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Time of India
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Scorching heat, unyielding resolve: Baloch activists risk lives in hunger strike amid Pakistan genocide
Baloch activists in Turbat are holding a hunger strike. They protest against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee demands the release of detained leaders. A separate protest blocks a highway in Mastung. Demonstrators seek the return of Azizur Rehman. Families fear police action. Protesters document abuses for international bodies. They seek human rights intervention in Balochistan. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Activists from the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) are on a hunger strike in Turbat, Pakistan, protesting against enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and the illegal detention of their strike, now in its second day, is taking place in extreme temperatures of nearly 50°C on Thursday outside the Turbat Press Club, as reported by The Balochistan BYC is demanding the immediate release of their leaders who have been detained by the authorities. The activists are calling for an end to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan."Despite the sweltering heat of 50°C, members of the Baloch nation are bravely joining the hunger strike," the BYC stated in a social media post. "Their message is unmistakable: safeguard and rescue BYC leaders and unite against injustice."In a post on X, BYC Kech chapter stated, "Kech, Turbat - 20 June 2025 Day 2 of BYC's hunger strike camp in front of Press Club Turbat. For the 3rd time, traffic accidents damaged the camp. If anyone gets injured, police authorities will be held responsible."In another post on X, BYC Kech chapter stated, "Turbat, Kech - 20 June 2025 Day 2 of the hunger strike camp continued outside the Press Club Turbat. Despite the blistering 50°C heat, members of the Baloch nation are courageously participating in the hunger strike.""Their message is clear: protect and save BYC leaders, and stand united against injustice," it protest camp has experienced three instances of obstruction since its inception, which they claim were either initiated or facilitated by police, The Balochistan Post reported."For the third time, traffic accidents have damaged the camp. If anyone gets hurt, police officials will be held accountable," the group announced, sharing video evidence from the roadside the sit-in, the BYC's Kech chapter reaffirmed its primary demands: the immediate release of detained leaders, the recovery of forcibly disappeared individuals, an end to what it described as the "Baloch genocide," and the filing of FIRs in cases of "fake encounters."The organisation encouraged families of those who have been forcibly disappeared or killed in "fake encounters" to visit the protest site and share their accounts. "Your voice is significant," it per the BYC, evidence of "enforced disappearances" and "extrajudicial killings" is being meticulously documented at the camp to be presented to courts and international human rights group also accused ongoing police interference and a lack of security measures as part of a wider strategy by state institutions to undermine peaceful protests. Nonetheless, they declared they would not "succumb to pressure" and promised that the demonstration would persist regardless of the BYC called on international human rights organisations to take immediate notice of what it termed "state atrocities" in Balochistan, including enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and judicial injustices, urging Pakistan to adhere to its constitutional and international legal in the Mastung district of Balochistan, a separate protest reached its 12th hour on Friday, with demonstrators obstructing the Karachi-Quetta highway at Ghulam Parhenz in response to the alleged enforced disappearance of a man named Azizur to The Balochistan Post, the sit-in, which includes women, children, and elderly citizens, has completely halted traffic. Authorities have reportedly made two unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the victim's family has insisted on continuing the protest until Rehman is safely returned. They also claimed that the district administration has threatened to use batons if the blockade is not lifted."If any harm, either physical or material, comes to the protesters, the responsibility will lie with the Deputy Commissioner of Mastung, the Assistant Commissioner, the DSP, and the SHO," the family warned in a statement.
