Baloch human rights activist Sammi Deen Baloch has flagged what she calls a sudden spike in the disappearance of students across Balochistan, arguing that abductions blamed on state agencies have picked up pace sharply in just the last several days.
A pattern that families say never really ended
In a post on X, Baloch said this practice of people vanishing without a trace has been a near constant feature of life in the province, but stressed that the frequency involving students specifically has become unusually alarming lately. She said young people tied to peaceful political groups were being lifted directly from their houses, from hostel rooms, and even from college and university campuses, leaving families with little information about where they had been taken or why.
She calls the approach a "failed and inhumane state policy"
Baloch argued that treating enforced disappearances as a tool of counter-insurgency has done nothing to calm the province, and instead has deepened the very unrest it claims to fight. She said, "If this approach were truly a means to bring peace, Balochistan would not be drowning today in this quagmire of blood, unrest, and hatred." According to her, policies built around forced abductions only widen the gap between the state and the people, feeding more resentment rather than resolving it.
Years in custody, torture claims, and a cycle of anger
She further alleged that many of those picked up are held for years without ever being produced before a court or given any legal process, and that they are made to face torture and humiliation while in custody. Baloch said this kind of treatment breeds fury and a desire for revenge among affected youth, pushing some toward violence later on. She claimed that whenever this happens, officials turn around and blame those campaigning against enforced disappearances for inspiring militancy, rather than examining why the anger exists in the first place. She also accused the state of trying to pin the blame for instability on peaceful activists and human rights defenders instead of owning up to its own conduct.
"Illegal actions" and repression, not critics, are the real problem: Baloch
Baloch said it is illegal state action, repression, and what she called tyrannical policies that keep fuelling hostility in the region, not the work of rights campaigners. She appealed to the authorities to rethink their strategy rather than continuing to go after critics, asking why decades of alleged repression, disappearances, extra-judicial killings, and collective punishment of entire communities have still failed to bring lasting peace to Balochistan.
Islamabad has denied such allegations before
The Pakistani government has in the past pushed back against claims of a systematic policy of enforced disappearances, insisting that its security operations follow the law and are meant to fight militancy while keeping public order intact.
