From Balochistan to Islamabad: Why I have been marching since I was 12

Over the last 14 years, I have travelled to Islamabad many times, holding a framed picture of my father, Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch, and screaming my heart out, demanding to know his whereabouts. Each time I have come to Islamabad, it is with the hope that one day, the authorities will listen to me and give me back my father.

Or at the very least, give me some answers as to where he disappeared.

You see, my father was abducted from Ornach hospital in Khuzdar, Balochistan, on June 28, 2009. I was a little girl of hardly 10 years old. Two years after his abduction, in April 2011, I participated in a train march along with seven other families, followed by another train march in 2013.

In 2014 came the most difficult journey of my life — the long march to Islamabad — when I, along with relatives of other missing persons, marched on foot for 116 days from Quetta to Islamabad — a journey of almost 2,000 kilometres. I was 15 years old then. By the time we reached the capital, my body was shattered and my feet were completely swollen, but I was hopeful that this time, those in power would show some mercy and release our loved ones.

I was so wrong.

Fighting for hope

Each time I come to Islamabad, my sorrows seem to intensify, and the pain becomes more pronounced. I feel increasingly isolated and abandoned — as if I am an alien, a terrorist, or an immigrant in my own country. Journalists and media workers bombard us with countless painful questions, demanding that we condemn armed groups in Balochistan as if I am not a victim but a decision-maker of this country.

Politicians and bureaucrats appear exhausted and fed up whenever we come to Islamabad to meet them. From being subjected to media trials to our pleas being turned a deaf ear, all of this hurts and reopens our wounds each time.

Families like ours live in an unending trauma with this uncertainty. With each passing day, the feeling of hopelessness sinks in even further, and yet we try different ways to keep the hope alive. I often wonder if the authorities know how many times over the last 14 years I have talked myself out of giving up hope. Infinite.

As a young girl, I did not fully comprehend what enforced disappearance meant or the pain associated with it. Following my father’s abduction, I started organising and participating in protests. When I took to the streets, I mainly observed men, much older than me at the time, participating in the demonstrations. There were hardly any younger people at the protests. Unfortunately, this has changed now.

Today, protest camps are filled with infants and their mothers, school-going kids, newborns, and children who haven’t even seen their fathers yet. These children deserve a better life, but it is their fate to grow up in a protest camp, just like me and my younger sister.

Like all other young girls, I should have dreamt about a career, to get married and raise my own children one day, to live a fulfilled life and grow old in peace — but the only dream I have is to see my father one day. To realise this dream, I have been marching, organising protests, staging sit-ins, and moving from one office, court, and commission to another for the last 14 years.

Dead or alive

My mother, who does not know if she is a widow or if her husband is alive, accompanied me in the 2011 train march. She has joined me again for the current march. Last Friday night, she said to me: “I wish we would not have come here for the protests only. I wish one day, we can come here as tourists with your father.”

People ask us why we come to Islamabad to protest. I explain to them that our loved ones are missing, and that we are helpless; we can’t do anything else but come to Islamabad, where important decisions are made for the entire country. We come to Islamabad to plead to the rulers to give us answers that we can’t get in Balochistan. You took them alive, we want them back alive. We don’t want them in coffins; hundreds of families live with this hope that their loved ones are alive, even if they are behind bars.

Over the last 14 years since I have been coming to Islamabad, three governments have changed and various commissions have been formed, but each of their promises are yet to be fulfilled.

Haseeba Qambrani came to Islamabad for the first time with us in 2021; she was lucky the authorities heard her and released her missing brother and cousin. I did not see her in any protest after that. None of us would protest if our loved ones are released. Who would like to sleep under the open sky in the freezing cold weather? We are helpless.

I have lost all hope in Islamabad now, especially after the recent unpleasant events, when the police fired tear gas and doused us in ice-cold water using a water cannon on the frosty night between Wednesday and Thursday [December 20 and 21]. Subsequently, the police arrested 283 peaceful protesters, including 47 women and five children; 87 are still in their custody. They then bundled us into buses and attempted to send us back to Quetta as if we were illegal immigrants who had crossed the border illegally.

But what else can we do?

Peaceful protests and marches are our only option. We cannot sit silently at home. The only thing left for us is to protest and march. If we could forget and ignore our loved ones, we would not even protest. However, moving forward and forgetting our loved ones is difficult and painful, especially when you don’t even know if they are alive or not.

All families of missing persons, including my own, see no future. The state has stolen our childhood. We are broken from within, helpless, and our desires and wishes have died. Our only option is to raise our voices peacefully, but even that is intolerable and unacceptable for the state.

The state behaves like a stepmother. Instead of paying heed to our concerns and listening to our justified demands, it launches propaganda campaigns against us through its ministers and lodges fake and fabricated cases against us.

The catalyst

As victims and helpless citizens, we have to live in this system and fight. As children, sisters, and mothers, we have a responsibility to raise our voices. This is why, when Balaach Mola Bakhsh, a young man in his 20s, was taken from his home, then presented before a court by the Counter Terrorism Department, before being killed in an alleged encounter, his family decided they would not remain silent. The whole of Turbat — people from all walks of life, irrespective of caste, creed, social status, political ideology, and religious beliefs — stood with Balaach’s family.

When I traveled to Turbat, I encountered dozens of low-income families from the remote areas of Kech district who could barely afford to travel to the district headquarters. Their loved ones had gone missing unnoticed. Their cases were undocumented. Some poor families did not even own mobile phones; several said their loved ones had been killed during extrajudicial encounters. They had just collected the bodies and returned home.

But Balaach’s case changed everything. The court took up his case in the last week of November. Scores of families of missing persons just like mine marched with his lifeless body outside the court premises. It was a unique case where a deceased individual was presented in court. It was then that we decided to travel across Balochistan, visit families, document their cases, and take them to Islamabad — where decisions are made.

This time, I did not come alone. We are not a dozen or a hundred; instead, hundreds of mothers, wives, children, brothers and fathers of missing persons have come to Islamabad to be heard, healed and helped.

We reached Islamabad on Wednesday after sunset, but were not allowed to march to the National Press Club. The state welcomed us with baton charges, sprayed cold water on aged mothers, young students and children and dragged them on the roads before shifting them to prisons. The next day, screaming women and young girls were dragged out of the women police station and forced into buses to send them back to Quetta.

But why? To not allow us to protest and ask questions about our loved ones who have been forcibly disappeared?

Over 14 years, I have taken the path of peaceful activism and I will always opt for that. All the families have come to Islamabad with the hope that they will be heard and healed. But the state’s attitude towards them has made many angry and despondent. The least the authorities can do is hear them out instead of inflicting violence upon them and rubbing salt on their wounds.