In March 2025, two prominent Baloch human rights defenders, Mahrang Baloch and Sammi Deen Baloch, were arrested by Pakistani authorities during peaceful protests in Quetta and Karachi. Their arrests have increased concerns about the criminalization of dissent and the ongoing policy of enforced disappearances in Balochistan.
Both women are internationally recognized for their work. In 2024, Time magazine named Mahrang Baloch one of the 100 emerging leaders, while Sammi Deen Baloch received the Front Line Defenders Award for her activism. These recognitions did not protect them. On the contrary, the arrests show how the state responds to growing public attention on human rights violations in Balochistan with more repression.
Long History of Forced Disappearances
Enforced disappearance has become a regular method used by the Pakistani state in Balochistan. Victims are often arrested by security forces without a warrant, held in unknown locations, and denied access to lawyers and family members. Many are later found dead with signs of torture; others are never seen again.
According to the Baloch Human Rights Council, between January and June 2024, at least 306 enforced disappearances and 205 extrajudicial killings were reported in Balochistan. In many cases, the families of the disappeared are also harassed by security agencies. These numbers are likely underreported, as fear prevents many families from going public.
This pattern is not unique to Pakistan. A similar policy exists in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistani Balochistan. Human rights groups have documented frequent arbitrary arrests and executions of Baloch people in Iran, often without fair trial. In both countries, Baloch communities face racial discrimination, poverty, and political exclusion.
On this International Womens Day, I stand in solidarity with women across the world who are fighting against oppression and struggling for justice, identity, dignity, and freedom—the freedom to live in peace, to speak without fear, and to be treated as equals.
From Mahrang Baloch Facebook post.
From Balochistan to every corner of the world, our voices will not be silenced, and our struggles will not be ignored. Baloch women, in particular, will continue to rise against oppression. The courageous mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives of Baloch missing persons are fearlessly leading the fight against enforced disappearances, custodial killings, and the right to live with dignity. not only in Balochistan but across the globe. I firmly believe that Baloch Women unwavering determination will one day help eradicate enforced disappearances everywhere. And they will not stop until justice is served.
Let’s bear this in mind: March 8 is not just a day of recognition! it is a call to action! Every day must be a day for women, for their right to resist systemic discrimination, to break free from social and political oppression, and to shape a world where equality is not a privilege, but a fundamental right.
I remain confident that Baloch women will triumph in their pursuit of justice. I call upon all humanitarians and advocates of truth and justice worldwide to stand in solidarity with them in their fight against tyranny and oppression.
My deepest tribute to all women, especially the powerful and fearless Baloch women, whose commitment and courage light the path toward freedom.
The Arrest of Mahrang Baloch
Dr. Mahrang Baloch, a 32-year-old medical doctor and activist, was arrested on March 22, 2025, during a peaceful protest in Quetta. She had been organizing public rallies and speaking against enforced disappearances for years. In 2019, she founded the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), a grassroots group focused on raising awareness of state violence in Balochistan.
Her activism is personal. In 2009, her father, Abdul Ghaffar Langau, was abducted by Pakistani security forces. Two years later, his body was found showing signs of torture. Her brother was also abducted in 2017 but was later released. These experiences pushed her to become one of the most well-known voices in the Baloch human rights movement.
In 2023, she led a march from Turbat to Islamabad to protest the extrajudicial killings and disappearances of Baloch people. The march was blocked several times by security forces. In 2024, she was invited to attend an event in New York by Time, but Pakistani authorities confiscated her passport and banned her from traveling.
Mahrang Baloch remains in custody. She has been charged with “inciting violence,” although the protests she participated in were peaceful.
The Case of Sammi Deen Baloch
Sammi Deen Baloch was arrested two days after Mahrang, on March 24, during a similar protest in Karachi. Her case, too, is rooted in personal experience. Her father, Dr. Deen Mohammad Baloch, disappeared in June 2009 and has never been found. Sammi was ten years old at the time. Since then, she has worked with the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), an organization that documents disappearances and supports families of victims.
Sammi Deen has spoken at the United Nations and other international forums. In her speeches, she has consistently asked for independent investigations into disappearances in Balochistan. After returning from one of these events in Geneva in late 2024, she reported facing increased restrictions and surveillance.
She was held for eight days under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) ordinance, a law that allows detention without trial. She was released on April 1, 2025, following pressure from human rights groups.
Gender and Risk
Women’s participation in political and civil society movements in Balochistan must be understood within a broader framework of gendered risk and structural exclusion. In this region, women who engage in activism do so while navigating not only state surveillance and repression, but also the pressures of patriarchal social norms that restrict their mobility, visibility, and public authority. These conditions create a dual system of control: one enforced through formal institutions of power—such as policing, detention, and legal threats—and another sustained by community expectations around gender roles.
The cases of Mahrang Baloch and Sammi Deen Baloch illustrate how this dual pressure operates. As women who take on leadership roles in public protests and human rights campaigns, they challenge dominant expectations in both political and cultural arenas. This visibility exposes them to intensified forms of state repression, including arrest, travel bans, and defamation. Their treatment also signals a broader pattern in which women’s political agency—especially in conflict zones or marginalized ethnic regions—is constructed by the state as inherently subversive and therefore punishable.
From a gender-based analysis, their arrests serve multiple functions for the state. They not only attempt to suppress the individual activist’s work but also discourage other women from entering public and political spaces. By criminalizing women who speak about enforced disappearances—particularly those involving family members—the state reasserts control over both memory and mourning, traditionally considered private, feminized domains. In this context, personal grief becomes political, and women’s roles as caregivers or relatives of the disappeared are transformed into acts of resistance.
This strategy is not unique to Pakistan. In Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, Baloch women who advocate for the rights of prisoners or speak out against arbitrary detentions face similar patterns of criminalization, travel restrictions, and gender-specific harassment. In both cases, the state’s treatment of women activists reflects a wider securitization of ethnic identity and gender, where activism by minority women is portrayed as a threat to national unity or public order.
The arrests of Mahrang and Sammi should be analyzed as part of an ongoing policy of political containment, in which the state seeks to manage dissent not only through violence and legal measures, but by targeting those whose presence challenges the existing gender order. These are not isolated or exceptional events—they are structured outcomes of a political environment that views independent organizing by women, particularly in ethnic minority contexts, as both dangerous and illegitimate.
As of April 2025, Mahrang Baloch remains in detention, while Sammi Deen Baloch has resumed her work despite increased surveillance. Their experiences highlight the gendered dimensions of repression and raise important questions about who is allowed to speak, organize, and be visible in public life—and under what conditions.
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