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First Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
Baloch must embrace civil disobedience to resist Pakistan's repression
From Gandhi's Salt March in colonial India to the sit-ins led by Black students in segregated America, history shows that justice has always advanced when ordinary people chose civil disobedience over silent suffering read more What options are left when every legal path is blocked, when even mourning becomes a punishable act, and a mother clutching her son's photograph is seen as a danger? When the courts, human rights commissions, and press clubs all turn their backs, what remains is not hope, but a quiet determination to endure and to resist. The past year has made one thing clear to the oppressed Baloch nation: the state has no interest in dialogue, justice, or reform. The crackdown on the Baloch Yakjehti Committee; the arrests of peaceful activists like Mahrang Baloch, Sibghat Ullah Shahji, and Beebagr Baloch; the brutal response to the long march to Islamabad and the Baloch National Gathering in Gwadar—none of this was accidental. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It is part of a long-standing campaign to silence and intimidate Baloch voices through brute force. These were not militants, but students, lawyers, doctors and families searching for their missing loved ones. They carried placards, chanted slogans and held photographs. In return, they faced repression, arrests, baton charges, tear gas and complete indifference from the very institutions meant to uphold their rights. In March 2025, in Balochistan's capital Quetta, families of the missing came to the streets alongside young activists to demand answers. These were families who had spent years searching for their loved ones—sons, daughters, and brothers who had disappeared without a trace. They called for the release of detained members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee and others held without charge. The state responded not with dialogue or compassion but with violence. Pakistani forces opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing three children in broad daylight. Those who spoke out were arrested, and those who stood in solidarity were harassed and intimidated. Grieving women were dragged and manhandled in the streets, while Mahrang Baloch, a leading voice of the movement, was taken into custody along with others in a wave of unlawful detentions. In a political order where peaceful dissent is met with such force, mass civil disobedience is no longer just a right; it becomes a moral duty. And now, as Baloch women and sisters themselves are being abducted, harassed and even killed, as they were in Awaran, Kech and Quetta, the red line has been crossed once again. This time, the response cannot follow the same path. It must take the shape of mass civil disobedience. A refusal to continue participating in a system that criminalises identity and grief. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The Baloch must now break the illusion of normalcy that the state depends on. Let teachers resign until the disappeared are returned or at least acknowledged. Let bureaucrats leave their offices and stop lending their labour to a government that erases their families. Let students refuse to sit in classrooms where their accents turn them into suspects. Let shopkeepers shut their stores, transport come to a halt and the roads empty. The state's authority should be met with collective and determined withdrawal. And let the Baloch people march again, not to courtrooms that offer no justice or press clubs that refuse to speak the truth, but to the gates of military cantonments and intelligence offices, where so many of the disappeared were last seen, where countless others continue to face inhumane torture. Let them stand before the institutions that built this terror and say, 'Abduct or kill us too. You abducted our sons and our daughters. You killed our mothers. We will not live half-lives anymore.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This is not some distant ideal or romantic notion. It has happened before, and it can happen again. From Gandhi's Salt March in colonial India to the sit-ins led by Black students in segregated America, history shows that justice has always advanced when ordinary people chose civil disobedience over silent suffering. When the law serves only power, disobedience becomes the highest expression of civic duty. Gandhi did not defeat the British with rifles; he broke their hold by daring them to arrest him, knowing thousands more would rise in his place. The Civil Rights Movement did not end segregation through appeasement but through the unbearable moral clarity of young people being hosed down for trying to go to school. The resistance that authoritarian states fear most is not violent—it is moral, disciplined, and impossible to ignore. Pakistan may fear militants in the mountains, but what it fears even more is unarmed, organised resistance. It fears a protest that refuses to disappear, one that grows stronger each time it is attacked. It fears women like Mahrang Baloch, who stand before cameras and say, 'We are not asking for charity; we are demanding justice. Stop your barbarity in Balochistan and give us answers.' And it fears thousands like her—people who carry no weapons, only the weight of memory and the strength to keep speaking when silence is safer. