Even today I vividly remember the forcible disappearance of my father Dr. Deen Mohammed Baloch. It was June 28, 2009 at 5 a.m. The mobile phone rang, and kept ringing until my mother picked it up. The caller was an orderly from a public hospital in Khuzdar, Balochistan province. He delivered the worst news: My father had been abducted by intelligence agencies while he was on a night shift.
I was 10 years old at the time.
June brings the tormenting flashback in its worst forms. That day 17 years ago robbed me of my childhood, bringing me to the streets to protests for the release of my forcibly disappeared father – or at least for his family to finally learn his whereabouts.
Over time, my father’s disappearance became not only an emotional absence, but an administrative one. It followed me into every form, every office, every space where identity must be complete.
When a child grows up without a father in Balochistan, even ordinary tasks become complicated. School admission forms require a father’s name. National identity cards and passports demand details people like me cannot provide. Even in moments of crisis, when my mother, a diabetic patient, has needed urgent medical care, hospital staff have asked for guardianship documents I do not have.
Uncertainty rules our lives. After 17 years, we still do not know whether my mother is a widow or a wife, whether my sister and I are orphans or daughters waiting for a father who may still return.
My mother’s life changed the most. In our societal norms and within Islamic tradition, she could no longer move through the world as a woman seen as complete on her own terms. Expectations were placed on her that went beyond grief: how she should dress, how she should appear in public. Over time, she withdrew from the public life that once belonged to her.
But I am not the only one who is suffering, although I am maybe one of the few who has been suffering for 17 years. I have participated in protests and marches alongside hundreds of young girls, elderly women, ailing men, and teenagers who have had their loved ones forcibly disappeared. I marched on foot nearly 3,000 kilometers from Quetta to Islamabad in 2013 and 2014. I have attended rallies, organized sit-ins outside press clubs across Pakistan, and peacefully protested, demanding the return of my father.
I never had a peaceful childhood after my father’s abduction; today I am a human rights activist asking to end enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
But in response, the state has beaten, humiliated, imprisoned, and charged me under terrorism laws. I have also been placed on the Exit Control List, which bars me from leaving the country.
This is not only my story. It is the story of hundreds of mothers, sisters, and children of the disappeared in Balochistan, people taken by Pakistani security agencies to contain a long-running insurgency. As the conflict intensifies in Balochistan, with suicide bombings and militant attacks threatening to derail a Pakistan-U.S. pact, Pakistan’s response has hardened, and peaceful activists like me continue to face increasing restrictions from the security forces. The security forces blur the line between peaceful activism and militancy while trying to contain the insurgency.
Violence by insurgents seeking separation from Pakistan in Balochistan has escalated in recent years, and the broader security situation in Pakistan has deteriorated. But alongside that, the space for peaceful activism has shrunk dramatically. I, along with more than a thousand others, have been placed on a domestic anti-terror watchlist locally called the Fourth Schedule. As a result, we face travel bans, and are blacklisted, which has made even basic life tasks – renting a home, having a SIM card, opening a bank account, or boarding a domestic flight – difficult or impossible.
On March 24, 2025, at around 5:30 p.m., I was one of several human rights defenders arrested in Karachi while peacefully protesting against a crackdown on Baloch rights activists, days after Baloch militants hijacked a train in March 2025 in Balochistan. Following the hijacking, dozens of my fellow human rights activists were arrested, charged under terrorism laws, and imprisoned.
Enforced disappearances remain one of the most serious human rights violations in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan today. Thousands, among them students, political activists, and ordinary citizens have been disappeared since 2000, when the insurgency erupted. Hundreds have later been found dead, their bodies mutilated – bearing the signs of torture – and abandoned. Others like my father remain missing for decades, with no information about their fate or whereabouts.
Over the years, I have also witnessed a shift in the state’s position. At times, authorities acknowledge the problem; in 2011, the government even established the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances. Politicians in urban Pakistan, including Rana Sanaullah, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, and Imran Khan, when in opposition, publicly acknowledged the issue and promised action. But once in power, those same leaders failed to deliver on those commitments.
The same state responsible for thousands of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and other serious human rights violations now seeks to present itself as a mediator and peacemaker on the international stage. Diplomatic efforts and talks between the United States and Iran unfolded in Islamabad – the very same city to which I traveled more than seven times alongside other families of the disappeared. We carried photographs of our missing loved ones, seeking answers from those who hold the power to reveal their fate. We were met with arrests, crackdowns, intimidation, empty promises, and deliberate invisibility.
Yet today, national and international media outlets praise Pakistan for its role in promoting dialogue and reducing tensions between the United States and Iran.
My mother, who is living the life of a half widow for the last 17 years, watched these reports on television. “My heart aches for Iran. I want its people’s suffering to end,” she said with a sigh. “But if Pakistan is allowed to become the face of peace there, I fear it will keep crushing us here, then smile before the world and say: how can we be oppressors when we are peacemakers?”
For families of the disappeared, the concern is not that Pakistan seeks peace abroad, but that its international image as a peacemaker may be used to obscure the suffering, repression, and unresolved injustices that continue within its own borders. A state should not be judged solely by the conflicts it helps resolve abroad, but also by how it treats its own people at home.
Now, as the entire world’s attention is on Pakistan becoming a key mediator between U.S. and Iran, the human rights situation, especially in Balochistan, worsens yet remains overshadowed. In the first six months of 2026, the Baloch Yekjehti Committee (BYC), a peaceful civil rights movement, documented 403 cases of enforced disappearances and 117 extrajudicial killings.
Pakistan’s military stands accused of grave human rights abuses in its campaign against insurgents in Balochistan and Field Marshal Asim Munir faces domestic criticism for jailing opposition leaders and undermining democracy. Still, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly lauded Munir as an “exceptional man,” a “great fighter,” and “my favorite field marshal.”
Today, the world turns a blind eye toward human rights movements. That’s the world dominated by Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. But even in such times, we would keep our struggle.
Over these 17 years, governments have changed. Policies have changed – from a Senate bill on the resolving the issue of enforced disappearances to the Anti-Terrorism Act amendment, which grants authorities the power to detain individuals for up to three months without charge. Official narratives have changed – from acknowledging that enforced disappearance is a serious issue in the county to claiming that no one disappeared at all. Public statements have changed. But my story has never changed. My father’s disappearance has never changed. My demand to know the fate of my father has never changed
The greatest tragedy is no longer only the suffering itself. It is that families like mine are forced to spend our lives proving that our suffering is real. We are made to prove that our loved ones were taken. We are made to prove that our fathers, brothers, and sons existed. We are made to prove that our grief is genuine, that our trauma is not fabricated, and that our pain deserves recognition. After 17 years, the burden placed upon us is not merely to survive injustice, but to convince the Pakistani authorities and the world that the injustice happened at all.
This year, even the most basic act of remembrance was denied to me. Seventeen years after my father’s disappearance, I was not allowed to stand peacefully outside a press club holding his photograph. Police officers and law enforcement agencies prevented me from carrying the image of the man whose fate remains unknown.
Imagine the cruelty of a state that not only takes a father away, but also seeks to erase his memory from public view.
We want nothing but the return of our loved ones. As Pakistan has earned an image of a global peacemaker, I wish the ruling elites and decisionmakers in Pakistan would bring some peace to our lives as well.
