Home » World » Pakistan, the death of activist Karima Baloch becomes an international thriller

Pakistan, the death of activist Karima Baloch becomes an international thriller

BANGKOK – Karima Baloch was a famous activist for the independence of Baluchistan from Pakistan, exile for 5 years and a critical voice followed on many social media for the allegations of torture, disappearances and rape committed by the army and the secret services of Islamabad in her land on the border with Iran.

Since she disappeared from her home in Canada on Sunday 20 December, her husband and brother have reported the threats received in the previous days to the police, fearing that she too had suffered the fate of other Baluchi separatists, such as the journalist. Sajid Hussain, disappeared in May in Sweden and found dead in a river in Uppsala.

Karima’s body was discovered two days later at the port of the city of Toronto, spilling lifeless with jacket and winter clothes on on the shores of an island in Lake Ontario, also drowned as Sajid. Canadian police, aware of his delicate political past, say they have found no evidence of a crime, and concluded that his death cannot be considered as a “criminal”.

It is the same conclusion reached by the Swedish investigators after Sajid’s death, but in both cases different groups of human rights and activists in Baluchistan speak openly of political killings carried out by Pakistani intelligence agents sent to hunt him down. The International Human Rights Council and the woman’s own husband appealed to the Canadian government and Prime Minister Trudeau, recalling that Karima himself had reported the case of the disappearance of 20,000 activists like her to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Of all, 37-year-old Karima was the best known and when she fled to Canada there Bbc he included her among the 100 most “influential and most inspiring” women of 2016 for his “campaigns for the independence of Baluchistan from Pakistan”, also defining her as a pioneer of women’s activism “in her land. After the disappearance of many of her comrades, the killing of two close relatives and several arrests, she became a member and then leader of the Baloch Students Organization (Bso-Azad) in 2015. In those years she was invited to speak about human rights at the United Nations in Switzerland. , Karima’s critical voice had made itself heard even more after the asylum granted to her with some reluctance by Canada.

The activist even went so far as to accuse the authorities of the country that hosted her of covering up the presence on her soil of well-known members of the Pakistani army and “services”. The same ones who eventually would have tracked it down and eliminated it. But Karima also became popular on Indian crowds and influential social media when she sent a gift of “friendship” and a message to the premier. Narendra Modi asking him to support his cause against the common enemy Pakistan. Precisely that gesture fueled a yellow and dubious counter-campaigns on pro-Pakistani social networks such as #RAWKilledKarima, Indian secret agents killed Karima. Social media accused the activist of having been in the Delhi intelligence service that would have eliminated her to prevent tracing their secret ties. Whatever the truth, it’s hard to predict whether the perpetrators will ever be found.

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