“Big Brother is watching you.” — George Orwell, 1984
Every dictatorship consolidates itself by fixing those who think, speak, and act independently. This is the central machinery of fascist rule: a slow and calculated campaign against dissent, aimed at those who dare to think beyond the sanctioned script. Such regimes do not govern by law or principle; they rule by whim, caprice, and appetite, enforcing obedience through censorship, intimidation, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary punishment.
By crushing independence at its root, they ensure that no voice, no institution, and no conscience survives with the strength to question power. The result is a totalitarian order sealed against scrutiny—unchallenged, unanswerable, and insulated from accountability. At the heart of this system lies a deeply embedded philosophy: rule by fixation, i.e., the deliberate targeting, breaking, and subjugation of individuals and institutions alike.
The current regime in Pakistan, installed through brazen electoral theft and judicial manipulation, is the very embodiment of this rule by fixation. Today, Pakistan languishes under a system that does not merely wield authority but seeks to reshape reality itself, bending the world to its desire by extinguishing every independent spark until obedience becomes instinct.
This phenomenon is rampant in Pakistan; it is a method, a mode, and a manner of governance that acknowledges no law and no Constitution. It follows a relentless pattern of targeting those who question, whether through word or deed. Such fixation is not chaos; it is a meticulously planned architecture of suppression. It is neither accidental nor impetuous but premeditated, deliberate, and precise. It does not rely on argument, debate, or persuasion but on unilateral decree.
One is left with the unsettling impression that, in warm and insulated drawing rooms, unseen arbiters sit in quiet vigilance, scrutinising all who dare challenge the regime’s audacious ventures. An illegitimate force drifts like a shadow across every institution, every voice, and every thought. Much like Orwell’s Big Brother, the ever-watchful face of psychological surveillance, this system operates through a central authority that dictates what may be spoken, thought, or done.
Power founded on terror is never eternal; it is provisional, vulnerable, and ultimately unsustainable
Alongside it moves a ruthless “Thought Police” charged with enforcing conformity, suppressing dissent, and punishing any deviation. This politics of fixation operates on an Orwellian logic: to watch, to intimidate, and to discipline until independent thinking vanishes. The purpose is unmistakable: to instil in citizens, journalists, lawyers, judges, and activists a profound and abiding fear—a constant reminder that independent thought or action carries consequences far too severe to risk.
The first victim of fixation in Pakistan was the electronic media, once the vital breathing spaces of debate, scrutiny, and accountability. Suddenly, these spaces fell silent; anchors disappeared as if swallowed by the night, and programmes vanished without explanation. Informal directives reached the owners of media houses—among them, a total ban on the name, voice, and image of Imran Khan.
Channels were instructed on which issues they may not cover, which topics must remain untouched, and even which guests they may or may not invite. Debate has not been vanquished by argument but by invisible strings of control; compliance became the sole currency of survival for electronic media. The once-vibrant landscape of electronic media has been hollowed out, transformed into a mirror that promotes power rather than a lens to examine it.
As traditional media succumbed to submission, social media emerged as the last refuge of comparatively independent expression. Yet even here, the shadow of fixation loomed large. Bloggers, YouTubers, activists, and ordinary citizens discovered that words themselves had become perilous. Laws have been wielded like blunt instruments, designed to silence, intimidate, and punish anyone who dared to question authority or expose injustice. A stark example lies in the case of Sohrab Barkat, the young journalist now facing multiple, simultaneous prosecutions on spurious grounds, orchestrated solely to ensure his continued incarceration.
The taming of the judiciary, however, reveals the architecture of fixation in its most intricate and deliberate form. At first, the regime sought to shape the outcomes of judicial decisions through interference: threats, blackmail, and coercion were applied to bend judges without dismantling the institutional edifice itself.
The letter authored by six Islamabad High Court judges stands as a living testament to such intrusion. When these tactics failed to produce the predictable loyalty desired, structural mechanisms were deployed—namely, the 26th and 27th Constitutional Amendments. The parliamentary numbers required for these amendments were secured through daylight abductions of lawmakers and the strategic gifting of reserved seats to the ruling alliance.
These were not reforms in the constitutional sense; they were instruments designed to fix the judiciary permanently, ensuring that courts could no longer exercise independence and that judgments would invariably align with the preferences of powerful quarters. The sequence is revealing: first coercion, then structural control. The judiciary, once a potential bulwark against executive overreach, has been transformed into a pliant extension of the executive branch itself.
Iman Mazari and Hadi Chatha had become sources of discomfort and consternation; their voices and actions did not conform to the regime’s carefully scripted plans. It requires a particular kind of shameless audacity to fix lawyers—especially those celebrated as defenders of human rights. Yet it was decided to fix them. Thus, human rights defenders, those who tread the narrow path of courage and conscience, found themselves ensnared.
Hadi Chatha and Iman Mazari have been convicted under the PECA law, and both the charges and the trial constitute a hollow superstructure that, if law were allowed its proper course, would collapse like a house of cards. Their crime was not the violation of penal statutes; it was the audacity to demand that the powerful answer for their actions and to insist that injustice be named. Their conviction is more than mere punishment; it is a signal, a warning, a proclamation that even lawful and principled advocacy is a dangerous enterprise.
However, rule by fixation is never permanent. History whispers that every tyranny, no matter how cunning or ruthless, carries within it the seeds of its own undoing. Such regimes may manufacture silence, but they can never manufacture legitimacy. The more institutions are crushed, the more voices silenced, and the more the social contract violated, the greater the resistance that accumulates beneath the surface.
The order such power enforces is an unstable quiet, for history shows that authority built solely on fear and the subjugation of conscience is inevitably fragile and transient. Power founded on terror is never eternal; it is provisional, vulnerable, and ultimately unsustainable. It may cast long shadows, but it cannot extinguish the light of thought. In this grim architecture of suppression, the capacity to think, to question, and to act with courage remains the one element the state can never fully fix.