Ex-senator Farhatullah Babar warns against ‘unilaterally declaring activists terrorists’
Former PPP senator and prominent human rights defender Farhatullah Babar has warned against labelling Baloch Yakjehti Committee Chief Mahrang Baloch, her group, or anyone “a terrorist” without evidence or trial, terming such statements “extremely problematic” that could “backfire”.
Babar, head of the PPP’s Human Rights Committee, said this in response to remarks made by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry earlier this week, who during a press conference vehemently criticised the BYC and Mahrang, saying that the media needed to “unmask” the group and its membership.
He had said that the group spoke about human rights and missing persons, yet when the armed forces eliminate terrorists and conduct DNA identification, “many of them turn out to be the very individuals listed as missing.”
Lt Gen Chaudhry also talked about the Jaffer Express hijacking incident, in which more than 400 people were taken hostage by the proscribed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), and said: “Innocent people were targeted […] who is she and who are they (BYC) to claim terrorists’ bodies? It is now clear that the BYC is a proxy of terrorism. Terrorists and their proxies have to be dealt with in the way that any nation deals with proxies. There is no doubt; there should be absolute clarity on that.”
In a Saturday post on X, Babar wrote that unilaterally declaring the BYC, or any group or individual, was “extremely problematic” and could backfire.
“[It is] unwise and dangerous to mount a high horse without knowing how to dismount,” the former senator wrote. “Curb the impulse to dub rights defenders as terrorists.”
While the BYC is not listed among banned organisations by the National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta), Mahrang — who has been jailed along with some BYC members since March for what the government alleges was an attempt to claim the bodies of the Jaffer Express attackers and “inciting people to violence” — is included on its list of proscribed persons.
A day before the arrest, Mahrang and BYC members had faced a police crackdown in Quetta while protesting against alleged enforced disappearances.
In response to the DG ISPR’s comments, Mahrang’s sister Nadia Baloch also published a post on the BYC leader’s behalf on X on Sunday, writing, “My activism is peaceful, principled, and grounded in universal human rights values. I have consistently condemned violence, whether committed by non-state actors or the state itself.”
Calling the DG ISPR’s allegations “unsubstantiated”, Mahrang said that the press conference was “widely misused” to distort her message and that she did not condone any acts of violence during her own press conference in March, according to the statement.
Her statement continued: “In response to the DG ISPR’s latest accusations, I ask: where is the evidence?”
In April, she and other BYC leaders launched a hunger strike to protest alleged “torture” by jail staff, as well as the transfer of activist Beebow Baloch to District Jail Pishin.
Nadia wrote a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan Yahya Afridi requesting “urgent intervention” against the alleged mistreatment of her sibling and other leaders of the group in prison.
The BYC is a Baloch advocacy group working against enforced disappearances since 2018.