GENEVA: United Nations rights experts on Wednesday condemned the life sentence a Pakistani court handed a prominent rights activist, calling it a “travesty of justice.”
Mahrang Baloch, a 33-year-old from the southern Balochistan province, was arrested in 2025 on charges stemming from a protest in the coastal city of Gwadar the previous year, which sparked clashes that left a paramilitary soldier dead.
Baloch, the founder of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), was handed a sentence of life imprisonment last month on murder and terror charges, at an anti-terrorism court in the provincial capital Quetta.
“Dr. Baloch’s punishment is a travesty of justice, following an unfair trial and the misuse of counter-terrorism and murder charges to suppress peaceful protest and freedoms of association and expression,” more than a dozen independent UN experts said in a joint statement, adding that the court inferred intent to kill due to mere participation in a protest.
The experts, who are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said several additional cases remained pending.
