'Security challenges, human rights abuses rampant during 2023'

QUETTA:

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has drawn attention to the growing unrest in Balochistan, compounded by the deteriorating security situation which saw a reported 110 militant attacks carried out in 2023 alone.

In its annual report - State of Human Rights in 2023 - the human rights watchdog mentioned that a suicide attack on a police convoy in Bolan had claimed the lives of nine police personnel in March 2023 while over 50 people, including civilians, had been killed in a suicide attack near a mosque in Mastung in September. In November of that year, six labourers from Punjab had also been shot dead by unidentified men in Turbat.

The HRCP report also highlighted that, in November 2023, when young Baloch rights activists had mobilized around the extrajudicial killing of a Baloch youth and marched from Turbat to Islamabad, they had been subjected to harassment and their right to freedom of peaceful assembly continually violated in the form of violent police action, and that, in Gwadar, the 'Haq Do Tehreek' had continued to demand action against state-led rights violations, including enforced disappearances and hyper-securitization.

Enforced disappearances

HRCP called on the state to eliminate the heinous practice of enforced disappearances, stating that it constituted a crime against humanity under international law.

With regard to the international day of the victims of enforced disappearances, the HRCP presented a charter of demands that said all victims of enforced disappearance be promptly and safely recovered and presented before courts of law.