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The state has made it clear, time and again, that it has no tolerance for peaceful dissent. This is exactly why the leaders of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee were targeted—not because they took up arms or incited violence, but because they refused to be silent. They were not punished for insurrection but for daring to organise within the bounds of the law. They were not arrested for agitation but for remembering the disappeared. When a state begins to treat remembrance itself as a threat, when mourning is labelled as sedition, it becomes painfully clear that the era of appeals, petitions, and commissions is over. Civil disobedience offers a way forward that does not rely on violence but on collective courage and dignity. Imagine mothers standing in quiet rows outside Pakistani military camps, holding nothing but photographs of their missing children. Imagine students walking out of universities in protest, not for privilege, but because their language or surname has marked them as suspects. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Imagine entire neighbourhoods marching together to the gates of military installations with a clear message: 'We will not cooperate in our own erasure.' This is not disorder or chaos; it is disciplined, purposeful resistance. It is the reclaiming of moral ground in a system built on denial and repression. The question is no longer whether the Baloch should resist but how to resist in a way that is effective, principled, and enduring. The answer lies in resistance that is nonviolent, collective, and unwavering. Continuing to beg a state that responds only with indiscriminate firing, tear gas, batons, and silence is a slow and suffocating death. Mass disobedience is never easy. It requires discipline, sacrifice, and unity that reaches across cities, communities, and generations, from Awaran to Kech, Gwadar to Quetta, Panjgur to Pasni. Yet it remains the only form of protest that carries both moral legitimacy and the power to shake the foundations of repression. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Let the state be forced to choose between acknowledging its violence or exposing its fear of peace. Let it come to understand that if it continues to criminalise grief, then grief will grow beyond its control. Let it face the reality of Baloch mothers who no longer beg but who will not walk away either. And let it be clear that if the state insists on erasing the Baloch, then the Baloch will step away from the very system that depends on their silence and cooperation. This is what settles in when people have tried everything—waited outside courts, knocked on every door, held up photographs, but nothing changed. When silence and oppression are all the state offers, the only thing left is to say no, together. This is not a call to destroy but a call to sit down, to disrupt the system peacefully and refuse to be pushed aside any longer. And if the state sees even that as a threat, then let it do what it has done to so many before. Let it abduct us too. Let it kill us too. But we won't be silent, and we won't fade away like our lives don't matter. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Dilshad Baluch is a journalist from Pakistan's Balochistan Province and a graduate of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @DilshadBaluch. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Arab News
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Family of detained Baloch rights activist moves Supreme Court against her arrest
ISLAMABAD: The family of a detained Pakistani Baloch rights activists, Dr. Mahrang Baloch, filed a petition in Pakistan's Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to overturn a provincial court ruling that upheld her arrest under public order laws, according to a local media report. Baloch, a physician and a civil society activists, has been held at Quetta's Hudda District Jail since March 22 after she participated in protests following a separatist militant attack on a passenger train in Balochistan. She was arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law, a move her supporters described as part of a broader crackdown on nonviolent dissent in the restive province. The petition, filed by her sister, argues that the detention is arbitrary and aimed at silencing peaceful activism. 'Nadia Baloch, the sister of Dr. Mahrang Baloch, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to set aside the April 15 order of the Balochistan High Court that rejected the plea against her detention under the Maintenance of Public Order,' the English-language newspaper Dawn quoted from the petition. The detained activist, who leads the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, also published a letter from prison in the US-based Time magazine this week, in which she asserted that 'speaking up for justice is not a crime.' Pakistani authorities have accused Baloch of promoting the narrative of separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in public. However, her letter in the American magazine maintained the officials had not provided any evidence of her links with BLA or any other militant group while criticizing the authorities for blurring the line between militancy and peaceful protest. Earlier this year, the Balochistan High Court dismissed Baloch's initial challenge to her detention, advising her to seek administrative remedies instead of judicial relief. Her sister's petition has now asked the apex court to suspend that ruling and review whether constitutional protections such as habeas corpus were ignored in the previous judicial decision. The Supreme Court has yet to announce when it will take up the case for hearing.
