Quetta, Sep 21 (IANS) As violence against Baloch civilians escalates across Pakistan, a leading human rights organisation on Monday brought to light the extrajudicial killing of two Baloch youths by Pakistani forces,
Human rights body Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) revealed that the dead body of 23-year-old Yahya Wahid Marri was found dumped in the Manghopir area of Karachi on September 19, nearly two months after he went missing.
According to the rights body, Yahya was forcibly disappeared from Hub Chowki in Balochistan by Pakistan’s Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) on July 5. Since then, it said, his family was left without any information about his whereabouts and denied the basic right to know his fate
The BYC further alleged that 28-year-old young worker Hilal Sayad was also extrajudicially killed by CTD in Karachi on September 19.
It noted that Sayad was “unconstitutionally” arrested from his home in Hub Chowki on July 5 before being killed in a “fake encounter”, by Pakistani forces.
“Yahya and Hilal had left their hometown with the simple hope of building ordinary lives through honest work. They were seeking nothing more than safety, dignity, and the ability to earn two meals a day. Instead, their search for a livelihood ended in disappearance and death. Their families were denied the right to see them return home alive, and their lives were reduced to encounter claims rather than being protected through due process and the rule of law,” the BYC stated.
“For Baloch families, the disappearance of a loved one is not merely the loss of contact; it is months of fear, uncertainty, unanswered questions, and the constant hope that the missing person will walk back through the door. When that hope is eventually replaced by a dead body, the grief becomes irreversible. No family should have to endure such suffering, and no person should be deprived of life without a fair judicial process,” it added.
The BYC called on the international human rights community to urgently investigate the enforced disappearance and killing of Yahya and Hilal, as well as the wider pattern of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of Baloch civilians.
“Independent and impartial investigations must establish what happened to them, who was responsible, and whether their deaths were carried out through unlawful force or staged encounters. Those responsible must be held accountable in accordance with international human rights standards,” it noted.
–IANS
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