QUETTA, Pakistan: Pakistan extended the detention of the most prominent rights activist of the Baloch minority for 30 days on Monday after she was charged with “terrorism,” “sedition” and “murder,” her lawyer told AFP.
Mahrang Baloch, 32, has long campaigned for the Baloch ethnic group, which claims it is targeted with harassment and extrajudicial killings in the Balochistan province. The state denies involvement.
She was detained on March 22 for 30 days but “the government has issued another notification ordering to detain her for 30 days more,” her lawyer Imran Baloch said.
A dozen UN experts called on Pakistan in March to immediately release Baloch rights defenders, including Mahrang, and to end the repression of their peaceful protests.
The judiciary declined to rule on her detention a week ago, effectively halting any further judicial appeal and placing the matter solely in the hands of the provincial government of Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.
Mahrang took part in a sit-in protest in the provincial capital, Quetta, in March to demand the release of members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, a group she founded to organize protests.
Since 2009, Baloch protesters have gathered in the vast and mineral-rich province — where 70 percent of the population lives in poverty — demanding justice for what they claim are extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detentions.
Pakistani authorities reject these as “baseless allegations.”
Pakistan has been battling a separatist insurgency in Balochistan for decades, with militants targeting state forces and foreign nationals.
Separatists accusing outsiders of plundering the province’s natural resources launched a dramatic train siege in March in which officials said about 60 people were killed, half of whom were assailants.
Mahrang was barred from traveling to the United States last year to attend a TIME magazine “rising leaders” awards gala.
Pakistan extends detention for ethnic rights activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch
https://arab.news/jum3j
Pakistan extends detention for ethnic rights activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch
- Detention of the most prominent rights activist of the Baloch minority extended for 30 days
- Baloch was charged with “terrorism,” “sedition,” “murder” after she took part in sit-in protest last month
Return of millions of Afghans from Pakistan and Iran pushes Afghanistan to the brink, UN warns
- Afghan authorities provide care packages for those returning that include food aid, cash, a telephone SIM card and transportation
- But the returns have strained resources in a country struggling with a weak economy, severe drought and two devastating earthquakes
GENEVA: The return of millions of Afghans from neighboring Pakistan and Iran is pushing Afghanistan to the brink, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday, describing an unprecedented scale of returns.
A total of 5.4 million people have returned to Afghanistan since October 2023, mostly from the two neighboring countries, UNHCR’s Afghanistan representative Arafat Jamal said, speaking to a U.N. briefing in Geneva via video link from Kabul, the Afghan capital.
“This is massive, and the speed and scale of these returns has pushed Afghanistan nearly to the brink,” Jamal said.
Pakistan launched a sweeping crackdown in Oct. 2023 to expel migrants without documents, urging those in the country to leave of their own accord to avoid arrest and forcible deportation and forcibly expelling others. Iran also began a crackdown on migrants at around the same time.
Since then, millions have streamed across the border into Afghanistan, including people who were born in Pakistan decades ago and had built lives and created businesses there.
Last year alone, 2.9 million people returned to Afghanistan, Jamal said, noting it was “the largest number of returns that we have witnessed to any single country.”
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have criticized the mass expulsions.
Afghanistan was already struggling with a dire humanitarian situation and a poor human rights record, particularly relating to women and girls, and the massive influx of people amounting to 12% of the population has put the country under severe strain, Jamal said.
Already in just the month and a half since the start of this year, about 150,000 people had returned to Afghanistan, he added.
Afghan authorities provide care packages for those returning that include some food aid, cash, a telephone SIM card and transportation to parts of the country where they might have family. But the returns have strained resources in a country that was already struggling to cope with a weak economy and the effects of a severe drought and two devastating earthquakes.
In November, the U.N. development program said nine out of 10 families in areas of Afghanistan with high rates of return were resorting to what are known as negative coping mechanisms — either skipping meals, falling into debt or selling their belongings to survive.
“We are deeply concerned about the sustainability of these returns,” Jamal said, noting that while 5% of those who return say they will leave Afghanistan again, more than 10% say they know of someone who has already left.
“These decisions, I would underscore, to undertake dangerous journeys, are not driven by a lack of a desire to remain in the country, on the contrary, but the reality that many are unable to rebuild their viable and dignified lives,” he said.
