It was the homecoming they never wanted. Five years ago, Karima Baloch fled Pakistan after her work as a leading human rights activist endangered her life. On Sunday morning on the tarmac of Karachi Airport, she was finally returned to her family.
But although she lay lifeless in a wooden coffin, her body was confiscated for hours by Pakistani security officials. Then her hometown in Balochistan was placed under the control of paramilitary forces, a curfew was imposed on the region and mobile services were suspended, all to prevent thousands from arriving for her funeral on Monday. It was clear that even in his death, Pakistan saw Baloch as a threat to national security.
The news of the 37-year-old Baloch’s death, whose body was found on December 21 in Toronto Lake in Toronto, sent shock waves through Pakistan and around the world.
Baloch was the most famous female human rights activist in Pakistan’s turbulent region of Balochistan. Her fight for the rights and freedoms of the Baloch people cost her family, friends and ultimately 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 her, 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 She was one of the first to challenge the cruel state, outdated norms and tribalism. Her legacy lives on in us. ”
Even banished from Pakistan, Baloch’s vocal activism continued from Canada and in 2016 she was named by the BBC in its 100 Most Inspiring and Influential Women. According to her family, the life threats never decreased. Although Toronto police have declared her dead by drowning as not suspicious, her family and many people in Balochistan are determined that there could have been foul play, linked to Baloch’s sincere activism.
The family says the circumstances of Baloch’s death do not come together and they are pressuring the Toronto police to investigate further. There were no witnesses to her death, and although she could not swim, the place where she fell into the lake, the central island gate of Toronto, was designed throughout waist railings to make it difficult to fall by accident.
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 dealing with human rights violations in Balochistan exposed. In May, Hussain was found drowned in a river near his home. His family says they are unhappy with the police ruling on accidental death.
Sameer Mehrab, the brother of Baloch, who also lives in Canada, described the death threats she received until recently for her activism. “The police chief has asked us to accept that this is a non-criminal case, but we will not. The police are not ready to take into account the history or the threats that Karima has had in Pakistan and even in Canada. We demand that the case be investigated taking into account all the threats and the history, ”he said.
In a statement, Toronto police said they still consider the death unsuspecting, and that they can provide no further details.
Karima Baloch was born on March 8, 1983 in Tump, Balochistan, and grew up in a province ravaged by decades of conflict over a long-running nationalist uprising. Here, thousands of people are abducted every year and “disappeared” by Pakistan’s security forces, without any justice or responsibility.
It was during her years as a student that Baloch began to become involved in nationalist politics and activism. In spite of conservative norms, she becomes the first female chair of the Baloch Students Organization (BSO-Azad), a political group that advocates for the rights of Baloch people.
It was there that she also met her husband, Hammal Haider, at the forefront of the BSO movement. Haider said Baloch was constantly breaking new ground for women in Balochistan and would travel to remote areas bordering Iran and Afghanistan to persuade girls to study and join the political struggle, and would sometimes travel to their homes to to win their parents.
“Until 2006, when Karima came, we could never expect Baloch women to become a part of politics, let alone one of them to become the chairman of the organization,” Haider said.
“In a society where women are not allowed to reveal or talk to men, Karima’s participation in BSO has normalized the presence of women in public spaces in the tribal patriarchal society.”
Around 2015, however, she began receiving death threats for her outspoken views, and out of fear for her life, she fled to Canada where she sought political asylum. It was a long and difficult process that would take three years, and although she was thousands of kilometers away from Pakistan, the threats and tragedy still reached her.
In December 2017, while living in Toronto, Baloch received a message that her uncle, schoolteacher Noor Mohammed, would be killed unless she returned to Pakistan. She refused to go back, and on January 2, 2018, a few hours before her asylum hearing, she received the terrible news; her uncle’s body was found dumped in Tump’s house.
“Karima has been threatened that if she does not stop her activism in Canada, they will kill her uncle,” Haider said. “They, the state authorities, finally did as they were told. But even this tactic never stopped Karima from raising her voice against human rights violations in Balochistan. ”
In the days after Baloch’s death in December, the streets of cities and towns in Balochistan and the city of Karachi were filled with a pile of female protesters, who chanted slogans against human rights violations, calling themselves Karima and conducting a thorough investigation into her demanded death. . The protests have been the subject of media coverage in Pakistan, with hardly any coverage.
It turned out that Pakistani security officials were afraid that a similar crowd would fill the streets of Balochistan for her funeral. On Sunday, hundreds of people in Karachi rallied and denied the government because they did not allow a funeral prayer to be held in the city for her. The military then closed all roads leading to Tump, where her funeral was held Monday. Baloch was buried amid strict security, in the presence of immediate family members and hundreds of local mourners.
“There is anger among women that has not been seen for decades,” said a friend of Baloch’s, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
Abid Mir, a political analyst and writer in Balochistan, said Baloch had founded a women’s resistance movement in a conservative tribal society always controlled by powerful male elites. Her death only fueled this newfound fire in Balochistan’s 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 the way, activism and taking the front seat in politics in Balochistan,” Mir said. “There are thousands of girls who are striving to become Karima – that’s what Karima started.”