Balochistan: Pakistani police harassed peaceful rally for release of Baloch student

QUETTA: The wife and sister of an abducted Baloch student leader broke into tears after the Pakistani security forces have stopped their peaceful rally from recording their protest in front of the CM house in Quetta Thursday.

Dozens of civil society workers and human rights activists also joined the protest rally for the safe recovery of Shabir Baloch – information secretary of BSO-Azad abducted from district Kech Balochistan on October 4, 2016.

The family of Shabir Baloch sat on a token hunger strike for a week before taking out the rally on the last day of their strike.

The participant of the rally wanted to march till the official residence of the Chief Minister of Balochistan to urge him to play his role for safe release of Shabir Baloch and others but the Police have stopped their protest midway and did not allow them to go near CM house.

The family of Shabir Baloch have travelled all the way from Balochistan’s remote Awaran district to Quetta for this awareness campaign and rally.

Seema Baloch sister of Shabir Baloch and Zarina Baloch his wife tried to reason with the police but they did not listen to their plea. The Baloch student’s family and other protesters then staged a sit-in protest to record their peaceful protest.

Seema Baloch tweeted, ‘I am holding my infant child Meeras, he [doesn’t] know what’s going [on], what is happening but he knows one thing, his mother is struggling, struggling for justice. Justice is when my brother is back.’

The Pakistani media was nowhere to be seen to cover the protest despite the prior announcement of the rally and previous six days consecutive protest outside Quetta Press Club.

Talking to social media Seema Baloch said, ‘We have strong evidence that my brother has been abducted by Frontier Corps (FC). His [Shabir’s] wife Zarina Baloch and 36 other people are eyewitnesses of his abduction. But, the FC and intelligence agencies are in denial about abduction and disappearance.’

She said that despite continuous protests the authorities have refused to register the FIR and neither has he been presented to the court of law. ‘He has not been surfaced yet due to which the entire family is extremely worried and going through psychological trauma in their life.’

A few days after Shabir Baloch’s abduction the Amnesty International urged Pakistani government for an ‘immediate, impartial, independent and effective investigation into Shabbir Baloch’s fate and whereabouts’ but his whereabouts remain unknown to this day.

In the last six days of token hunger strike and during Thursday’s protest rally his family has demanded that if Shabir Baloch has done anything wrong, he should be presented to the court and punished according to the law.

‘His continuous disappearance and keeping him incommunicado is against the law and a violation of his human rights,’ the protesters maintained.