Protest movement led by women turns a spotlight on forced disappearances in Pakistan • FRANCE 24

Protest movement led by women turns a spotlight on forced disappearances in Pakistan • FRANCE 24

For the past 3 weeks the families of BL missing persons have staged a sit in outside the Islamabad Press Club they refuse to leave the capital until the authorities meet their Demands two of my cousins were picked up from queta in 2013 we still don’t know about their whereabouts we are here for our family to get Justice mahang Balo is leading the protest her father a doctor was forcefully disappeared when she was a child and months later his mutilated body was

Discovered there’s an atmosphere of suppression in balistan people are being silenced they cannot speak against State oppression if someone’s family member is picked up they don’t even file a case because if they try to do it the police harass them there’s a new wave now where missing persons are extrajudicially

Killed and then and labeled as terrorists the demonstrators were manhandled by the police upon their arrival in Islamabad the courts had to intervene and permitted the protesters to continue the sitting baluchistan has long been marred by separatist violence State repression rages in the geopolitically Strategic province in Pakistan the military has

Always been powerful and the military has always uh you know clamped down on descent whether the that is in the form of uh enforced disappearances ARB detention or even extra judicial killings so uh we have had B dissidents we have had human rights activists who have been picked up

Thousands of people have disappeared over the past 20 years in bistan hundreds of abandoned bodies have been found in the streets of the troubled province

For the past three weeks, almost 300 people have gathered outside the Islamabad press club to protest against the disappearances and extrajudicial killings in the province of Balochistan, in south-west Pakistan. The province, which borders neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan, has been plagued for decades by a separatist insurgency, which the security services are trying to neutralise by force. Thousands of men have disappeared and their mutilated bodies have been abandoned in various parts of Balochistan. FRANCE 24’s team reports from Islamabad.
#Pakistan #Balochistan #humanrights

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