Geneva, Sep 28 (IANS): The Baloch National Movement (BNM) held a protest rally in Geneva against enforced disappearances, human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, and the sentencing of political activists in “fabricated” cases by Pakistani authorities in Balochistan.
According to the BNM, the participants gathered outside the United Nations Office at the Broken Chair monument on Sunday, where speakers called for international attention to the human rights abuses in Pakistan’s Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces as well as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
The protest was part of BNM’s September 2026 Geneva campaign, aimed at highlighting the Balochistan issue on the international stage.
The BNM noted that the campaign extended beyond Balochistan, emerging as a “collective campaign of the oppressed nations”, with representatives from Sindh, the Pashtun community, Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan and PoK joining the protest.
Addressing the gathering, the speakers said, “thousands of people are being abducted, thousands are being killed, and bodies are being thrown onto the streets,” across Pakistan.
They said the issue was not limited to the Baloch, but that Pashtuns, Sindhis and Kashmiris were also suffering from the same situation.
Stressing that “Balochistan has been turned into a military cantonment, and all freedoms and legal rights of the local people have been taken away,” the speaker highlighted that “thousands of Baloch had been subjected to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings” by Pakistani forces.
Referring to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they said that over the past decades, “more than 3,500 enforced disappearances and more than 100 extrajudicial killings have been reported in Sindh,” while “more than 100 nationalist activists remain forcibly disappeared, and the number of ordinary citizens is four times higher.”
Expressing grave concern the speakers further said, “There is no rule of law in Pakistan. There, power itself is the law, and that power is the Pakistan Army.”
Earlier, the BNM also staged a protest outside the UN headquarters in New York to draw the attention of the international community to the human rights abuses in Balochistan, as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif addressed the UN General Assembly session.
“During the protest, demonstrators raised slogans against human rights violations in Balochistan and held various placards and banners. On the occasion, a tableau was also presented on the subject of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan, symbolically highlighting these incidents and the situation of their victims,” the BNM stated.
The protest also featured various slogans, including “Free Balochistan” and calls for an end to enforced disappearances.
The BNM called on the United Nations and the international community to “end their silence” over the worsening human rights situation in Balochistan and take “immediate action.”
