By Hamza Ameer
Islamabad, Apr 23 (IANS): Campaign on social media slamming the military establishment, Pakistan Army Chief and the judiciary, accusing the state institutions of being party to the alleged international conspiracy that led to the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan seems to have melted down after counter action.
Anti-Pakistan, anti-establishment and anti-judiciary slogans, banners and chanting has been witnessed in many protests in and outside of Pakistan, while an organised social media drive in the same regard seemed to have launched from many social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Anti-army hashtags like #ImportedHakoomatNamanzoor stayed among the top trends on twitter in Pakistan. A direct target of these trends was the promotion of Imran Khan's ongoing campaign against the current ruling government, and other prime agenda was to target the army and judiciary.
As per records, anti-army trends has a few thousand tweets, #GhaltiSudharoElectionKarwao trend reached 140,000 tweets while #ImportedHakoomatnamanzoor shot up to at least 300,000 tweets.
During the last seven days, at least 591,000 tweets have been made under this hashtag, according to a PTI social media wing official who is monitoring such data.
Interestingly, twitter shows a strong trend against the army and judiciary, with over at least 20,000 tweets during the days leading to April 10, when former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted.
"The FIA's otherwise quick action against the social media activists believed to be supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has slowed down following the downturn in the malicious campaign against the army and judiciary," said an official with knowledge of the investigation.
"The anti-army and judiciary hashtags on Twitter and other online sites have seen a downward trend for two major reasons, the PTI leadership's intervention and law enforcement agencies' action. Raid on the house of Imran Khan's focal person on digital media, Dr. Arsalan Khalid, and some other PTI social media activists, had helped in containing this campaign," the official added.
The anti-army campaign seemed to be part of an organised and well-planned manner by social media activists operating these accounts from within and outside of Pakistan.
It has been stated that many of the social media activists associated with the PTI have gone underground or have relocated to get away from an expected FIA raid.