Citizens will be guilty until they are demonstrated innocent. At least that is the message that Baluchistan’s political leadership has sent to the people of the province. The Anti -Terrorism Law (Baluchistan amendment), 2025, adopted last Wednesday by the Baluchistan Assembly, establishes that any individual “suspect of crimes enshrined in the anti -terrorist law can be kept in preventive detention for up to three months for the purpose of the investigation.”
It was approved without any real resistance of the parties present, apparently because the chosen leadership of the province has run out of ideas about how its violent socio -political crisis can be addressed. It cannot be denied that the State faces immense challenges of law and order in the province, but will such radical legislation solve problems or will simply complicate them by adding more fuel to the fire?
The Baluchistan Assembly seems to have made the amendments to provide legal coverage to the State, which routinely stops the citizens of the province without any formal position. The vague standard legal for “reasonable suspicion”, the absence of judicial controls, the formal participation of the military forces in the surveillance of civilians and the history of Baluchistan of a politician, but guarantee that this law will be abused and, in turn, combine more of the same anger and discontent that today makes Baluchistan problems look intractable.
Even apart from the series of legal and moral problems with the law, if the State really needed these powers, it could have respected at least some complaints of Baloch long data while being written. For example, you should have said that each detention would be properly documented; that there would be a continuous civil and judicial supervision of each case so that there were no abuse of rights in detention; and that the families of the detainees would be informed about the whereabouts of each detainee and the legal status so that they do not seek them in despair. It would have made the law much tastier. Maybe you can still reconsider.
Posted in Dawn, June 7, 2025
