions led protests against the local authorities to demand compensation for the Attabad lake affectees. During one such protest in the Aliabad area of Hunza, the police fired upon and killed two unarmed men. The protesters responded in kind and set fire to a government installation.

Baba Jan was not present on that particular day but this did not stop the authorities from framing him for the whole episode. He was incarcerated in Gilgit jail and spent almost two years there with three other companions.

Baba Jan was eventually released on bail after it became clear that there was no case against him. He refused to give up his activism, most recently being at the forefront of a mass agitation in Gilgit-Baltistan against the withdrawal of wheat subsidies. In response, the ‘rule of law’ was again invoked, and Baba Jan promptly declared a terrorist who would have to spend his life in prison to atone for his sins.

Baba Jan and his companions are only the latest victims of anti-terrorist legislation. Pro­gressive trade unionists were sentenced in 2011 to 490 years in jail for trying to organise power loom workers in Faisalabad. An almost 70-year old progressive peasant leader has been languishing in Sheikhupura jail for two years because of his support to the tenants of Dera Saigol farm in their struggle against eviction.

The ‘good’ and ‘bad’ faces of Pakistan may make the news, but it is the ugly face of state power and its excesses that most affects people in this country. It is not to be understated that while progressives are subjected to the arbitrary invocation of anti-terror laws, the right-wing continues to spread its reign of terror without impediment.

The story does not end there. There is the banal suffering of those who have never even tried to advocate for anything to change at the hands of thanedars, patwaris and magistrates all over the country. And the other extreme: mutilated bodies of Baloch and Sindhi nationalists dumped in roadside drains.

This is the ugly face of Pakistan, and no one is saying anything about it.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2014