By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Lawmaker Ali Musa Gilani spent much of Sunday on social media batting back claims that he had been expelled from the United Arab Emirates, calling the reports fabricated and demanding that authorities investigate the account that first circulated them.
Gilani, a member of the National Assembly and the son of former prime minister and current Senate Chairperson Yousaf Raza Gilani, posted a series of denials on X after a former government economist shared a claim that Gilani had been deported by UAE authorities — a charge that quickly ricocheted across Pakistani social media before the original post was deleted.
“I was not deported at all, it’s fake news,” Gilani wrote. “I travelled as per schedule and returned as per schedule.”
The claim had originated with Nadeem Haque, a former vice chancellor of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, who used the reported deportation as a springboard to lament what he described as the diminished standing of the Pakistani passport and, more broadly, the country’s democratic institutions. His post drew sharp engagement before it disappeared from the platform.
Gilani — who posted a photograph he said was taken during his recent trip — was not satisfied with a simple rebuttal. He tagged the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency, the Federal Investigation Agency, and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, and called for action against Haque’s account, which he said was “maligning the image of Pakistan and its relations with the UAE.”
“He should prove I was deported from Dubai,” Gilani wrote.
After the post was taken down, Gilani acknowledged the deletion but pressed further, urging those who had shared or amplified the claim to remove their own posts and comments. His tone shifted from confrontational to something closer to civic instruction. “We should not carry hatred forward, nor should we use every opportunity to defame our beloved country, its passport, or our national identity,” he wrote, going on to praise Interior Minister Naqvi and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar for securing a visa-free entry arrangement for holders of Pakistani official and diplomatic passports.
Haque, for his part, posted his own account of the exchange, noting that Gilani had denied the deportation and had shared a photograph from Dubai as evidence — while pointing out that the photo carried no visible date or timestamp.
The episode unfolded against a backdrop of broader anxiety in Pakistan over reports that its citizens have been facing deportations from the UAE in recent weeks. The Interior Ministry moved earlier this month to tamp down those reports, issuing a statement that no “country- or sect-specific” expulsions from any country, including the UAE, were underway. The ministry’s denial came after multiple media outlets reported a pattern of Pakistanis being expelled from the Emirates without clear explanation.
The volume of emergency exit documents being issued by Pakistan’s consulate in the UAE has also drawn scrutiny. At a weekly Foreign Office briefing on May 7, spokesperson Tahir Andrabi was pressed on what officials described as an unusually high number of such travel documents being processed. Andrabi attributed the increase largely to immigration status violations and other legal infractions — stopping well short of characterizing the situation as a systematic or politically motivated expulsion campaign.
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