No home in Balochistan is safe and enforced disappearances are widespread. Detaining me and other rights activists only confirms the justice of our cause
It’s 9pm and I’m sitting alone in my cell in block nine as I write these lines. I’ve been in solitary confinement for a year now. In fact, I turned 30 here.
The silence has a weight to it, something that presses in on you the longer you sit with it.
Two other defenders and members of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), the organisation I founded to advocate against human rights violations in Balochistan are here too, in cells next to mine. There are nine cells in this block in Central Jail Huda in Quetta, but we are kept away from the other women. They tell us, because we are political prisoners, we are not allowed to interact. I suppose they are scared we might influence them.
My 20-sq-metre cell is bare, with only a small cot and a corner commode – designed to make solitary confinement as harsh as possible for prisoners.
