QUETTA, BALOCHISTAN: Sadia Baloch, whose brother Salman Baloch disappeared from Quetta on Nov. 13, 2022, has said families of the disappeared will keep questioning the state until their loved ones are recovered.
In a statement shared on social media platform X, she said the government acknowledges the problem of disappeared persons and has set up bodies such as the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances to investigate such cases. “On the other hand,” she said, authorities claim the missing persons belong to armed organizations.
“If you can say this with confidence, prove it,” she said. “Bring them to court and take action.”
She objected to people being held in detention for years, killed extrajudicially, or shot in fake encounters and then labeled terrorists. She also said that bodies are buried secretly, without families being informed.
Sadia Baloch said families have now been deprived of even the right to protest. “If we come out on the roads, we are called terrorists,” she said.
“We used to ask questions before and we ask them today,” she said. “Until our loved ones are recovered, we will keep questioning you again and again, like a stain on your forehead: where are our loved ones? Bring them out into the open.”
Salman Baloch’s whereabouts remain unknown nearly four years after he was taken into custody by Pakistani forces from Quetta.
