Prominent Baloch human rights defenders Dr Mahrang Baloch and Sibghat Ullah Shah Jee, from the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (Balochistan Unity Committee, BYC) were sentenced to life imprisonment under Pakistan's notorious anti-terrorism laws on June 22. They have been under unlawful detention since March 2025, along with four other Baloch activists.
BYC is a peaceful civil rights movement in Pakistan advocating for an end to enforced disappearances, extrajudicial murder and economic injustice in Balochistan province.
Sammi Deen Baloch, a central BYC activist, said on June 23 that the decision by a special “anti-terrorism court” in Quetta is “not merely a travesty of a fair trial, it is the funeral of this country's own law and constitution, and it will stand as one of the darkest chapters in history”.
Amnesty International’s Acting Regional Director for South Asia, Isabelle Lassee, described the decision as “an affront to the right to a fair trial” that “demonstrates how Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws are being cynically misused to silence peaceful dissent”.
“The conviction and sentence followed an expedited secret trial conducted on jail premises, during which serious concerns were raised over international fair trial standards and due process. No direct evidence was presented linking Mahrang and Shah Jee to the alleged violence.
“It also comes after a prolonged period of unlawful detention. Mahrang was arrested in March 2025 following a peaceful sit-in and later charged with over two dozen anti-terrorism cases filed across Pakistan. These cases were so high in number that it was difficult for her lawyers to even keep track, let alone provide meaningful legal representation.”
Sammi Deen said “The repeated insistence of the prosecutor that the trial must proceed and that they must be convicted made it abundantly clear to us that the orders have come from above, and that the court will now move swiftly to complete its formalities.”
The anti-terrorism court implicated Mahrang for participating in July 24, 2024 Baloch Raji Machi (Baloch national gathering) and allegedly delivering an “inciting speech” that referred to state officials as “occupiers”. When part of the crowd charged at a Frontier Corps (FC) officer, who was killed, this supposedly made Mahrang guilty of murder.
Shah Jee was convicted of being part of the crowd that charged at the FC officer.
At least three Baloch protesters were killed during the assembly, but no one has been charged with their killings.
Sami Deen said the police gave contradictory evidence and the FIR [police First Information Report] on which the conviction rests is contested: “Two separate FIRs have been registered over the same incident, charging a single individual with murder in two entirely different ways. This alone makes it plain that this case does not exist in any legal or factual sense.”
This, she added, had exposed to the entire world how the Pakistani state “has abused its own laws and constitution to imprison BYC leaders”.
This was part of a “deliberate conspiracy” at work in Balochistan “aimed at suppressing the most prominent voices, at extinguishing in the hearts of the people the very concept of peaceful and organised struggle,” Sammi Deen said.
“But we will not be shaken. Living on this very ground, we will carry this struggle forward, we will carry the fight for human rights forward.
“The mission that belonged to Dr Mahrang and Sibghat Ullah Shah Jee belongs to all of us, to every child of Balochistan, and to every child who has witnessed state brutality and grown up under its shadow.
“How many people will you throw into prisons? How many voices will you silence? You believe that through such tactics you can reduce people to silence, but absolutely not. You have been doing exactly this for the past seventy-six years, and you have seen what the consequences have been.
“Your every act of oppression has given birth to resistance. We consider this your greatest failure, and through our struggle, we will prove it to you.”