ISLAMABAD: Baloch protesters demanding an end to enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in their province on Tuesday complained of their Islamabad sit-in being subjected to alleged harassment from unknown individuals despite the presence of the capital city police.
The accusations were levelled by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), organiser of the Baloch long march in Islamabad, and several figureheads associated with the movement.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the BYC said “masked persons” had arrived and fled with a speaker on a white Toyota Vigo, terming the incident a “shameful act of Islamabad administration and the state”.
“The Islamabad police and the state should stop harassing peaceful Baloch protesters,” the BYC said.
In a later post, it said “at 3:15am our sound system was stolen by the ‘unknown people in civil dress’ despite the presence of multiple police and surveillance cameras.”
The BYC questioned the alleged lack of a police response to the issue and questioned how the individuals had “fled easily”.
Dr Mahrang Baloch, one of the long march organisers, also made the same allegations. The footage shared by her showed Islamabad police personnel present at the scene.
Another organiser, Sammi Deen Baloch, said much the same.
Mahrang later said while speaking to the media that when the police were asked to stop the individuals, personnel of the force replied that the matter was not in their domain.
Mahrang alleged that the police were facilitating the individuals. “This is the limit and what the Islamabad administration is doing … they were facilitators of that attempt,” she added.
Lawyer and human rights activist Jibran Nasir condemned the alleged incident, saying that “it is a moment of shame and sadness to see our ‘guardians’ using such crude tactics.”
The Islamabad police has yet to publicly comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, PML-N Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed said he visited the sit-in camp and it was a “painful, heart-wrenching experience with so many families still searching for their missing loved ones!”
