ISLAMABAD: Baloch activists who have been staging a sit-in in Islamabad since last month against alleged rights abuses in southwestern Balochistan called off their demonstration on Tuesday, vowing to continue protests in their home province.
Led by 30-year-old Dr. Mahrang Baloch, ethnic Baloch protesters marched 1,600 kilometers from the southwestern Turbat district and arrived in Islamabad in December. The march was ignited by the November killing of a 24-year-old man, Balach Baloch, in the custody of the provincial Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD). The CTD had said Balach Baloch had links with militants and was involved in attacks in the region. His family and protesters say he was killed in a staged shootout by police, who deny the charge.
Political leaders, human rights activists and families of victims have for decades spoken against killings in Balochistan by security agencies in staged encounters, a practice where officials claim the victim was killed in a gunfight though they were summarily executed. Authorities deny involvement in such incidents.
On Tuesday, protest leader Sammi Deen Baloch of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) said the group was calling off its sit-in, being held outside the National Press Club (NPC) in Islamabad since Dec. 22.
“Now we have decided to take back the Baloch protest camp to Quetta [capital of Balochistan] where we will organize a public rally to start phase five of the protest,” she told Arab News, adding that Baloch protesters would now stage demonstrations across the province.
When asked why the protest was being called off, Sammi Deen Baloch said the government had not taken the demands of the Baloch protesters “seriously.”
“Unfortunately, the government used different tactics to disturb our peaceful protest, instead of hearing our demands,” she said. “The state attempted to counter our protest for Baloch missing persons and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan.”
Speaking to participants of the sit-in earlier today, Tuesday, Dr. Mahrang Baloch said the central government in Pakistan could have used the protests as an opportunity to solve Balochistan’s issues but instead “suppressed” demonstrators.
“We will take the accounts of the injustices [suffered] by Islamabad and relay them to every household in Balochistan,” the protest leader said, vowing to stand up to the state’s “inhumane” measures against the people of Balochistan.
Baloch became an activist when she was still a teenager after what she says were the enforced disappearances and custodial deaths of her father and brother.
The calling off of the protest comes days after Balochistan’s Caretaker Information Minister Jan Achakzai warned that “hostile intelligence agencies” could attack Baloch protesters in Islamabad to create a “law-and-order situation” ahead of national polls. He did not specify any specific agencies but Pakistan has long accused India, Afghanistan and Iran of stoking trouble in neighboring Balochistan. All three deny the charge.
Balochistan has for decades been the site of a low-level insurgency by separatists fighting for a more equitable share of the resources of the mineral-rich province or outright independence from Pakistan. The remote province is Pakistan’s largest by land mass but most impoverished by almost all social and economic indicators.
