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Dr. Mahrang Baloch, the charismatic and fearless leader of the peaceful Baloch civil resistance, has been detained by Pakistani authorities alongside 16 other activists for protesting against the ongoing enforced disappearances in the province. As a key organiser of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, an organisation that has played a significant role in galvanising grassroots mobilisations demanding state accountability, Baloch faces charges including directing terrorist activities, sedition, and rioting. Despite triggering widespread domestic and international condemnation, the Pakistani authorities remain largely unperturbed in their authoritarian suppression of peaceful Baloch demonstrations. In light of the recent escalation in insurgent attacks within the province, the latest wave of arrests and violent repression of protests can be seen as a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the state’s own failures and shortcomings.
Although the Pakistani state has escalated its efforts to silence Baloch this time, she has been under scrutiny for some time. A surgeon by profession, she has played a pivotal role in fostering the peaceful Baloch movement within a highly perilous environment. At just 32 years old, she has witnessed firsthand the severe abuses that the Pakistani state inflicts upon the Baloch people. In 2009, at the age of 16, her father, Abdul Ghaffar Lango, a labourer and political activist with the Balochistan National Party (BNP), was forcibly disappeared. Two years later, his mutilated body was discovered, showing signs of torture and gunshot wounds. In 2017, Baloch’s brother was also forcibly disappeared. Although he was released three months later following Baloch’s vocal opposition to the authorities, her anger and activism endured, and she has since become the voice of many others who continue to suffer similar fates.
Mahrang Baloch gained widespread recognition during the Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s (BYC) ‘March against Baloch Genocide’ from Turbat to Quetta (the provincial capital) and ultimately to Islamabad, held between December 2023 and January 2024. The catalyst for this long march was the November 2023 killing of 24-year-old tailor Balach Mola Baksh by the Counter Terrorism Department, which falsely characterised the incident as an encounter. His family, claiming he was in state custody at the time of his death, protested at Fida Ahmed Chowk in Turbat with his body for a week, but their efforts yielded no results.
The BYC had originally emerged from the Bramsh Yakjehti Committee, formed in solidarity with and to seek justice for Bramsh, the 4-year-old daughter of Malik Naz, who was allegedly killed by state-backed death squads in May 2020. In response to the ongoing state abuses, including enforced disappearances, fabricated encounters, extrajudicial killings, and torture, the leadership of the Bramsh Yakjehti Committee chose to broaden its scope to address the broader plight of the Baloch people, renaming the organisation as the Baloch Yakjehti Committee. The movement is spearheaded by the mothers, sisters, daughters, and half-widows of those who have fallen victim to these brutal state actions, without any accountability. The BYC has since organised a number of significant demonstrations, mobilising people on an unprecedented scale in the history of the province, including the ‘Baloch Raaji Muchi’ in Gwadar in July 2024 and the ‘Baloch Genocide Remembrance Day’ in Dalbandin in January 2025.
In response to the rise of peaceful civil resistance by the Baloch people, the Pakistani establishment, rather than addressing the long-standing grievances of the populace, has resorted to its usual tactics of obstructing, discrediting, and silencing the movement. The protests have continued despite state-enforced internet and network blackouts, arbitrary detentions, the use of water cannons, tear gas, and even live ammunition. Additionally, the state has launched an extensive disinformation campaign against the movement. The mainstream media, traditionally aligned with state narratives, has been complicit in linking the activists to insurgents, alleging that they are supported or manipulated by foreign entities. Dr Mahrang Baloch herself has been targeted by malicious digital propaganda, with false claims that her father and brother were associated with insurgents. Furthermore, an image of her with a Norwegian journalist who interviewed her was circulated, suggesting foreign involvement in the movement. A fabricated audio recording was also spread, falsely claiming that Baloch was attempting to secure foreign funds for the Gwadar protest. A recurring element of the disinformation campaign involves misrepresenting the missing persons, whom the movement advocates for, as separatist militants. In one instance, a photograph of Baloch at a protest was altered to distort an image of a missing person on a poster behind her, replacing the image of Rafique Oman with that of Rafiq Bizenjo, a suicide bomber allegedly claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
The province of Balochistan has endured immense deprivation and suffering due to the ongoing conflict between the Pakistani state and the long-standing armed insurgency. In addition to the systemic discrimination and exploitation imposed by the federal government, the Baloch people have faced relentless human rights violations by the state under the guise of counter-insurgency measures. The recent train hijacking and Noshki attack on security personnel by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) highlight the complete failure of Pakistan’s policies to address the insurgency and safeguard the Baloch population. Rather than confronting the fundamental issues surrounding its approach, the establishment has reverted to its familiar and convenient tactic of suppressing peaceful dissent to avoid addressing difficult questions.
Dr Mahrang Baloch is currently being held in Quetta District Jail without any legal proceedings, denied access to her lawyer and family. Her cousin, Asma Baloch, has reported that the authorities are even preventing her family from delivering food and other necessary items to her. International human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Front Line Defenders, have raised concerns about this situation and called for her immediate release. It is evident that the state’s attempt to silence a prominent figure of the peaceful Baloch resistance has backfired, drawing greater attention to the plight of the Baloch people. It is crucial that the establishment reassesses its approach and puts an end to the egregious practices that have fuelled the insurgency and caused immense suffering to the Baloch population.
