Late one March night, a group of Baloch students were startled by a forceful knock on the door of their shared flat in Islamabad’s I-10 sector. A number of men in plain clothes entered without warning or warrants. One of them instructed the others: “Humiliate these Baloch students and torture them like this.”
The harassment in Islamabad had been escalating for months. “They come late at night, enter our flat without permission, and make those remarks right in front of us,” said one student, whose name has been withheld for security reasons. “They follow us constantly in their Vigo vehicles, the kind everyone recognizes as used by state agencies. Whether we go to university or just out for tea, they follow us the entire way.”
He described one incident where two friends were followed from a café: “As soon as they reached our flat, the Vigo came right up to the building, then turned around and left.”
These are not just rare incidents. Many Baloch students living in cities like Islamabad and across Punjab face constant harassment, racial profiling, and state-led intimidation. For them, going to university has become a continuous struggle to stay safe and continue their education.
A Targeted Minority: Repression of Baloch Students Across Pakistan
Resource-rich Balochistan is home to the Baloch people, who have endured decades of political exclusion, economic hardship, and violent crackdowns by the Pakistani state. While Balochistan is widely known for enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, far less attention is given to how this repression has extended beyond its borders into classrooms, hostels, and city streets across Pakistan.
In Punjab and Islamabad, the country’s academic and administrative centers, Baloch students face systematic targeting under the guise of national security. Accused of harboring anti-state views or links to Baloch armed organizations, they endure constant surveillance, racial profiling, public harassment, false charges, and threats of abduction.
“The harassment isn’t just on the streets,” said a Baloch student from Punjab University who was recently evicted from his hostel. “Inside our classrooms, our teachers make us feel like we don’t belong. We are asked to condemn things we have no connection to. We’re made to feel like criminals simply for being Baloch.”
This repression reflects a broader institutional mindset that views Baloch identity and political expression as security threats. Enforced disappearances – secret abductions and detentions without due process – have become a common tool to instill fear and control dissent. These disappearances escalated sharply in Balochistan in the early 2000s, carried out by intelligence agencies, the army, or the Frontier Corps. Victims include activists, journalists, professionals, and most frequently, students.
The current Baloch resistance movement is stronger and more widespread, drawing in students, thinkers, and professionals. Rather than confronting Baloch armed organizations directly, state forces have chosen to punish the entire Baloch nation, with students bearing the heaviest toll. By criminalizing peaceful voices, the state has expanded its crackdown far beyond the battlefield.
This repression now extends to major urban centers. In cities like Islamabad and Lahore, Baloch students face racial profiling, surveillance, and enforced disappearances. Many are picked up from hostels or streets and held in secret detention, with some returning after torture while others never reappear. Female students are also subjected to targeted harassment on university campuses.
According to Paank, the human rights wing of the Baloch National Movement, thousands have been forcibly disappeared since February 2023, with students among the most affected. This surge followed attacks by Baloch armed organizations on Chinese and Pakistani interests. In response, state forces conducted widespread raids across the country, which rights groups describe as indiscriminate and retaliatory.
Classrooms as Interrogation Chambers
Baloch students say that university spaces now feel more like security zones than places of learning. For security reasons, the names of students quoted in this section are being withheld.
One Baloch student in Punjab said a professor asked him to condemn Baloch armed organizations. “He wanted me to say that anyone involved with Baloch armed organizations is not a real Baloch,” the student recalled. “I told him I have nothing to do with these organizations. But he got angry and said, ‘Every militant attack in Balochistan will cost you here.’”
At Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, students say surveillance is constant. “It starts with your name,” said one. “Once they know you’re Baloch, your bags are searched, and you’re stared at in lectures. You’re seen as a threat.”
Female students also report facing discriminatory treatment in Islamabad and Punjab. After participating in the Baloch Long March Against Genocide in 2023, one Baloch female student said a warden questioned them in their hostel. “They wrote our names down, asked who had been jailed during the crackdown on Baloch marchers in Islamabad, and said we would be expelled,” she recalled. She was also told that Baloch girls would be charged higher hostel fees.
The same student described another disturbing experience. During an oral exam, she was asked, “If you were on a flight with a gun, how would you target someone?” She said it felt less like an academic question and more like an attempt to provoke or criminalize her.
Teachers have also given Baloch students failing grades due to ethnic bias. “One teacher said I looked like I’d kill people after graduating,” said a student. Another recalled being failed for wearing traditional Balochi clothes: “He [the teacher] called me uncivilized.”
These stories are part of a much larger problem. They reflect a deeper institutional issue, where education is replaced with suspicion and profiling.
The targeting of Baloch students does not stop at university gates. It continues in markets, flats, and streets. A Baloch female student at Punjab University described being stopped in a local market by state agents who asked if she was carrying a bomb in her handbag. “We came here to study, not to be treated like terrorists,” she said.
The Baloch Students Council Punjab called out what it sees as a systematic campaign. “At Punjab University, the disciplinary committee has become a platform for intelligence agencies,” said the spokesperson. “Baloch students are being evicted, forced to record videos, and harassed in the name of university rules.”
Surveillance, too, has grown more aggressive. After peacefully protesting in Islamabad for the release of Hafeez Baloch, a student from Quaid-i-Azam University was threatened at gunpoint by a rideshare driver. “You think I’m just a driver?” the driver said. “If you protest again, you’ll be abducted just like Hafeez.”
The everyday presence of such threats reflects how the state uses both formal institutions and informal proxies to maintain fear and obedience.
A Timeline of Terror
Simply existing as a Baloch student has already been dangerous in Pakistan. In August 13, 2016, Pakistani forces handed over the bodies of Gazzain Qambrani, a Baloch student leader and university student in Islamabad, and his relative Suleman Qambrani. Both had been abducted from Quetta in July 2015 and were later killed in what critics called a staged encounter.
