The atrocities inflicted on the Baloch people, including the disappearance of Baloch students, human rights activists, educators, professionals, and ordinary working people and tribesmen, without ever charging them with any crime, are crimes against humanity. The disappearance of individuals like Dr. Deen Mohammad, Zakir Baloch, Zahid Baloch, and hundreds of others, followed by the dumping of their mutilated bodies with ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ carved on them, is proof of these crimes.
The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), which operates as an officially-sanctioned death squad, has recently adopted a tactic of killing individuals held in custody in staged encounters. This phenomenon has further intensified crimes against the Baloch, who have been brutally terrorized and repressed since 1948. The Baloch nation can no longer be expected to suffer silently.
Due to the absence of the rule of law in the country, and the judiciary being as ineffective as a discarded dishrag, the commissions formed, such as “The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearance”, are meant to whitewash the state’s organized and systematic policy of enforced disappearances. They also seek to intimidate and harass Baloch women who seek justice for their disappeared family members. These commissions have only succeeded in bullying Baloch complainants and misleading the general public about the issue of Baloch missing persons.
The Commission for Missing Baloch Students formed under Sardar Akhtar Mengal has also proven to be ineffective, as its report has been ignored. Students continue to be picked up in Islamabad and Balochistan with impunity, which proves that these commissions are worthless and have only been created to defuse rising resentment. These commissions do not have the trust of the affected people who have seen too many of these worthless entities.
The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), which operates as an officially-sanctioned death squad, has recently adopted a tactic of killing individuals held in custody in staged encounters. This phenomenon has further intensified crimes against the Baloch, who have been brutally terrorized and repressed since 1948. The Baloch nation can no longer be expected to suffer silently.
When the judiciary is helpless and the commissions are worthless, the question arises: what should the people do? They cannot be expected to let their loved ones remain at the mercy of the state, which continues to abduct them without even stating or proving what crimes they were accused of. Naturally, the only recourse available to them is to protest against the injustices perpetrated against them in Balochistan. These protests are unacceptable to the state and are either barred, blocked, or brutally dispersed, or misrepresented as part of an enemy agenda. The victims are stigmatized, and people in general blame them instead of the perpetrators of the crimes against humanity.
The Baloch have long protested peacefully for the recovery of their loved ones but have faced state’s highhandedness in response. Mama Abdul Qadeer Baloch, whose son Jalil Reki was a victim of disappearance and extrajudicial killing in November 2011, has been sitting outside Press Clubs for more than 5000 days, demanding recovery of the missing persons and an end to extra-judicial killings, but he is ignored.
Mama Qadeer, along with Farzana Majeed and female members of missing persons’ families, marched from Quetta to Karachi on October 27, 2013, and then onwards from Karachi to Islamabad, reaching there on March 1, 2014. This 106-day-long march was traversed on foot in difficult conditions, as the government put up obstacles, both social and physical, to deter the marchers. Despite the odds, these brave marchers accomplished a truly historic feat. I was a part of this historical march for 26 days. The public became aware of the issue of missing persons, but the state ignored it, and the disappearances continued.
The Baloch protests have long gone unheard
When Zahid Baloch, the Chairman of BSO-Azad, was picked up in Quetta on March 18, 2014, with Asad Baloch, the organization, under Banuk Karima Baloch, decided to wait in hope that they would be released. However, after realizing that they would not be released, they started a hunger strike in Karachi on April 22, 2014. After 46 days, at the persuasion of civil society, Baloch elders, and myself, the emaciated hunger striker Latif Johar ended his strike on June 6, 2014. This protest also went unheeded.
There was a protest in Islamabad in February 2021 by Sammi Deen, Haseba Qambarani, and other affected persons. After a long delay, the then Minister of so-called Human Rights, Shireen Mazari, met them and promised a meeting with the then Prime Minister Imran Khan, which led to the protest ending. However, the meeting with Imran Khan was fruitless, and the grievances of the protesters were not addressed. Thankfully, Haseeba’s cousin and brother were eventually released.
The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearance is meant to whitewash the state’s organized and systematic policy of enforced disappearances. It also seeks to intimidate and harass Baloch women who seek justice for their disappeared family members.
Killings in fake “encounters”
In response to the kidnapping and killing of Lt Col Laiq of the Pakistan Army on July 12, 2022, near Ziarat, 9 Baloch men who were already in state custody were killed in a fake encounter. The affected Baloch families started a protest in the Quetta Red Zone, which continued for 50 days and ended on assurances from ministers in Islamabad. However, nothing positive was done to address the grievances of the protesters.
On the night of November 22, 2023, the CTD claimed to have killed four terrorists in an encounter on Pasni Road in Turbat and recovered a large number of weapons. Among the four killed was Balach Mola Bakhsh, who was picked up on October 29, 2023. On November 21, a case of weapon possession was registered against him, and he was produced in court. His bail hearing was scheduled for the 23rd, but the CTD preempted it by killing him in a fake encounter along with three others who were already in custody.
