During the Fifty-fifth session (26 February–05 April 2024) of the UN Human Rights Council, BHRC submitted a written statement on Agenda Item 5 through the Centre for Gender Justice and Women Empowerment, a non-governmental organization with special consultative status at the UN. The statement, received by the UN Secretary-General, urged his urgent attention to the recurring cases of custodial and extrajudicial executions of Baloch people in Balochistan, Pakistan.
The BHRC statement reads, ‘For over the past two decades, the Pakistani state has persistently engaged in gross human rights violations in Balochistan, specifically targeting students, intellectuals, socio-political activists, professionals, and human rights defenders. In recent years, the crisis in Balochistan has taken a distressing turn, with the military establishment in Pakistan adopting tactics involving the orchestrated killings of Baloch activists and students in staged encounters.’
The statement further elaborates that in nearly every case, individuals forcibly disappeared or arrested by security forces, and subsequently held in the custody of security agencies, are eventually killed after a period of detention and torture in these staged encounters. These encounters are frequently claimed by the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of the police. The CTD, in turn, releases public statements suggesting a confrontation and indicating that the victim had resisted arrest. The statement highlights a discernible pattern wherein detainees are taken from custody and subsequently shot dead in staged encounters. The bodies of these victims are then disposed of secretly. This consistent pattern strongly indicates that the victims are, in fact, being killed while in custody. The statement emphasizes the imperative need to initiate an independent and impartial investigation to collect testimonies regarding these extrajudicial executions in detention, assess the extent of the abuses, and identify the perpetrators responsible for these actions.
BHRC urged the UN to take the following actions:
1. Dispatch a UN Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) to Balochistan to thoroughly investigate human rights violations committed by Pakistani security forces including the CTD.
2. Press Pakistan to cease custodial and extrajudicial killings of Baloch people, and insist on presenting all abducted individuals before a court of law.
3. Call for the dismantling of all death squads involved in the abduction and extrajudicial killings of Baloch people, followed by prosecution of those responsible.
Baloch Human Rights Council 