"Despite overwhelming evidence of Mr Anwar’s persecution in Pakistan, including imprisonment for five years under a former dictatorship, the Home Secretary, (at the time Jack Straw) refused the application".
Paul Foot, The Guardian, July 10 2001

    During his last years in Pakistan Mr Anwar Dholan was heavily involved in the campaigns against the introduction of Sharia law and against the nuclear tests carried out by Pakistan and India. In 1997-8 the government created a situation where it was extremely dangerous to oppose the Sharia bill, currently before Parliament. Prime Minister Sharif made an address on national TV in which he whipped up public opinion against its opponents. Yet Mr Anwar Dholan organised meetings to discuss the issue and was reported in the press as having spoken out against it. This led to him receiving threats at his office and at home from religious groups as well as police and members of I.S.I. (security forces). A case was filed against him for breaking Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which is still pending today.

    He had received an invitation to travel to Brussels to attend a conference on "Trade Unions in the Third World" and travelled there via London in December 1998. Whilst in Europe he contacted his family, who reported that masked men had visited them in Lahore and Kasur threatening him with dire consequences if he did not stop his campaign against Sharia. On the advice of relatives he did not cancelled his return flight and sought political asylum in the U.K on 6 January 1999.

    His wife and two youngest sons joined Mr Anwar Dholan in Britain in November 1999. His eldest son aged nine was unable to obtain a visa and the family was re-united as recently as February 2001. All the children are now settled in a school in Shepherd’s Bush.

    He has made his home in West London, and continues to commentate on Pakistani affairs for the BBC World Service. He is currently studying for the Q.L.T. exams that will allow him to practice as a solicitor.

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Anwar Dholan:

     Anwar Dholan is an advocate at Lahore High Court. He has been a campaigner for democracy and human rights in Pakistan for over 30 years. Despite the costs to himself and his family Mr Anwar Dholan has kept up his fight without compromise during this time.

     He joined the Pakistan People’s Party (P.P.P.) in 1968. During the government of Z. A. Bhutto he held a number of executive positions in his native Kasur district of Punjab during the 1970s.

     Anwar Dholan was detained for one year and four months in 1977-8 after General Zia’s military rule began. Despite the many differences he had with Z. A. Bhutto, he campaigned to halt the death sentence pronounced and later carried out on Mr Bhutto. This led to his arrest, torture and further imprisonment.

     As a President of the defunct P.P.P. he took part in the Movement for Restoration of Democracy, a coalition of forces opposed to the dictatorship, which brought him several periods of detention including one of about a year in 1983.

     Mr Anwar Dholan twice went on hunger strike, in 1979 and 1983, for the commutation of Mr Z. A. Bhutto’s sentence and in protest at the conditions opponents of the military dictatorship were kept in.

    In 1987 he led a strike of tannery workers in Kasur. The strike was successful but Mr Anwar Dholan was afterwards detained for two months. Then in 1990 he played a key role in organising a strike of power loom workers in the city.

    He was twice nominated as the parliamentary candidate for the P.P.P in Kasur, in 1990 and 1994. However in protest at Benazir Bhutto’s change of policy in favour of privatisation and market reforms Mr Anwar Dholan took part in the formation of the P.P.P. Left Wing.

    In 1995 he left the P.P.P. and soon joined the Labour Party of Pakistan. Then in 1998 he helped to form the United Socialist Party of Pakistan (U.S.P). He was elected General Secretary and still formally holds this title.

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