Women’s Action Forum, Karachi, joins AWP in mourning the tragic loss of lives of our brothers and sisters in the bombing in Quetta today. We are bereaved by the deaths of respected members of the legal community and journalists who were killed on duty. Our grief extends to the families of all those who were systematically and cruelly targeted. In addition, as members of the women’s movement, we ask the State and the government the following;

1. How does the most securitized province in Pakistan - the one were layers and layers of security in the form of Levies, FC, LEAs, dozens of intel agencies, the military and LEAs - become so easily breached by not just the target killing of the President of the Bar but also a well panned and mechanized bombing of the hospital where he was taken?

2. Why has the head of a banned militant group who has sworn to eradicate the Hazara community been released from detention and how does the Quetta Shura operate with such impunity - in act but also by way of spreading a narrative of hate and threats?

3. How is it so easy to suppress dissent by students and academics or intellectuals and nationalists but not the hate mongering by murderous groups? Why are they never “disappeared”? What is the definition of “anti-state” for Baluchistan?

4. When the Hazara community was going through systematic genocidal persecution, why was that not taken as a symptom and prediction of mass murders that were sure to follow, as that which happened today?

5. Is there no normative security apparatus left anymore in Pakistan? Even if the army insists on being manager of all provincial issues it must hold internal reckoning regarding its own role in the history of conflict within Pakistan, especially Baluchistan. It has to understand that political resolution by political leadership has to take the lead to secure the lives of our citizens.

WAF stands in solidarity with the families of those murdered today but also those who have been victims of persecution and neglectful policies by the state in the history of Baluchistan’s struggle for just rights. WAF resolves to continue its struggle against all forms of violence especially which targets women and the marginalised and vows to building solidarity and seeking justice for them.

Women’s Action Forum
Karachi