There is a palpable sense of anger among people of Balochistan, says fact finding report

The latest report by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) notes that there is no respite in rights abuse which has led to palpable sense of anger among the people of Balochistan

May 03, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch
Photo via Human Rights Commission of Pakistan

A fact-finding report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a non-governmental body, has found that the repeated instances of rights abuse in Balochistan province have led to a palpable sense of anger among its populace. Many residents have referred to Balochistan as “a colony of the state,” the report noted.

On April 26, the rights body released a detailed report titled Balochistan’s Struggle for Hope, discussing the military’s alleged involvement in political manipulation in Balochistan, harassment of political activists, economic exclusion, enforced disappearances, intense securitization in the Makran division, and shrinking press freedom along with the plight of minority groups (such as Qaddiyanis, Shia Hazaras and Christians) in the region.

“Pakistan is experiencing the deepest crisis of the strength of our institutions from which respect for people’s rights emanates,” chairperson Hina Jilani, while launching the annual report on April 26, stated.

At least 2,000 women had gathered in Gwadar in December 2021, according to the report, demanding basic amenities for marginalized Balochis. The “reasonable demands” raised in the series of protests organized by the Haq Do Tehreek (Rights Movement), were largely overlooked, the report added. The longstanding “demand for access to healthcare, electricity and clean drinking water and an end to enforced disappearances should be met,” it recommended.

The report further noted that a number of the activists (including Mahrang Baloch and Seema Batool) who have been actively campaigning for the enforced disappearances issue are being labeled as “traitors,” who are “peddling a Western-funded agenda” and have faced “surveillance and profiling” by the state apparatus. 

“(Activist) Mahrang Baloch has herself faced the brunt of the rights abuse, her father was abducted in 2009; his mutilated body surfaced two years later. Afterwards her brother was also abducted in 2017,” the report said.

While quoting the activists, the report suggested that “the families of missing persons were commonly harassed and coerced into withdrawing their FIRs or court cases and ceasing public protests.”

In the recent past, the rights body, HRCP has observed a change in tactics with political dissidents, journalists, students and rights activists being disappeared for short duration followed by a string of fresh disappearances in a pattern. At least 500 Baloch persons were forcibly disappeared in 2022 alone, as per the estimates of Voice of Baloch Missing Persons, which the report noted couldn’t be independently verified. 

The report mentions a local journalist saying that the establishment wants to suppress the dissenting voices in the restive region by releasing one missing person on a given day and allegedly “disappearing another four the next day.” Between 2020 to 2022, at least four journalists were killed, the report said.

A university student from Turbat (whose cousin was subjected to enforced disappearance) was quoted as saying by the report that the fear compelled many others to maintain silence on the issue. “My cousin was picked up and released after more than three years. The risk that any one of us could be next has made us fearful of attending university at all,” the student told the commission anonymously. 

On April 26, the co-chair of HRCP, Asad Butt cautioned that the issue of missing persons will take Pakistan down a road from which it cannot return: “Enforced disappearances violate the right to fair trial and due process, freedom from torture and the right to security,” Butt remarked.