ISLAMABAD: A doctor and Baloch rights activist Mahrang Baloch has been named in Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 emerging leaders for “advocating peacefully for Baloch rights,” the magazine said this week.
In 2019, Time began publishing the Time100 Next list, which “spotlights 100 rising stars who are shaping the future of business, entertainment, sports, politics, science, health and more.”
Baloch, 31, became an activist as a teenager after her father, activist Abdul Gaffar Langove, disappeared in 2009. She was 16 at the time and immediately started protesting his abduction — which she blamed on Pakistani security forces — and became known in the student resistance movement in Balochistan. In July 2011, Langove’s body was found bearing signs of torture.
Baloch now leads the Baloch Yakjehti Committee civil rights movement, and last December led hundreds of women in a long march to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, demanding justice for their “disappeared” husbands, sons, and brothers. Earlier this year, she organized the Baloch Raji Muchi gathering in the strategic port city of Gwadar, an event aimed at uniting the Baloch against rights abuses.
“With many of the community’s men missing or dead, women like Mahrang are now at the helm advocating peacefully for Baloch rights,” Time wrote as it announced this year’s Time100 Next.
Baloch’s actions had brought “unprecedented attention to the Baloch struggle,” Time said, and the activist believed the momentum she had built would carry on.
“There is a lot of threat. There is a lot of oppression,” she was quoted as saying by Time. “Still ... we will struggle for humanity.”
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