On May 5, 2026, police in Karachi detained Aurat March organiser Sheema Kermani along with six other fellow activists, as they arrived to hold a press conference. This recent event is not new in Pakistan’s history against women’s activism. The state has been using multiple forms of resistance to discourage participants from organising protests on March 8 (International Women’s Day) every year since 2018 — the year when Aurat March demonstrations were initiated by women’s rights activists.
Some of the restrictions include administrative barriers, such as the requirement to obtain a No Objection Certificate from city authorities, who routinely withhold or delay it; police violence against protesters; and the refusal or delay of permits for public gatherings.
In 2019, the provincial assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa adopted a resolution against the Aurat March and labelled its demands as “shameful and un-Islamic.” In terms of public backlash, there have been reports of petitions being submitted before the courts to ban the march, along with blasphemy complaints and police cases filed against organisers over doctored videos.
These repeated attempts to restrict the Aurat March highlight the relationship between feminism and state power that Durba Mitra examines throughout her book The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism.
