Protest movement led by women turns a spotlight on forced disappearances in Pakistan
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00:00 For the past three weeks, the families of Blooch missing persons have staged a sit-in
00:05 outside the Islamabad press club.
00:07 They refuse to leave the capital until the authorities meet their demands.
00:20 Two of my cousins were picked up from Quetta in 2013.
00:24 We still don't know about their whereabouts.
00:26 We are here for our family to get justice.
00:31 Mahrang Blooch is leading the protest.
00:33 Her father, a doctor, was forcefully disappeared when she was a child.
00:37 And months later, his mutilated body was discovered.
00:42 There's an atmosphere of suppression in Balochistan.
00:45 People are being silenced.
00:46 They cannot speak against state oppression.
00:49 If someone's family member is picked up, they don't even file a case because if they try
00:53 to do it, the police harass them.
00:56 There's a new wave now where missing persons are extrajudicially killed and then labelled
01:00 as terrorists.
01:01 The demonstrators were manhandled by the police upon their arrival in Islamabad.
01:05 The courts had to intervene and permitted the protesters to continue the sit-in.
01:11 Balochistan has long been marred by separatist violence.
01:15 State repression rages in the geopolitically strategic province.
01:20 In Pakistan, the military has always been powerful.
01:22 And the military has always clamped down on dissent, whether that is in the form of enforced
01:32 disappearances, arbitrary detention or even extrajudicial killings.
01:37 So we have had Baloch dissidents.
01:40 We have had human rights activists who have been picked up.
01:44 Thousands of people have disappeared over the past 20 years in Balochistan.
01:48 Hundreds of abandoned bodies have been found in the streets of the troubled province.