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Roshaan Khattak is an\u00a0exiled Pakistani documentary filmmaker<\/a>. Until\u00a018 December 2025<\/a>, he was a postgraduate researcher at Wolfson College, Cambridge, working on enforced disappearances and state killings in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan through which the\u00a0China-Pakistan Economic Corridor also happens to run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His cousin, the human rights researcher Idris Khattak, has been in a Pakistani military prison since 2019, serving a 14 year sentence handed down by a secret court on espionage charges that Amnesty, the UN and Freedom House regard as fabricated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 21 Group has been asked to look at his case. Having done so, we think our readers should know about it. The Index on Censorship article<\/a> contains many disturbing details of Cambridge University’s failure to protect Roshaan Khattak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened at Cambridge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before he took up his place in September 2024, Khattak discussed with the University the politically sensitive nature of his research and the risks that flow from it. Cambridge accepted him anyway. His work, according to his proposed supervisor Dr Thomas Jeffrey Miley, was distinction-level and “one of the strongest doctoral projects produced in the Department in recent years”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, in the space of a few weeks in late 2024, the following happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 30 November 2024, Khattak organised an online solidarity event for his imprisoned cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 3 December 2024<\/a>, residents of his postgraduate hall of residence reported two “strange blasts” that caused a near-complete electricity outage. Khattak states that evidence was concealed. Wolfson College took no follow-up action. Instead, the College terminated his accommodation contract, changed the locks on his room while he was abroad, and powered down the computer that held his research data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 21 December 2024, he received a specific and detailed message via X mentioning Cambridge by name. He reported it. He was told to call the police. The police told him that because he was abroad it was outside their jurisdiction, and later, once he was back, that no criminal threshold had been met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between February and May 2025<\/a>, without a proper explanation, Cambridge informed him he would not be permitted to progress to the doctoral stage of his PhD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In June 2025, Wolfson asked him to leave his accommodation for a second time. He lost all his belongings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By late 2025, the threats had become explicit. He was told he was “waiting for the bullet”. The messages referenced his passport number and other private details that no private person could plausibly have obtained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On 17 November 2025, he formally notified Cambridge. He heard nothing. On 15 December 2025, he wrote again. On 18 December 2025, the final day of his enrolment, he forwarded the whole correspondence to a College Tutor at Wolfson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later on 18 December he received his answer. His enrolment was over. The Universit, he was informed, no longer owed him any duty of protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pattern that will not go away<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Two months earlier, Khattak’s barrister Ben Keith<\/a> had already written to Cambridge arguing that the University’s conduct was unlawful and violated Khattak’s rights under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The letter was ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In February 2026, the Committee for Academic Freedom wrote to Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice with six questions: Did the University treat Khattak’s notifications as engaging the new statutory duties? What assessment was made of the chilling effect on his lawful research? What measures had been considered? Who was responsible for triage and escalation? What contemporaneous records existed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost seven months on, the questions have not been answered. Cambridge, our regular readers will not be surprised to learn, has produced no response.The Vice Chancellor has been silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compare this with the response Cambridge described in the Guardian, in August 2026, to threats received by the late Professor Jason Arday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n As soon as Professor Arday shared concerns with the faculty a number of enhanced security measures were urgently taken in response, with the advice and continuing engagement of university security and the police. These include the installation of panic alarms, screening of emails, post and packages, upgraded CCTV and revised security protocols.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cambridge, therefore, does possess ample mechanisms for screening mail, upgrading CCTV, installing alarms, and adapting security arrangements around a specific individual under threat. It simply chose not to make them available for Khattak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What Cambridge’s own academics have said<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n His supervisors all have high praise for Roshaan’s intellectual abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at Cambridge and a member of Khattak’s proposed supervisory team, wrote to University officials and the Office for Students: “Cambridge University is deeply imbricated with the financial and political forces that sadly shape our society right now, and you are not wrong to sense that outside pressures have contributed to this situation.”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Associate Professor of Sociology and Khattak’s proposed PhD supervisor, wrote in March 2026: “The circumstances surrounding Roshaan’s case smell of the university bowing to pressure and being complicit in international repression of dissident voices. The department pursued a policy with Roshaan that is virtually unprecedented in my experience of over a decade and a half of teaching here at Cambridge.<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, in a later letter: “Roshaan is an exceptionally strong scholar. He is one of the strongest students I have taught and supervised. His work is original, intellectually ambitious, politically and sociologically important and pursued with unusual seriousness.<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clive Stafford Smith, the human rights lawyer who had agreed to serve as Khattak’s external supervisor, put the matter to the University in terms that will interest anyone following the wider Cambridge story: “Where a researcher is documenting allegations of atrocity crimes and is targeted as a result, institutional choices that assist attempts to silence that research are not merely unfortunate, they raise questions of facilitative complicity.<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n What we notice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The bureaucratic vocabulary is by now familiar to readers of this website: capacity, protocol risk assessment, well-being framework, safe-guarding review.The technical language of institutional care, deployed to conceal the political fact that a threatened researcher was progressively stripped of his accommodation, his data, his supervisor, his doctoral progression, and finally his enrolment, and told at the end of it all that the University owed him no protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are told that further information may soon emerge concerning the resources Cambridge has allegedly deployed to build a case against Khattak, including the reported involvement of external advisers at considerable expense. We will not repeat those allegations here until they can be substantiated on the record. We note only that a member of staff is reported to have raised concerns through appropriate channels, and that we look forward to seeing what emerges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why this matters beyond one student<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Balochistan is not a subject Cambridge is going to comment on lightly. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through it. Cambridge has received tens of millions of pounds in China-linked funding in recent years. Its \u00a3200 million TusPark venture at the Cambridge Science Park is a Tsinghua Holdings vehicle. Several senior academics have reportedly told Khattak, in as many words, that.topics deemed politically sensitive \u2014 Uyghur persecution, China’s overseas footprint \u2014 are off-limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a principle here that will interest even those readers who could not readily place Balochistan on a map. It is this: if a student’s lawful academic research can be effectively obstructed because it attracts threats, political pressure, or discomfort from influential external actors, then tomorrow the same treatment can be extended to any Cambridge academic whose scholarship troubles a powerful interest. The Employment Tribunal ruling in favour of Professor Wyn Evans<\/a> in August 2026 established that the University does retaliate against those who raise inconvenient concerns. The Roshaan Khattak case suggests it also retaliates against those who become inconvenient by being threatened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cambridge, the correspondent who brought this case to our attention observes, should not have to experience another tragedy before these questions are confronted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Committee for Academic Freedom<\/a>, Index on Censorship<\/a>, Freedom House<\/a>, ARTICLE 19<\/a>, the National Union of Journalists<\/a>, Amnesty International<\/a>, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders<\/a>, the former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP<\/a>, and the signatories of a cross-party Early Day Motion<\/a> have all raised concerns with the University. The University has, to date, replied to none of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We suspect this is not because the Vice-Chancellor and the President of Wolfson have been too busy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We suspect it is because, once you begin to answer the questions, you have to answer all of them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Roshaan Khattak is an\u00a0exiled Pakistani documentary filmmaker. Until\u00a018 December 2025, he was a postgraduate researcher at Wolfson College, Cambridge, working on enforced disappearances and state killings in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan through which the\u00a0China-Pakistan Economic Corridor also happens to run. His\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t