By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: After months of camping outside the National Press Club in Islamabad, a group of Baloch protesters demanding justice for their missing and killed relatives announced on Tuesday that they were ending their sit-in.
The decision came a day after the press club, which had hosted the protesters since December, asked the police to remove them, citing security and financial concerns. The request was later retracted after it drew widespread condemnation from journalists, human rights activists and civil society groups.
The protesters, who belonged to the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, a coalition of Baloch rights organizations, said they were calling off their demonstration because of the constant harassment and intimidation they faced from the authorities and the lack of response from the government.
“We have been protesting peacefully for our basic rights, but we have been met with silence, threats and violence,” said Dr. Mahrang Baloch, one of the protest organizers, at a press conference on Tuesday. “We are not against the state, the state is against us.”
The Baloch protesters had set up their camp on Dec. 22, 2023, to highlight the issue of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan, a restive province in southwestern Pakistan where a separatist insurgency and a military crackdown have been going on for decades.
According to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, a government body, there are more than 2,000 unresolved cases of missing persons in Pakistan, most of them from Balochistan. Human rights groups say the actual number is much higher and accuse the security forces of abducting and killing suspected insurgents and activists with impunity.
The protesters said they had come to Islamabad to seek the attention of the media, the judiciary and the political parties, but they were largely ignored or shunned by the mainstream institutions.
They also said they were subjected to frequent raids, arrests and false cases by the police, who tried to force them to leave the press club premises.
The press club, which had initially welcomed the protesters and allowed them to use its facilities, changed its stance on Monday, when it wrote a letter to the Islamabad police chief, asking him to devise a plan to relocate the protesters to another venue.
The letter said that the press club’s main source of income was the press conferences and seminars it hosted, and that the presence of the protesters and the security arrangements around them were affecting its operations and causing inconvenience to its members and the surrounding businesses and residents.
The letter sparked a backlash from journalists and civil society groups, who accused the press club of betraying the Baloch protesters and succumbing to the pressure from the authorities. The press club later withdrew its letter and apologized to the protesters, saying it had no intention of harming their cause.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog, issued a statement on Tuesday, expressing its solidarity with the Baloch protesters and condemning the attempts to dislodge them.
“The validity of the Baloch protesters’ demands cannot continue to be ignored, and must be heeded with the legitimacy it deserves, not with undue force or defamation,” the statement said.
The Baloch protesters said they would return to Balochistan on Wednesday, and criticized the political parties for not raising their voice for the Baloch people, especially in the run-up to the general elections scheduled for February 8.
“It is a shame that despite election campaigns being under way, no political party has spoken about the issue of missing persons,” Dr. Baloch said. “We will take back the message of hate we received. We will remember everything that has happened with us.”
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