In June 2025, the Balochistan Provincial Assembly passed a controversial amendment to the anti-terrorism law, granting sweeping powers to law enforcement agencies. The amendment allows individuals to be detained without trial for up to 90 days based solely on suspicion. Far from being a measure to enhance public security, the law marks a dangerous shift from informal state repression to its formal legal codification.
For decades, Balochistan has witnessed enforced disappearances, custodial torture, extrajudicial killings, and the silencing of political dissent. Rather than addressing the province’s deep-rooted grievances, the Anti-Terrorism (Balochistan Amendment) Act seeks to legitimize long-standing abuses under the cover of legality.
Perhaps the most alarming feature of this amendment is the creation of ideological oversight boards. These boards—comprising two civilians, two military officials, a psychiatrist, and a criminologist will determine whether detainees should be sent to rehabilitation or de-radicalization centers. This mechanism gives the state unchecked authority to label students, activists, and journalists as ideological threats and subject them to indefinite detention, forced re-education, or psychological manipulation all without any proof of wrongdoing.
This reflects not a concern for justice but an attempt to weaponize psychiatry and ideology to control thought, punish dissent, and criminalize political consciousness.
The law is riddled with broadly defined and ambiguous terms such as “security of the province,” “facilitating or aiding,” and “abetting.” These loosely framed categories are likely to be used not against terrorists, but against peaceful protestors, grieving families demanding the return of missing loved ones, students seeking dignity, or journalists reporting truthfully on the ground realities of Balochistan.
Such elasticity in the law makes virtually any form of dissent punishable, allowing the state to silence voices under the guise of counterterrorism.
The passing of this law represents a transition in state policy: what was previously practiced in the shadows is now being embedded into Pakistan’s legal structure. Enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and custodial killings once covert tactics of control—are now sanctioned tools of governance in Balochistan.
This is not a step toward peace or justice. It is a deepening of authoritarianism, cloaked in the language of law and order.
Since the controversial 2025 general elections and the selection of the Sarfraz Bugti-led government in Balochistan, repression has taken on a new dimension. State-sponsored propaganda campaigns have intensified against peaceful political activists and their families. Hundreds of fake social media accounts allegedly run and funded by state institutions are deployed to discredit voices of dissent and distort the narrative around Balochistan’s human rights crisis.When these digital tactics fail to bury the truth, the state turns to legislation.
In late March 2025, security forces—including police, CTD, and personnel in plain clothes launched a crackdown on peaceful protestors in Quetta. Among those abducted were Dr. Mahrang Baloch and members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC). They were illegally detained for 24 hours before the government formally announced their arrest without citing any legal basis.
To prolong their detention, authorities invoked the dubious Maintenance of Public Order (3MPO) law, a relic often used to suppress peaceful organizing. Despite repeated legal appeals, the courts extended the 3MPO orders multiple times. Rather than providing relief, the judiciary appeared to align itself with state institutions, reinforcing the sense that justice in Balochistan is no longer impartial.
The government has failed to present evidence for its politically motivated claims. Instead, it relies on these elastic legal tools to incarcerate peaceful organizers whose only crime is advocating dignity and rights.
The real crisis in Balochistan is not the lack of laws—but their selective and violent application. It is not the people who need regulation; it is the military forces and intelligence agencies that need accountability.
Every corner of Balochistan has witnessed military operations. Entire villages have been burned, families displaced, and young men abducted and killed without explanation. The military operates as judge, jury, and executioner. Within this militarized governance structure, legal systems function only as façades to mask atrocities.
These new laws serve one purpose: to provide legal immunity for those who abduct, torture, and kill with impunity.
With the passage of the 26th Constitutional Amendment, even the faint hope that the judiciary might offer relief to the oppressed has faded. Instead of defending civil rights, courts now serve the interests of the powerful. In Balochistan, legal redress is not only rare—it is systemically obstructed.
The judiciary’s refusal to entertain legitimate petitions related to unlawful detentions sends a clear message: dissent will not be tolerated, and those who demand accountability will be punished.
A Call to the International Community
If the international community genuinely values human rights, it must take a principled stand on the situation in Balochistan. Global human rights organizations must demand the repeal of repressive laws like the anti-terror law, the 3MPO, and the abuse of the 4th Schedule. They must advocate for an end to enforced disappearances, unlawful detentions, and the criminalization of political dissent.
Without international scrutiny and solidarity, the people of Balochistan will continue to suffer in silence. These legal maneuvers, rather than resolving conflict, risk further alienating a marginalized population and may push more people to reject the state entirely.
The Anti-Terrorism (Balochistan Amendment) Act, 2025, is not a step toward order it is the legal sanctification of state violence. It seeks to silence a population that has endured decades of militarized governance and collective punishment.
If the state truly seeks peace, it must listen not repress. It must offer justice not legislation that criminalizes the cry for it. Otherwise, laws like these will not unify the province; they will fracture it beyond repair.
