Balochistan: Sammi Deen Baloch Condemns Intensifying State Violence Against Baloch Women
SHAAL, BALOCHISTAN: Sammi Deen Baloch, a member of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), issued a statement on Tuesday condemning what she described as escalating state violence, criminalization and repression targeting Baloch women across the Balochistan.
In a post shared on her official social media account, Sammi said that the “most violent expression of state power” in Balochistan today is carried out on the Baloch women, who are “charged with crimes they did not commit, arrested without cause, vanished into cells or into silence, beaten, watched, followed, punished for daring to exist with dignity.”
She named several Baloch women activists, including Dr. Mahrang Baloch, Gulzadi Baloch, and Bebow Baloch, whose arrests, she said, reflect the state’s fear of politically conscious Baloch women. “The imprisonment of women like them is the state confessing its fear,” she wrote. “It is the state admitting, without saying a word, that the political voice of a Baloch woman can shake the ground beneath it.”
Sammi also drew attention to the enforced disappearances of women such as Mah Jabeen and Nasreena, saying the state refuses to acknowledge them because doing so would require admitting responsibility. “The state will not speak their names, nor answer for them,” she said. “Because to answer would mean to acknowledge who took them and why.”
She criticised the state’s brutal response to peaceful protests led by Baloch women demanding the recovery of their loved ones. According to her, these women are met with “batons, fists, insults, arrests” simply for seeking the return of the disappeared. “The law contains no mercy for them,” Sammi said. “The morality of those in power contains no shame.”
The BYC activist further condemned the practice of labelling dissenting voices as “terrorists,” saying it is used to silence those who expose injustice. “Those who dare to speak truth are met with the ugliest word the state can conjure,” she said.
In a broader indictment of the political landscape, Sammi declared: “There is no justice in Pakistan. There is no law in Pakistan. There is only the machinery of dictatorship and the women who stand in its path, bleeding and unbowed.”
Her statement comes against the backdrop of growing protests in Balochistan and nationwide concern over enforced disappearances, police crackdowns and the recent abduction of Baloch women activists. Sammi’s remarks underscore a deepening sense of anger and despair among Baloch families who say they have been fighting for years to bring their disappeared loved ones home.