The family, relatives, and friends protested on the 25th with Balach’s body outside the sessions court. The court ordered that an FIR be registered against the CTD, but the police refused to do so. The protest gained strength as thousands of women and men joined it. These were the largest protests seen in the area, and the number of protesters kept increasing. The family eventually buried the body after 7 days. The protest continued to expand, and after two weeks, on December 5th, they ended the protest in Turbat and decided to hold a sit-in in Quetta.
The latest Baloch awakening is a response to the Pakistani state’s repression of the Baloch which has continued unabated for over 70 years
Throughout their journey to Quetta, people came out in droves to show support and condemn the injustices against the Baloch. They reached Quetta on the 11th and began the sit-in. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee then decided to move the protest to Islamabad and left on the 15th evening, passing through Kohlu, Dera Ghazi Khan, Taunsa Sharif, and other cities, and finally reaching Islamabad on the 20th.
On the 21st, which also marked Banuk Karima’s 3rd death anniversary, the police unleashed a brutal assault on the protesters with batons, teargas, and water cannons, and arrested all of them. In the lockups, they beat up the women protesters as well. After widespread outcry, the women were released, but they were forced to board a bus to send them back to Quetta, which the conscientious drivers refused to comply with. The boys and men were kept in jail awaiting bail, as if peacefully protesting was a crime.
Mistreatment meted out to Baloch protestors in Islamabad
The treatment of Baloch protesters in Islamabad was criminal and shameful, for which the caretakers are responsible and will have to answer someday. It remains to be seen how some supposedly liberal individuals like Murtaza Solangi will face the people once he is out of the cabinet.
The brutality was perpetrated to break the spirit of the protestors, but these souls have seen enough trauma and anguish to be deterred by this physical violence. The protestors are led by the indomitable, brave, dedicated, and eloquent Mahrang Baloch. As her spirit has not flagged, neither has the spirit of others who are equally brave and dedicated. The caretakers and those before them, ad infinitum, are not in any way friends of Baloch. If they were, the repression would have been replaced by recognition of rights at some stage.
To add insult to injury, some journalists, while interviewing Mahrang, confronted her with the repeated question, “Do you condemn the BLA, BLF?”. This was done to intimidate her and present the protestors as supporters of militancy in Balochistan. However, the cool-headed Mahrang eloquently countered the journalists’ aggressiveness with logical answers. Sadly, many journalists come to protestors at the behest of their mentors in the establishment to malign the Baloch and their peaceful protest, so that people may refrain from supporting them. Some Islamabad journalists are notorious for this kind of attitude. When the VBMP Long March reached Islamabad on 1st March 2014, the same type of questions were thrown at the participants, and they had been forcefully answered by Farzana Majeed, sister of Zakir Majeed, who has been missing since 2009.
This sort of bullying and attempted intimidation of peaceful protestors by Pakistani journalists just adds to the already infamous reputation of the press and media of Pakistan, which incidentally also has the largest number of journalists killed for presenting the truth. These bullying journalists besmirch the noble name of the truthful journalists and should be called out and exposed as enemies of truth and servants of the establishment.
People unaware of Balochistan’s political dynamics are surprised that the Baloch protests are being traumatized in Islamabad at a time when a politician from Balochistan is serving as the PM. They fail to understand that Anwar Kakar is the PM not because he cares for the anguish and pain of Baloch, but because he is expected to help his mentors in the establishment inflict more pain on the Baloch. He was installed there not for any services to the Baloch, but because he has faithfully served the establishment, supported their injustices, and helped malign those Baloch who struggle for their rights.
We need to understand that this awakening is not something out of the blue. It is the result of the Pakistani state’s unabated repression of the Baloch that has continued for over 70 years and the ceaseless resistance to these injustices by the Baloch. The blood and tears shed over the years have given birth to this unparalleled wave of protest from Balochistan.
Repression has given birth to the fearlessness of Karima Baloch, who blazed the trail for Baloch women to come out and speak out fearlessly against the injustices and for the rights of the Baloch. She was an icon in her life and even more so after her tragic death. She inspires Baloch women to resist oppression of all sorts. Mahrang Baloch, who is now the face of peaceful resistance, is also a product of state repression. Her father, Ghaffar Langove, was abducted by the State, and his mutilated body was thrown in July 2011.
Sammi Deen, whose father Dr. Deen Mohammad has been missing since 2009, is also the undying spirit behind this awakening. There are so many unnamed Mahrangs and Sammis among the Baloch women who strive and struggle for Baloch rights and the recovery of their loved ones who remain missing, and their fates unknown.
The Baloch women and children have suffered unbearably from injustices, and the Pakistani State and its caretaker government decided to inflict more pain on them in Islamabad, where they came in hope of redemption from their woes. What happened in Islamabad to the Baloch children, women, and men on December 21 and the continuing harassment of the protesters after that, will not be easily forgiven or forgotten. It will only strengthen the people’s resolve to struggle against a callous and heartless state.
Those hoping to break the Baloch spirit should understand that the more they repress, the more we will resist. The more you repress, the more Karimas, Sammis, and Mahrangs you will have to face, and it is you who will eventually be defeated.
The writer has been associated with the Baloch movement since 1971. He tweets @mmatalpur and can be reached at mmatalpur@gmail.com.
