Repression Backfires In Pakistan
In July, hundreds of thousands of people set out for a national gathering in Gwadar, a picturesque port city on the Arabian sea in Balochistan — Pakistan’s largest, but least populated, province. Making their way through an expanse of mountainous desert were the members of a severely oppressed community, the Baloch, whose population extends into neighboring Iran and Afghanistan.
At this first-of-its-kind national gathering, called Baloch Raji Munchi, people were planning to press their demand for an end to enforced disappearances, wrongful arrests and extrajudicial killings — all of which have been rampant across the province since its annexation in 1948.