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Day 48. 24 hours ago, my family raised the alarm. My mother, @DrUzma_KhanPK, has a replaced heart valve, her blood pressure is rising in Kot Lakhpat Jail, and she is not receiving treatment. Since then, there has been no word from the jail, no word from the authorities, and no cardiologist. My mother and my aunts, @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK, all around 70, have been held for 48 days under a detention law, without charge. Their brother, @ImranKhanPTI, is in solitary confinement with his blood pressure at 192. The state holds them. The state is responsible for their health. Let her see her cardiologist. Charge them or release them. #FreeImranAndFamily

Sources: Aquino v. Enrile, Philippine Supreme Court, G.R. No. L-35546, 17 Sept 1974; Military Commission No. 2 verdict, 25 Nov 1977; Ninoy Aquino biography (imprisonment, hunger strike, assassination 21 Aug 1983); EDSA People Power Revolution, 22–25 Feb 1986.

Critical & urgent!! My aunt Rubina Khan's statement about my mother, @DrUzma_KhanPK, held in Kot Lakhpat jail: "I have received information from inside Kot Lakhpat jail, through informal sources, that my sister Uzma Khan's blood pressure is also shooting up and she is not receiving any medical treatment. This is not natural. Like her other siblings, her blood pressure has always been genetically low to normal. The family has received no information from jail authorities. She had a heart valve replacement and her condition is vulnerable. She should be seen urgently by a cardiologist."
– Rubina Khan This is very serious. My mother has a replaced heart valve and her blood pressure is rising with no treatment. The authorities must let her see her own doctor immediately. @UNHumanRights @UN @amnesty @amnestysasia @hrw @HRCP87

The British jailed two brothers for their politics. Then their mother took their place. In 1915, in the middle of the First World War, the British detained Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali, two of the most popular Muslim leaders in India, for speaking and writing in support of Ottoman Turkey. They were held for four years without trial. While her sons were locked away, their elderly mother, Abadi Bano Begum – known to everyone as "Bi Amman" – stepped into the struggle herself. In 1917 she addressed the All-India Muslim League, and she went on to travel the country, speaking, raising funds and rallying people to the cause. Gandhi called her mother. The brothers were released in 1919, only to be put on trial in Karachi two years later for sedition. They did not deny the charge, and they were sent back to prison for another two years. In 1930, at the Round Table Conference in London, Mohammad Ali told the British that if they would not give India its freedom, they would have to give him a grave there. He died in London two months later. Seventeen years after that, the Raj was gone. In 1990, Pakistan honoured Bi Amman with a postage stamp. Today, @ImranKhanPTI is in jail for his politics. His sisters took up his cause, and so the state jailed them too. Empires that jail families do not last, but the families are remembered. Will this regime be any different? #FreeImranAndFamily

Day 46. My mother @DrUzma_KhanPK and my aunts @Aleema_KhanPK and @Noreen_KhanPK, all around 70, remain in Kot Lakhpat Jail without charge under the MPO. Today the Federal Constitutional Court ordered the Peshawar High Court to stop hearing MPO detention cases "until further orders". The argument put to it: where the army operates, a High Court cannot interfere. That court was created by the 27th Amendment – the same amendment that made Field Marshal Asim Munir Chief of Defence Forces and gave him immunity from criminal proceedings for life. @UNHumanRights warned it would "seriously undermine judicial independence". So the state can detain anyone under the MPO, and the courts may not even hear the challenge. In Lahore, my family's petition was closed on a technicality after their detention was extended by another 30 days. Yesterday, the judge did not even show up for my mother's and aunt's hearing. This is not the rule of law. It is rule by one man. Charge them or release them. #FreeImranKhanAndFamily

William Ernest Henley, "Invictus" (1875): "It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul." Nelson Mandela recited this poem to fellow prisoners on Robben Island. Try as they might, with narrower gates and longer lists of punishments, they cannot own Imran Khan's will, and they will not break him. #FreeImranAndFamily