Iit was homecoming that they never wanted. Five years ago, Karima Baloch fled Pakistan after his work as a prominent human rights activist put his life in danger. On Sunday morning, on the runway at Karachi airport, she was finally returned to her family.
But although she was lifeless in a wooden coffin, her body was confiscated by Pakistani security officials for hours. Then, his hometown in Balochistan was brought under the control of paramilitary forces, a curfew was imposed in the region and mobile services were suspended, all to prevent thousands from attending his funeral on Monday. It was clear that Pakistan, even dead, saw Baloch as a threat to national security.
The news of the death of Baloch, 37, whose body was found floating in Lake Ontario in Toronto on December 21, caused shock waves in Pakistan and around the world.
Baloch was the most famous human rights activist in the turbulent Balochistan region of Pakistan. Her struggle for the rights and freedoms of the Baloch people cost her family, friends and, eventually, her freedom to live safely in Pakistan and she fled to Canada in 2015, where she later obtained political asylum.
“Karima was the epitome of women’s politics in Balochistan,” said Sadia Baloch, 21, a student activist. “Because of it, we can leave our homes in a tribal and conservative society. We can protest in a society dominated by men. She was one of the first to challenge the brutal state, outdated norms and tribalism. His legacy lives on in us. “
Even though she was exiled from Pakistan, Baloch’s vocal activism continued in Canada and in 2016 she was listed by the BBC among the 100 most inspiring and influential women. But, according to his family, the threats to his life have never abated. Although the Toronto police declared his drowning death to be unsuspected, his family and many in Balochistan are adamant that there could have been a crime, connected to Baloch’s high-profile activism.
The family says the circumstances of Baloch’s death do not match and are putting pressure on the Toronto police to investigate further. There were no witnesses to her death, and although she was unable to swim, the place where she fell into the lake, Toronto’s central island pier, has waist-high railings all the way in, designed to make accidental falling difficult.
Baloch was the second Pakistani dissident to die this year, after the death of Sajid Hussain, a journalist, also from Balochistan, who was forced to seek asylum in Sweden after facing death threats for his work exposing human rights abuses in Balochistan. In May, Hussain was found drowning in a river near his home. His family says they are dissatisfied with the police’s decision on accidental death.
Sameer Mehrab, Baloch’s brother who also lives in Canada, described the death threats she continued to receive for her activism until recently. “The delegate asked us to accept that this was a non-criminal case, but we will not accept it. The police are not ready to take into account the history or threats that Karima was facing in Pakistan and even Canada. We demand that the case be investigated considering all threats and history, ”he said.
In a statement, Toronto police said they were still treating the death as unsuspected and could not provide further details.
Karima Baloch was born on March 8, 1983 in Tump, Balochistan, growing up in a province riddled with decades of conflict due to a longstanding nationalist insurgency. Here, thousands of people are kidnapped every year and “disappeared” by Pakistani security forces, without justice or responsibility.
It was during his years as a student that Baloch began to get involved in nationalist politics and activism. Defying conservative norms, she became the first woman to chair the Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad), a political group that defends the rights of the Baloch people.
It was there that she met her husband, Hammal Haider, also at the forefront of the BSO movement. Haider said Baloch continually opened up new paths for women in Balochistan and would travel to remote areas on the border with Iran and Afghanistan to convince girls to study and join the political struggle, sometimes traveling home to win over their parents.
“We could never have predicted, until 2006, when Karima appeared, that Baloch women would become part of politics, let alone that one of them would become the organization’s president,” said Haider.
“In a society where women could not reveal or speak to men, Karima’s participation in the BSO normalized the presence of women in the public spaces of tribal patriarchal society.”
However, around 2015 she started receiving death threats for her frank opinions and, fearing for her life, she fled to Canada, where she sought political asylum. It was a long and arduous process that would take three years and, although it was thousands of kilometers from Pakistan, the threats and tragedy still reached it.
In December 2017, while living in Toronto, Baloch received the message that, unless he returned to Pakistan, his uncle, Professor Noor Mohammed, would be killed. She refused to return and, on January 2, 2018, hours before her asylum hearing, she received the terrible news; his uncle’s body was found lying in his hometown, Tump.
“Karima was threatened that if she didn’t stop her activism in Canada, they would kill her uncle,” said Haider. “They, state officials, ended up doing what they said. But even these tactics never prevented Karima from raising his voice against human rights abuses in Balochistan. “
In the days after Baloch’s death in December, the streets of the cities and towns of Balochistan and the city of Karachi were flooded by a wave of female protesters, chanting slogans against human rights violations, calling themselves Karima and demanding a full investigation. about his death. The protests have undergone a blackout in Pakistan’s media, with almost no coverage.
It appeared that Pakistani security officials feared that a similar crowd would fill the streets of Balochistan for his funeral. On Sunday, hundreds gathered in Karachi, denouncing the government for not allowing a funeral prayer for her to be held in the city. The military then closed all roads leading to Tump, where his funeral was held on Monday. Baloch was buried amid strong security, in the presence of close relatives and hundreds of local mourners.
“There is a rage among women here that has never been seen in decades,” said a friend of Baloch’s, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
Abid Mir, Baluchistan’s political analyst and author, said that Baloch introduced a women’s resistance movement into a conservative tribal society that has always been fully controlled by powerful male elites. Her death only fueled this new fire in Balochistan women, he said. “Karima was not just a woman, but a symbol of change in a patriarchal society,” he said.
“Women used to be the backbenchers, invisible in our society, but now they are leading on the roads, activism and taking the front seat in politics in Balochistan,” said Mir. “There are thousands of girls who aspire to become Karima – that is what Karima started.”