We published a text by Dur Bibi – Baloch political activist.
In Pakistan’s restive province of Balochistan, a quiet war is being waged, not just in the streets or mountains, but in courtrooms. On July 18, 2025, in Quetta’s Anti-Terrorism Court, what was meant to be a routine hearing turned into something historic. As the state tightened its grip through laws and security forces, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC)—a nonviolent political movement—transformed a courtroom into a stage of defiance. The accused refused to bow. Their laughter, glances, and silence became symbols of resistance. But behind that powerful moment lies a darker truth: Pakistan is systematically weaponizing its legal system to criminalize dissent and exhaust peaceful Baloch activists.
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee: Voices Against Disappearance
Balochistan, the largest yet most marginalized province in Pakistan is home to a long-standing political conflict. Rich in natural resources but plagued by poverty and militarization, it has become a site of one of the world’s least reported human rights crises. Thousands of Baloch students, activists, journalists, and civilians have been forcibly disappeared over the past two decades. Many are tortured, killed, or held incommunicado for years.
In response, a new generation of Baloch youth has emerged through the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) a grassroots, nonviolent movement founded by students, Doctors, intellectuals, and families of the disappeared. The BYC organizes peaceful marches, sit-ins, and legal campaigns to expose state repression. Their most visible leader is Dr. Mahrang Baloch, a young doctor who became the face of Baloch resistance after leading a 40-day sit-in in Quetta and a long march to Islamabad in 2023–24. The BYC represents not militancy, but moral authority—something the state now seems desperate to suppress.
From Protest to Prison: Why Were BYC Leaders Arrested?
The arrest of key Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leaders in mid-2025 was not an isolated incident, it was the culmination of months of intensifying state surveillance, threats, and harassment directed at the movement. Since their nationwide long march from Turbat to Islamabad in late 2023 an extraordinary 1,500-kilometre journey led by families of the disappeared the BYC has emerged as the most visible nonviolent challenge to Pakistan’s security establishment.
Their demands were simple: an end to enforced disappearances, demilitarization of civilian areas in Balochistan, and constitutional justice for victims of state violence. Yet their popularity and moral clarity made them a threat to a regime accustomed to silencing dissent through force.
By early 2025, BYC members reported being followed by intelligence agencies, barred from holding press conferences, and receiving repeated warnings. Despite this, they continued organizing study circles, vigils, and community-based protest camps across Balochistan.
In March 2025, after the deadly Jafar Express incident claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the Pakistani state responded not just with military operations but with a sweeping political crackdown on peaceful dissent, particularly targeting the leadership of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC).
While international coverage focused on insurgency, the real casualties were peaceful Baloch activists, especially women who have emerged as the moral conscience of Balochistan’s resistance. What unfolded after the attack was not justice, but the expansion of a war on memory, motherhood, and movement-building.
Police responded with violent crackdowns. Dozens of protesters were arrested in Quetta alone. Among them: Dr. Mahrang Baloch, Gulzadi Baloch, Sibghatullah Shah Ji, Beebgr Baloch, Beebow Baloch, and Mama Ghaffar Baloch, a veteran National Party leader and Beebow’s father. Initially, they were detained under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order (3MPO) a colonial-era law that allows preventive detention without charges. Under Pakistan’s Constitution, such detentions must be reviewed within 90 days—but that safeguard was ignored. The activists remained in custody with no formal charges.
Just hours before their scheduled court review on July 8, the government revoked their 3MPO detention—only to immediately re-arrest them under terrorism charges. This legal bait-and-switch allowed the state to prolong their detention without presenting any concrete evidence.
ATC Hearings: The Legal War Behind the Smiles
On July 18, the activists were presented in the Quetta Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) under heavy police guard. The state requested an additional 15-day remand to “complete the investigation.” No formal charges or credible evidence were presented. But what happened inside the courtroom defied expectation.
Dr. Mahrang Baloch walked in laughing, not in mockery, but in open defiance. Her smile cracked the façade of authority. Gulzadi Baloch stared down the judge with a gaze that asked: Who’s really on trial here? Sibghatullah stood calm, his silence more powerful than any argument. Beebgr, restrained in a wheelchair, chanted: “Zinda hai muzahimat, zinda hai!” (“Resistance is alive!”)
The most moving moment came when Beebow and her father Ghaffar Baloch, detained in separate jails, were reunited in court. Surrounded by guards and walls of silence, they embraced. Then, Ghaffar lifted his chained hands skyward—not in despair, but as a silent revolutionary chant!
What was meant to be their humiliation became a declaration of dignity.
Legal Warfare: How Pakistan Is Criminalizing Dissent
What’s unfolding in Balochistan is not just a human rights crisis—it’s a deliberate strategy of legal warfare. After their initial arrest under the 3MPO, the state moved swiftly to file terrorism charges based on vague police reports and broad accusations. These charges fall under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, a sweeping law that often conflates political dissent with terrorism.
BYC’s lawyer, Advocate Israr Jattak, called the state’s request for more investigation time unjustified: “If the police failed to show any progress in the last ten days, what can they achieve in fifteen more? These accusations are baseless.”
Three separate First Information Reports (FIRs) have now been filed against Ghaffar Baloch alone, a tactic known as “legal stacking” used to complicate cases, delay trials, and keep detainees locked away indefinitely without conviction.
The sequence, preventive detention under colonial laws, followed by re-arrest under terrorism laws—demonstrates a broader pattern. Scholars call it “lawfare”: using legal tools not to uphold justice, but to dismantle political opposition.
The Courtroom as Battlefield
In regions like Balochistan, where military operations have failed to silence demands for justice, the state is now turning the judiciary into an extension of counterinsurgency. Peaceful activism is labeled subversion. Raising a slogan is framed as sedition. The courtroom becomes not a venue for justice, but a performance of control.
Nadia Baloch, a practicing advocate and Dr. Mahrang’s sister, recently said: “These delays are not about investigation, they’re about punishing voices of resistance.”
This isn’t just about individual rights. It’s about the systematic transformation of law into a mechanism of state repression.
What unfolded in that courtroom was more than a legal proceeding—it was a mirror. And what it reflected was disturbing: a system where truth is a liability, where silence is rewarded, and where the demand for dignity is treated as a crime. When dignity becomes dangerous and silence becomes safe, something deeply human is lost. In a place where truth is punished and power hides behind laws, it is not the accused who stand condemned, but the system that fears them.
Source: ANF News
