Hania Aamir slams lack of accountability after police action against families of Pakistani sailors

Hania Aamir has spoken out against what she described as a recurring, distinctly Pakistani pattern of moving from one tragedy to another without resolution, after a video began circulating of police action at a sit-in in Karachi.

The video, shared on the actor's Instagram story, shows police disrupting a sit-in held at Sharea Faisal a day ago by family members of Pakistani sailors who have been held hostage by Somali pirates since April this year.

Aamir called the pattern "deeply frightening," writing that accountability tends to disappear somewhere in the cycle between one crisis and the next.

Photo: HaniaAmir/Instagram

She went on to question how much more the public is "expected to witness" before real change follows.

Aamir's story came a day after some of the sailors' family members said they had been briefly detained by police on the morning of a planned march. Police maintained they had only "engaged" with the protesters in an effort to get them to vacate their site near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs liaison office, and denied using force to disperse them.

The sit-in is the latest in a string of protests over the past five months demanding the government secure the sailors' release, none of which has produced significant progress.

Aamir is not the only Pakistani celebrity to have spoken up for the sailors. Mahira Khan, Sabeena Farooq and Talha Anjum have also publicly called for their safe recovery in recent months.

The Instagram story is consistent with Aamir's track record of using her platform, one of the largest in Pakistani entertainment with over 15 million followers, to weigh in on issues beyond her film and drama work. At a UK Parliament event last year, where she received the Star of Pakistan Award, she argued that "craft is craft, humanity is humanity" and that political differences should not stand in the way of it.

She has also been candid about personal struggles, writing at the start of this year that 2025 had given her "the absolute worst and the absolute best", and describing panic she said she had quietly worked through even while appearing composed on set.

Aamir was last seen on screen in Kabhi Main Kabhi Tum and is currently attached to Netflix's Jo Bachay Hain Sang Samait Lo, alongside Sanam Saeed, Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan.