Pakistan police arrest Baloch rights activists in Karachi for violating public gatherings ban

KARACHI: Police in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi this week arrested prominent Baloch rights activist Sammi Deen Baloch and others for protesting despite a ban on public gatherings, a copy of the police complaint said. 

Karachi commissioner’s office on Monday imposed a ban on public gatherings in the city under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure ahead of a protest by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) rights group. 

The BYC announced a demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Monday against the detention of its leader, Dr. Mahrang Baloch, and some other members who were arrested last week at a protest camp in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, in which three persons had died following clashes. Both sides blamed each other for the deaths.

Police broke up the protest outside the KPC on Monday evening, rounding up Baloch and other BYC members. Baloch and five other activists were charged under Section 188 (disobedience to an order duly promulgated by a public servant) for violating Section 144. 

“The protesters, which numbered around 35-40 men and women, were attempting to cross into the Red Zone when they were told by the assistant sub-inspector to refrain from doing so but they did not listen,” a copy of the complaint registered by the Artillery Maidan Police said. 

Others arrested apart from Baloch identified in the complaint were Abdul Wahab, Mustafa Ali, Shahzad Rab, Hamza Iftikhar and Sultan Hamal. 

The BYC, founded in 2020, has organized several large protests in Balochistan and led marches to, and sit-ins in, the Pakistani federal capital, Islamabad, mainly against what it describes as a surge in enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan that it blames on the army and other security forces operating in the province. Officials deny the accusations. 

Balochistan has also been plagued by enforced disappearances for decades. Families say men are picked up by security forces, disappear often for years, and are sometimes found dead, with no official explanation. Government and security officials deny involvement and say they are working for the uplift of the province through development projects. 

Pakistan’s military has a huge presence in the rugged, impoverished region 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 military 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 Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) of being “terrorist proxies.”