Balochistan: Prominent Baloch activist Mahrang Baloch claims that one person died and numerous others were wounded when Pakistani security personnel opened fire on peaceful protestors in Quetta.

Attaching to X, Mahrang Baloch denounced the episode, saying, “In Quetta, police launched indiscriminate fire on peaceful protestors, leaving many hurt and one demonstrator dead. The state treats nonviolent protests in Balochistan in this manner.

Niaz Baloch, Coordinator of the Baloch National Movement (BNM) Foreign Department and a Central Committee Member, highlighted the worsening human rights situation in Balochistan at the 58th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva.

Political groups such as the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad (BSO-A) and the BNM, according to him, still suffer extreme persecution wherein members are arbitrarily arrested, harassed, and silenced.

Baloch underlined the seriousness of the matter as “enforced disappearances have become a systematic tool of oppression in Balochistan.”

He mentioned the recent deaths of scientist Hammal Zehri and Central Committee member Beeberg Zehri of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. Along with over a dozen members of the Qambarani family, Ilyas Baloch, a psychiatrist and Vice Principal of Bolan Medical College, was also among those forcefully vanished. Additionally, apparently detained were human rights activist Saeeda Baloch and her sister.

Extrajudicial murders by death squads supported by governments highlight even more the human rights issue, he said. He cited, for instance, the horrific murder of Shah Jahan Baloch, the brother of BSO Azad’s missing chairman Zahid Baloch, in Naal, calling it an example of collective retribution applied against Baloch families.

Baloch said, “these killings and enforced disappearances are not isolated events but part of a deliberate state policy to terrorize the Baloch population.”

Long accusing the Pakistani government of utilizing enforced disappearances, targeted assassinations, and intimidation to stifle political activists and human rights advocates in the area, the BNM and other Baloch nationalist parties have