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Two Baloch civilians killed by state-backed death squads; rights groups call for justice
In two separate incidents of extrajudicial killings in Balochistan, two Baloch civilians, Yasir Baloch and Musafir Baloch, were reportedly killed by operatives of state-backed death squads in the Kech and Turbat regions, intensifying concerns among rights groups over the continued targeting of Baloch youth by Pakistsecurity forces and affiliated militias. On May 20, Yasir Baloch, son of Nasram Baloch and a resident of Geshkur, Tehsil Buleda in the Kech district, was shot and killed by members of a death squad allegedly backed by Pakistani forces. Yasir was working as a daily wage labourer in a local orchard and was the sole breadwinner for his family. His killing has left his relatives devastated and local communities alarmed, according to a statement by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. Ten days later, on May 30, another Baloch civilian, Musafir Baloch, son of Pir Dad and a resident of Apsar, Turbat, was similarly gunned down by operatives of a state-backed militia. Musafir, a professional driver, was reportedly targeted without cause. Also Read: At least 21 Palestinians killed while heading to Gaza aid hub, hospital says Both killings are part of what rights activists describe as a systematic campaign of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Over the past two decades, numerous cases have surfaced involving Baloch students, teachers, labourers, and ordinary civilians being abducted or killed by shadowy armed groups operating with impunity, allegedly under the protection or direct command of Pakistani security institutions. Live Events The killings of Yasir and Musafir have sparked renewed calls from human rights organisations for an international investigation into state-linked violence in the region. Advocacy groups urge the global community to press Islamabad to halt these unlawful killings and hold perpetrators accountable.
Arab News
29-05-2025
- General
- Arab News
International rights bodies write joint letter to Pakistani PM calling for releases of Baloch activists
ISLAMABAD: Amnesty International along with four other human rights organizations on Wednesday wrote to the Pakistani prime minister, calling for an end to the 'harassment and arbitrary detention' of Baloch human rights defenders (HRDs) exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, particularly in Balochistan province. The letter comes in the wake of Dr. Mahrang Baloch, one of the leading campaigners for the Baloch minority and the leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), and a number of other activists, being arrested in March on charges of terrorism, sedition and murder. Security forces are battling a growing insurgency in Balochistan, an impoverished province that borders Afghanistan and Iran. Rights groups say the violence has been countered with a severe crackdown that has swept up innocent people. Authorities deny heavy handedness. 'All five organizations — Amnesty International, Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), Front Line Defenders, International Federation for Human Rights, World Organization Against Torture — appeal to Pakistan's Prime Minister to release Baloch human rights defenders and end the crackdown on dissent in line with Pakistan's international human rights obligations,' Amnesty Internation said on X, sharing a copy of the joint letter. The joint letter called on the government to take the following steps: Immediately and unconditionally release all Baloch HRDs and their family members 'arbitrarily detained solely for peacefully exercising their rights in line with the right to liberty and safety'; drop all charges against them; pending their release, ensure the safety of HRDs and family members, including by sharing accurate information about their whereabouts, providing effective access to family members, legal counsel and medical treatment; conduct a thorough, impartial, effective and transparent investigation into the allegations of torture and mistreatment by Pakistani authorities of Baloch HRDs under detention; end the crackdown against HRDs, journalists, protesters and dissidents by ensuring their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are fully protected; cease all forms of reprisals against family members of HRDs; and conduct an 'effective, prompt, thorough and impartial investigation into the unlawful use of force' against protesters including Dr. Baloch on March 21 in Quetta and bring those suspected of responsibility to justice through fair trials. Activists say in the crackdown against militancy in Balochistan, authorities have harassed and even carried out extrajudicial killings of Baloch civilians. Pakistani authorities reject the 'baseless allegations.' A dozen UN experts called on Pakistan in March to immediately release Baloch rights defenders, including Dr. Baloch, and to end the repression of their peaceful protests. UN special rapporteur for human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said she was 'disturbed by reports of further mistreatment in prison.' Balochistan is the site of a long-running separatist movement, with insurgent groups accusing the state of unfairly exploiting Balochistan's rich gas and mineral resources. The federal and provincial governments deny this, saying they are spending billions of rupees on the uplift of the province's people.
