Pakistan has been swamped with protests over enforced disappearances and killings of Baloch people, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee shared the details on Wednesday.
“From Quetta to Islamabad to Karachi, Baloch families are sitting on roads, in heat, in rain, only because the state has left them no other path. Their demand is simple: Stop enforced disappearances. Stop killing our children. Release the missing,” the BYC wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
BYC shared details of protests taking place in Quetta, Islamabad and Karachi.
It shared that in Quetta, on August 5, the mother of 17-year-old Ehsan Syed, shot dead by Pakistani forces near Lak Pass, Mastung, set up a protest camp outside Quetta Press Club.
BYC noted that for over 10 days, she sat under the sun, demanding justice for her son. However, she faced harassment, intimidation, and surveillance.
“On August 15, Quetta police arrested her inside the protest camp — along with her little daughter. Both were illegally detained, tortured, and later deported back to Mastung,” BYC added.
In Islamabad, on June 14, families of detained BYC leaders, along with enforcedly disappeared victim families, tried to stage a sit-in outside National Press Club, BYC said. It further noted that the federal police blocked them, using abuse and threats to silence their peaceful protest.
According to BYC, the families continued with their demands, namely the release of their leaders, ending enforced disappearances and stopping the extrajudicial killings in Balochistan.
In Karachi, outside the Karachi Press Club, the family of Zahid Baloch, a 25-year-old student of International Relations at Karachi University, continued with their sit-in, BYC shared in its post.
Enforced disappearances in Balochistan have been a grave human rights issue for decades, rooted in the region’s long-standing political and ethnic tensions. For the last several decades, Baloch nationalists, students, activists, and intellectuals have been targeted, allegedly by state security agencies, for demanding greater autonomy or rights.
(ANI)