Mahrang Baloch: The voice Pakistan and China fear most

In an age where democracies falter and authoritarian regimes form alliances of convenience, the global defence of human rights is no longer a matter of diplomacy—it is a battlefield. At its centre stands a young doctor from Balochistan, Mahrang Baloch, whose voice from inside Hudda Prison in Quetta now echoes as a warning to the world. Speaking from solitary confinement, she writes that “speaking up for justice is not a crime,” and insists that “raising our voices against state violence is not treason. Demanding rights is not terrorism. It is humanity.”

Her crime? Refusing silence. Refusing the deal she was offered: avoid politics and go home. “I refused,” she wrote in Time magazine. In doing so, Mahrang joins the ranks of imprisoned conscience—of Nelson Mandela, Narges Mohammadi, and other beacons who exposed the tyranny of those who fear words more than weapons. Like them, she chose conscience over comfort, truth over compromise.

On 22 March 2025, Mahrang Baloch was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement. Her charge? Holding a press conference that dared to ask uncomfortable questions. Why were over two dozen “unidentified” bodies delivered to Quetta’s Civil Hospital after a militant attack? Why were thirteen buried without names, without dignity, without DNA tests? She feared the dead weren’t militants—but forcibly disappeared civilians. She spoke the truth. For that, she was caged.

But this crisis is not only about Pakistan. It is about who enables Pakistan.

In Mahrang’s home province of Balochistan, China is not a silent partner—it is an economic overlord. She reminds the world that “we are the rightful owners of the Saindak Copper-Gold Project… the Reko Diq mine… and Gwadar—the gateway to the China-Pakistan Economic

Corridor.” Yet over 70% of Balochistan’s people live below the poverty line. Her call is simple: economic justice. And it is precisely that call that threatens the strategic logic of the China-Pakistan alliance.

China’s model—invest deeply, silence dissent—is not a glitch. It is a feature. As in Xinjiang, China’s logic is brutally simple: development without consent, security without scrutiny, and investment without accountability. And Pakistan has followed suit: disappear journalists, imprison students, smear activists. “The state is armed, powerful, and ruthless,” Mahrang warns. “It uses violence to silence those who ask for justice.”

If China is willing to back such repression abroad, what does that portend for global human rights? Are we approaching a world where prosperity without justice becomes the norm—not the exception?

The danger is not abstract. This is tyranny in real time: a non-violent activist in solitary confinement while her captors extract wealth from her homeland under foreign guarantees. Her peaceful activism was branded terrorism. Her international honours were treated as treason. After returning from Norway—where she attended the World Expression Forum—she said, “I was treated as if I had returned from an ISIS camp.” That humiliation wasn’t the end. She was later placed on the Fourth Schedule—a terror watchlist typically used against militants. Even ISIS-K circulated a booklet accusing her of being a Western agent. Her only crime, it seems, is being heard.

And it is that clarity, that refusal to bow, that frightens Pakistan’s security establishment. Mahrang puts it plainly: “This isn’t about the law. It’s about fear—their fear of our truth.”

That truth is both local and universal. Balochistan is not alone. The suppression of identity and dissent is a hallmark of the 21st century’s moral crisis. But when those crimes are sanitised through strategic partnerships—when China refuses to acknowledge even the name “Mahrang Baloch”—it signals more than indifference. It signals complicity.

Silence from Western democracies—many of whom continue to trade with both China and Pakistan—deepens the impunity. If Pakistan wants to avoid becoming a case study in collapse, it must abandon the illusion that silencing moral voices brings peace. Mahrang is not the problem. She is the answer. Her courage offers a chance to restore dialogue, justice, and trust between the centre and the periphery. If she and others like her are crushed, Pakistan will only extend its cycle of repression, radicalisation, and international shame.

And for the rest of the world, her case is a test. Do human rights still matter when weighed against economic deals, ports, and minerals? Can the global order survive when its most powerful members normalise the criminalisation of conscience?

Mahrang Baloch's words should not be read only as a protest against her prison. They are a manifesto for our age. She writes, “When our generation came of age, those of us raised in the shadows of state violence, we vowed: no child after us should suffer the same fate.”

Let the world hear that vow—not as a plea, but as a warning. Because if we abandon figures like Mahrang, we are not just betraying Balochistan. We are betraying ourselves. Nations have interests, but people need values. States need leaders who listen. Humanity must change direction as we head towards the Quantum Age—before silence becomes the loudest sound in our history.