Dr Sabiha Baloch, a prominent Baloch rights activist and senior leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), has written an emotional open letter to her father on Father’s Day, accusing Pakistani authorities of targeting him in retaliation for her activism.
Her father, Mir Bashir Ahmed, was allegedly detained by Pakistani security forces on 5 April from the town of Hub, Balochistan. According to family sources, intelligence officials have since told the family that he would only be released if Dr Baloch resigned from the BYC or turned herself in. His whereabouts remain unknown.
In her letter, titled “A Letter to My Father — On Father’s Day,” Dr Baloch writes:
“Baba,
They didn’t take you for something you did.
They took you for who I chose to become.
On this Father’s Day, I don’t have your voice, your presence, or your prayers. I have only your absence and the cruel truth that you’re being punished for my refusal to be silent.
They came to Hub and took you.
They say you’ll be released if I surrender,
If I stop organizing.
If I silence myself.
If I betray everything that led me to this path.
But how could I, Baba?
I did not grow up with politics.
I grew up with grief
with photographs of the disappeared,
with wailing mothers,
with blood on our soil and fear in our homes.
The pain of our people shaped me.
The silence surrounding their suffering turned me into a voice.
And now, they want to crush that voice by taking you.
They’ve done it before when they took Elum (brother), when they took my cousin, held them for months. Now it’s you. They think if they target the people I love, they can break my will.
But I carry the strength of the Baloch nation in my bones.
Not inherited, but earned through tears, through resistance, through every step I’ve taken on this wounded land.
You are not their criminal.
You are their hostage.
Because I refuse to kneel.
And Baba, if this is the cost of truth, I accept it.
I would rather live with the pain of your absence than with the guilt of betrayal.
I would rather fight with an aching heart than live with a silenced soul.
I promise you this: I will not stop. I will not be silent. I will not be bought.
Not because I am fearless,
But because I know,
‘You would rather sit in their cell than see me bow.’
With love, and unbroken resolve,
Your daughter,
Sabiha”
The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), which Dr Baloch helps lead, is a grassroots organization that has organized major demonstrations across Balochistan and beyond to protest enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and military operations.
In recent months, the group has faced an intensified crackdown by Pakistani authorities, with several of its members — and, in some cases, their family members, including Dr Baloch’s father — reportedly arrested or abducted.
In April, a group of United Nations Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement expressing alarm over the harassment of Dr Baloch and her family. The UN experts said they were “deeply concerned” by reports of her father’s enforced disappearance and warned that Dr Baloch could face imminent arrest for her political and human rights work.
“Pakistani authorities must end their retaliation against her and ensure she is free to protect, defend and promote human rights,” the statement read.
Despite international concern, Pakistani authorities have not issued an official statement on the detention of Mir Bashir Ahmed or the allegations of coercion.