Imprisoned rights activist and chief organiser of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), Dr Mahrang Baloch, has condemned what she called “state violence” against Kashmiri protesters and criticised the ban on the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), saying Pakistan has repeatedly answered political demands from oppressed nations with force rather than dialogue.
In a statement issued from Hudda Jail, Quetta, Dr Mahrang said she expressed full solidarity with Kashmiri protesters and their struggle for rights, dignity and justice.
She said the ban imposed on the JAAC, was not merely a ban on an organisation but reflected what she described as the state’s continued repressive attitude towards freedom of expression, political freedom and the basic rights of oppressed nations living in Pakistan.
In democratic societies, she said, dissent was not answered with bans, arrests and violence, but through dialogue, justice and the political process.
“In Pakistan, public movements and democratic demands have often been answered with force, repression and restrictions,” she said.
Dr Mahrang said that “in the silence of this prison,” her heart first beat with the Kashmiri protesters, the wounded, grieving families and those demanding justice who had come onto the streets for their rights and faced repression.
She said the distance between Balochistan and Kashmir might be thousands of kilometres, but “the pain is the same, the wounds are the same and the desire for justice is also the same.”
“I salute the steadfastness, courage and struggle of the Kashmiri people,” she said.
The BYC leader said the walls of prison might be high, but not high enough to imprison “the suffering of nations, the sighs of mothers and the call for justice.”
She said that even from behind bars, she could hear voices rising from Balochistan, Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Gilgit-Baltistan and Kashmir, demanding basic rights, dignity, identity and justice.
Dr Mahrang said state repression followed an old pattern: first the voice of the people was ignored, then defamed, then restricted, and finally an attempt was made to silence it through force.
She said the repression faced by the peaceful movement of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee in Balochistan was a continuation of the same policy.
Pakistan’s history, she said, showed that repeated attempts had been made to suppress the political struggles of oppressed nations through force, adding that events in Kashmir reflected the same repressive mindset.
“Those sitting in the corridors of power may think that bans, arrests and violence can erase the memory of nations,” she said. “But oppression never creates stability. Oppression only creates wounds, and wounds one day become questions.”
“When these questions become the questions of an entire society, then no wall, no prison and no ban can stop their path,” she added.
Dr Mahrang said that when mothers in Balochistan came onto the streets carrying photographs of their forcibly disappeared loved ones, attempts were made to silence them.
She said their pain was made suspicious by declaring their missing sons and daughters terrorists, while in Pakhtunkhwa, voices demanding rights were also suppressed and defamed.
“Today in Kashmir too, public demands are being answered with force,” she said. “But the lesson of history is that oppression can create fear temporarily, not silence.”
Dr Mahrang said people demanding their rights were treated as enemies, political demands were answered with force instead of dialogue, protest was treated as a crime and resistance was branded as terrorism.
“But history bears witness that truth can be imprisoned, but it cannot be defeated,” she said.
She expressed solidarity with families who had lost loved ones, were living in fear and uncertainty, or were waiting for justice.
“Whether they are mothers from Balochistan, families from Pakhtunkhwa, activists from Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan, or protesters from Kashmir, their pain is not different from one another,” she said.
Dr Mahrang said their struggle was not for hatred, but for justice, human dignity, equality and national rights.
She said they dreamed of a day when no mother had to come onto the streets holding the photograph of her missing son, no student had to pay the price of political views through loss of freedom, and no person was killed, imprisoned or disappeared for demanding identity and rights.
She said public demands should be answered not with “bullets, bans and repression,” but with justice, dialogue and democratic process.
“If speaking the truth is a crime, then every dignified person in history has committed this crime,” Dr Mahrang said. “And if demanding justice is rebellion, then this rebellion is born from the human conscience, not from any conspiracy.”