Gazzain was not the first Baloch student to be disappeared outside of Balochistan, nor would he be the last; there has been a startling uptick in such cases in the past few years.
On February 8, 2022, Hafeez Baloch, an M.Phil physics scholar at Quaid-i-Azam University and volunteer teacher, was abducted in broad daylight from a classroom in Khuzdar, Balochistan. He had previously been harassed and threatened by military officials for refusing to spy on fellow Baloch students. Hafeez was later arrested under fabricated charges and falsely linked to Baloch armed organizations. After weeks of protests, he was acquitted and released in June 2022 due to lack of evidence.
In the months that followed Hafeez’s disappearance, multiple Baloch students across Islamabad and Punjab were similarly abducted.
Dilip Baloch, a literature student at Islamia University Bahawalpur, was abducted on February 27, 2022, while traveling to Quetta. He was released two days later. Sameer Baloch, a Punjab University student, was abducted in Turbat on January 20, 2022. Two college students, Adam and Imran Baloch, residents of Hoshab, were abducted on January 21.
On April 28, 2022, a viral video showed personnel of Pakistani intelligence agencies abducting Beebagr Imdad, a literature student at National University of Modern Languages Islamabad, from the hostel of Punjab University where he was visiting his cousin Salim Baloch. He was later released after being tortured. His cousin, Salim Baloch, who petitioned for his release, was himself disappeared over a year later, on July 4, 2023, in Turbat.
Additional cases include Feroz Baloch, an education student in Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, abducted on May 11, 2022, while on his way to the library. He remains missing. His classmate, Ahmed Khan Baloch, was abducted later from Turbat and is also still missing. Ihtesham Baloch, a biotechnology student at International Islamic University Islamabad, was abducted from Panjgur on February 3, 2022. His mutilated body was discovered hours later.
According to Paank, 151 cases of enforced disappearances were reported in April 2025 alone. In the same period, 23 individuals were extrajudicially killed, while 50 survivors of enforced disappearance were released after being subjected to severe torture. A significant number of the victims were Baloch students and young men, indicating a systematic pattern of targeting the Baloch youth through abductions, custodial torture, and killings.
On February 4, 2023, Allah Dad Baloch, an MPhil scholar from Quaid-i-Azam University and a respected literary figure, was shot dead in Turbat after previously receiving threats from Pakistani intelligence agencies. He had left his studies due to sustained harassment.
On June 4, 2024, Anees Baloch, a computer science graduate and former chairman of Baloch Students Council in Multan, was abducted in Khuzdar. He remains in illegal detention on charges from the Counter Terrorism Department, a tactic increasingly used to mask abductions as counterterrorism operations.
One of the most brazen cases occurred on October 31, 2024, when ten Baloch students from the National University of Modern Languages in Rawalpindi were abducted in a coordinated raid just before midterms. All ten were released two days later after enduring severe torture.
Most recently, on March 4, 2025, Ashfaq Baloch, a recent social work graduate from Punjab University, was abducted from his home in Kalat. His whereabouts remain unknown.
These cases reflect a brutal and systematic campaign in which Baloch students, particularly those in Punjab and Islamabad, are surveilled, harassed, disappeared, and in some cases, murdered. For every student who is released, five more go missing. No one is prosecuted for the abductions or murders, and the cycle shows no signs of slowing.
The psychological toll on survivors of enforced disappearances is often undocumented, but in some tragic cases, it becomes painfully visible.
On March 6, 2025, Sajjad Ishaq, a second-semester law student at the International Islamic University Islamabad, was abducted from I-10 Markaz, Islamabad. It was not the first time he had been targeted. Years earlier, while studying law at Quaid-i-Azam University, he had been abducted from Khuzdar.
During that first abduction, Sajjad was electrocuted, injected with sedatives, and dumped unconscious in a roadside drain after three days. He was released physically alive but psychologically devastated. He left Quaid-i-Azam University and transferred to International Islamic University, hoping to start over. But the nightmare repeated.
After being abducted again in 2025, Sajjad was subjected to similar torture. When released two days later, he was no longer the same. Friends say he now experiences sudden outbursts, faints at the sight of strangers, and lives in constant fear. He has since dropped out of university and returned to Khuzdar, a young man broken not only in body but also in spirit.
The State’s War on the Baloch Intelligentsia
What is especially disturbing is that the very students who have chosen education over the gun and pursued knowledge as a means of empowerment are being labeled as terrorists.
“By targeting students, the state is trying to cut off the intellectual and political leadership of the Baloch people,” said a student leader. “They don’t want an educated Baloch youth. They want us to remain silent, illiterate, and broken.”
This repression goes beyond security concerns. It is a deliberate effort to dismantle the Baloch intelligentsia and to silence any voices of dissent, reform, or resistance before they can organize.
The damage caused by this policy extends well beyond individual lives. It is feeding a deepening sense of alienation, resentment, and disillusionment among Baloch youth. When students are abducted, humiliated, or driven out of classrooms, they begin to lose faith in the possibility of peaceful change. This is more than repression, it is a political failure that pushes youth closer to the brink.
By criminalizing peaceful students, the state is not countering insurgency; it is creating the very conditions that lead to it. Instead of investing in education, dialogue, and inclusion, the government is relying on surveillance, intimidation, and brute force – an approach that will inevitably backfire.
“If you leave people with nothing to lose, can you really be surprised if they pick up arms?” asked one Baloch activist. “The state says it wants development in Balochistan, but how can you talk of development when students are being abducted, tortured, and killed?”