A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has sentenced Dr. Mahrang Baloch, one of the country's most prominent human-rights campaigners, to life imprisonment — a ruling that rights organizations have denounced as the result of a trial conducted in secret and far short of fair-trial standards.
Who she is
Mahrang Baloch, a physician in her early 30s, became the public face of a movement against enforced disappearances in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest and poorest province. As a leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), she organized large demonstrations by relatives of people who had vanished, allegedly seized by security forces and never charged. Her own activism is rooted in personal loss: her father disappeared when she was a teenager and was later found dead, according to Arab News.
The conviction
An anti-terrorism court in Quetta found Baloch guilty on June 22 on charges including murder and terrorism, and sentenced her to life, Dawn reported. The case stems from a protest in 2024 at which, prosecutors allege, a member of the security forces was killed and Baloch incited violence. A fellow BYC leader was convicted alongside her and also received a life sentence.
The charges are allegations, and Baloch denies wrongdoing. She retains the right to appeal.
Why rights groups object
Amnesty International condemned the verdict, saying the trial was held on jail premises rather than in open court and that the defendants — who boycotted the proceedings as unfair — were represented by state-appointed lawyers without their consent. The organization called the case "an affront to the right to a fair trial" and said anti-terrorism laws were being "misused to silence peaceful dissent," urging Baloch's immediate release.
Baloch has argued that peaceful political activism is being deliberately conflated with armed militancy. "Conflating [peaceful political movements] with armed groups is deliberate propaganda," she has said, according to rights groups.
The government's position and the wider context
Pakistani authorities have long maintained that the BYC has links to Baloch separatist militants — an allegation the group denies — and have defended security operations in the province as necessary against a decades-old insurgency. The government had not issued a detailed public response to the June 22 verdict at the time of publication.
Balochistan has for years been the site of allegations of enforced disappearances, in which people are detained without warrant and held incommunicado, sometimes for years. Rights groups say they have documented large numbers of such cases; official tallies and activist estimates differ widely, and no single figure can be independently verified. The dispute over those disappearances — and over how the state treats those who protest them — sits at the heart of Baloch's case.
International rights organizations and some Pakistani lawyers and journalists have warned that the conviction could have a chilling effect on peaceful advocacy. For now, Baloch remains imprisoned, her supporters have called for protests across Balochistan, and her legal team is expected to challenge the verdict on appeal.
These are allegations and a conviction now subject to appeal; Mahrang Baloch maintains her innocence, and the presumption of innocence applies until the legal process concludes.
