Baloch human rights activist Sammi Deen Baloch was interrupted when she was delivering a fiery speech at the Asma Jahangir Conference 2022 in Lahore, criticizing the people in power for their inability to deliver on their promises. Ms Baloch said that the Pakistani state is mining billions of dollars worth of minerals from Saindak and Reko Diq, but giving us the mutilated dead bodies of our loved ones in return.
The Asma Jahangir Conference, named after the eponymous human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is an annual two-day conference held in different cities in Pakistan. The conference attracts a large gathering of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, labour leaders, student leaders and intellectuals from all over Pakistan. Prominent among this year’s attendees were Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto, puisne Supreme Court Justice Qazi Faiz Isa, Pashtun leader Manzoor Pashteen, Baloch politician Akhtar Jan Mengal, and Baloch rights activist Sammi Deen Baloch.
The speakers addressed the gathering one by one, but when Sammi Deen Baloch went on the stage to address the crowd, she was interrupted. Her mike was cut off in the middle of the speech and she was not allowed to finish.
Speaking at the conference, which was convened a few days after the CTD shot dead four Baloch missing persons in an alleged “fake encounter”, Sammi Deen Baloch lambasted the authorities for not delivering on their promises. She said she had not come to Lahore carrying the burden of the hopes and expectations of the families of Baloch missing persons.
She said the families of the Baloch missing persons, rights activists and the lawyer community of Pakistan played a crucial role in introducing and passing the bill through the Pakistani parliament that criminalized enforced disappearances. But despite all this, the government failed to take any concrete steps to put an end to this heinous practice – enforced disappearances are still a part of our day-to-day lives in Balochistan, she lamented.
Recounting incidents from the past, Sammi Deen Baloh said that the steps the Pakistani judiciary has taken to put an end to enforced disappearances are nothing more than a window dressing. She gave the example of DIG Hamid Shakeel, who was mysteriously killed in 2012 after arguing in the court that the Frontier Corps were involved in enforced disappearances of the Baloch youth and activists.
She also broached the topic of harassment and racial profiling of Baloch students at different universities in Punjab and Islamabad. It was at this point in her speech when she was suddenly interrupted by the moderator; the mike was cut off and she was forced to leave the stage.