In December 1970, Pakistan held its first democratic National Assembly elections, in which the Awami League, a political party rooted in East Pakistan, secured a resounding victory. However, rather than accepting the will of the people, the political and military elite of West Pakistan—fuelled by an ingrained prejudice against the Bengali population, whom they viewed as socially and culturally ‘inferior’—chose to suppress their aspirations through brute military force. Their response culminated in Operation Searchlight on 25 March 1971, an unspeakable campaign of terror designed to crush Awami League activists and their supporters. Yet, what began as a targeted crackdown soon escalated into an indiscriminate genocide against the Bengali population, whose only ‘crime’ was their demand to be treated as equal citizens rather than colonial subjects.
The horrors unleashed by the Pakistan Army swept through the streets of Dacca (now Dhaka) and into the remotest villages, leaving in their wake devastation beyond measure. Among the most harrowing atrocities was the systematic sexual violence perpetrated against Bengali women, a tragedy that has been shamefully overlooked in historical discourse. These biranganas—‘war heroines’—bear the deepest scars of Bangladesh’s struggle for independence, their suffering a cruel testament to the price of liberation. Even after 54 years, the wounds of 1971 remain unhealed, exacerbated by Pakistan’s obstinate refusal to acknowledge its army’s genocidal crimes, let alone offer an apology. This shameful denial stands as an enduring stain on history, a stark reminder of justice long denied.
The horrors of war are not confined to the battlefield; they seep insidiously into the very fabric of society, leaving scars far beyond the domain of military conflict. Among the most egregious manifestations of this brutality is sexual violence, a weapon wielded with calculated cruelty to devastate both individuals and communities. In the cataclysmic events of the 1971 Liberation War, the Pakistani military orchestrated a campaign of systematic rape and torture, deploying it as an instrument of both physical subjugation and psychological annihilation. Women’s bodies, long perceived as the repositories of familial and societal honour, became the battleground upon which this barbarity was unleashed.
As Operation Searchlight unfurled its dark shadow over Dhaka, innumerable Bengali women were forcibly taken from their homes and university campuses, their destinies cruelly altered as they were transported to military barracks and confined to what can only be described as ‘rape camps.’ Subjected to relentless violation, many perished at the hands of their tormentors, their suffering rendered invisible in the tide of genocide. A sinister agenda underpinned this depravity—the calculated objective of impregnating Bengali women to dilute ethnic identity, an insidious attempt at demographic engineering. The so-called ‘war babies,’ estimated at around 20,000, were intended as a grotesque means of tethering East Pakistan’s future to the bloodlines of the West. This brutal strategy, steeped in both violence and a grotesque perversion of power, epitomized the depths to which oppression can descend in its ruthless pursuit of domination.
The horrors of the Liberation War of Bangladesh were not confined to the battlefield alone; they seeped into the very fabric of human dignity, as the Pakistan Army weaponised rape to inflict psychological trauma upon the Bengali populace. In a calculated effort to break the spirit of resistance and force submission, women were subjected to unspeakable brutality, often in the presence of their own families. With the complicity of collaborators—the notorious razakars—who abducted and delivered women, particularly from the Hindu community, the army orchestrated sexual violence on an unimaginable scale. The aftermath was as macabre as the crime itself: bodies of slain victims hung from trees, discarded in mass graves, or strewn beneath bridges—chilling symbols of the cost of nationalist aspiration. In this grotesque theatre of terror, rape was not just an instrument of war; it was a calculated strategy to annihilate the will of a people.
The systemic and brutal use of sexual violence as a weapon of war during Bangladesh’s Liberation War remains one of the darkest stains on human conscience. The atrocities committed against an estimated 200,000-400,00 women were not incidental but deliberate—a vile strategy of war designed to terrorise and subjugate a people. However, to reduce Bengali women’s role in 1971 merely to that of victims would be an egregious oversight. Women were not just passive sufferers but active participants in the resistance, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Mukti Bahini. They smuggled arms and intelligence, tended to the wounded, and even bore arms themselves—undaunted warriors in their own right. Their contributions were no less significant than their male counterparts, their sacrifices no less valiant.
It was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman who sought to dignify these women by calling them ‘Birangana’—a title meant to honour their courage. Yet, in the post-war years, the term became tragically synonymous with shame, society reducing these war heroines to mere victims of rape, as if their suffering was theirs alone to bear. Instead of receiving the gratitude of a free nation, they were met with ostracism, rejection, and silence. Many families refused to accept them back, further condemning them to a life of isolation. The establishment of the War Crimes Tribunal in 2010 was a long-overdue step toward justice, yet the scars of betrayal remain. Pakistan has yet to acknowledge its army’s heinous crimes, and Bangladesh’s collective memory has yet to fully embrace these women as the warriors they were. On the 54th anniversary of Operation Searchlight, let us not only remember Pakistan’s war on women but also recognise the Birangana for their undying fortitude in forging a free Bangladesh.