Balochistan: Shooting the Messenger

May 04, 2015, at 10:01 pm

Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management One more messenger of peace fell prey to Pakistan's Mullah-military nexus in the night of April 24, 2015, when unidentified assailants shot dead Sabeen Mahmud, a prominent Pakistani women's rights activist, in the Phase-II area of the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) in Karachi, the provincial capital of Sindh. According to reports, Sabeen, accompanied by her mother, was just returning home after organizing a discussion on 'Unsilencing Balochistan' at 'The Second Floor' (T2F), a café that had been developed as a forum for open debates, of which she was Director. The event, "Un-Silencing Balochistan (Take 2)" was organized after the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) cancelled the talk due to security threats allegedly from Pakistan's intelligence agencies. The panelists in the discussion included 'Mama' Abdul Qadeer Baloch, the President of Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), who had led a 'long march' to protest forcible disappearances in Balochistan; Baloch activists Farzana Baloch and Mir Muhammad Ali Talpur; and journalists Malik Siraj Akbar and Wusut Ullah Khan.