PAKISTAN’S stormy history of political and rights protests shows that even the use of excessive state brutality has never been able to fracture the commitment of women political workers. It seems particularly pertinent to highlight this as more and more women are made targets for suppression and lawfare by an overreaching state. Consider how women political prisoners have been treated lately. Three months after the Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s Mahrang Baloch was arrested, the Balochistan High Court in April rejected her bail petitions after Balochistan’s advocate general argued her release “will cause unrest”. Thereafter, her liberty was placed at the mercy of a sceptical Balochistan government. Not only that, the DG ISPR recently denounced her in a press conference as a “proxy of the terrorists”. Apart from Dr Baloch’s detention, septuagenarian politician Dr Yasmin Rashid’s extended captivity and PTI Punjab chief organiser Aliya Hamza and party supporter Sanam Javed’s return to jail last month, seen together, seem to suggest a pattern of exclusion, discrimination and disregard for women who have dared to assert themselves in domestic politics. Is this a reflection of who we are as a society?

Silencing voices of the public and coercing representatives of a troubled province with tools of repression will achieve little more than test national unity at a particularly sensitive time. There must be realisation on the part of the political leadership that the route to consolidating popularity, power and economic muscle lies through negotiating favourable outcomes for political prisoners and engaging with reasonable advocates from restive regions. The government should, for the sake of the people who rallied unquestioningly behind it and the armed forces in the recent military conflict with India, aim to ease domestic frictions and rethink its policy of oppressing political workers and activists, particularly women, because of the social harm it is causing. Jailing women protesters and party workers without due process will be seen as an aggressive warning to females to desist from participating in politics and public engagement. Similarly, the justice system should uphold the special privileges and considerations for women accused of crimes as laid out in various rules and laws. Undoubtedly, militant separatists must be neutralised. However, the state, through transparency and justice, must ensure that the rights of incarcerated women are not trampled upon in the process.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2025