ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government will engage with prominent Baloch rights activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch and her Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) movement provided it does not have an “ulterior motive,” the government’s spokesperson on legal affairs Aqeel Malik said this week.
Baloch has been a fierce critic of Pakistan’s powerful military, whom rights activists, politicians and families blame for enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the impoverished, southwestern Balochistan province. Security forces deny this.
The BYC, founded by Baloch in 2020, has organized several large protests in Balochistan and led marches to, and sit-ins in, the Pakistani federal capital, Islamabad, mainly against “enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings” which officials deny.
The military has a huge presence in Balochistan bordering Afghanistan and Iran, where insurgent groups have been fighting for a separate homeland for decades to win a larger share of benefits for the resource-rich province. The army has long run intelligence-based operations against insurgent groups, who have escalated attacks in recent months on the military and nationals from longtime ally China, which is building key projects in the region, including a port at Gwadar.
International rights bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as opposition political parties have also long highlighted enforced disappearances targeting students, activists, journalists and human rights defenders in Balochistan. The army says many of Balochistan’s so-called disappeared have links to separatists. Military spokespersons have also variously accused rights movements like the BYC of being “terrorist proxies.”
Speaking to Independent Urdu on Wednesday, Malik said there were “a few unanswered questions” related to Dr. Mahrang Baloch and the BYC.
“The reason is that she leads a big movement but no one knows who is backing or supporting it,” Malik said.
“This is a very important question. If her movement is truly for the rights of Balochistan, and there is no ulterior motive to it, then the government will definitely engage.”
The government’s spokesperson said the state should engage with all Pakistanis regardless of which Pakistani province they belong to.
“If there are any such factions, we will engage with them and are doing it already,” he said.
Malik’s comments come days after BYC’s prominent leader Sammi Deen Baloch said her group was open to engaging in direct talks with “those who have the power” to end human rights violations in Balochistan, when asked if the group would hold talks with the military.
“Those who have the authority to resolve our issues, whose voices are heard, they can be any person, any institution or any representative … we say that that empowered person should come forward,” she told Arab News in an interview when asked if her group was open to talks with the army.
Pakistan has seen a surge in militant attacks by separatist groups in Balochistan in recent months. More than 50 people, including security forces, were killed in August last year in a string of assaults in Balochistan that were claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, the province’s most prominent separatist outfit.
