Front Line Defenders stands with Sammi Deen Baloch in the search for her disappeared father, Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch
Today, 28 June 2026, marks seventeen years since the enforced disappearance of Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch, a physician from Balochistan and the father of woman human rights defender, Sammi Deen Baloch. Seventeen years on, his whereabouts remain unknown, and Pakistani authorities have failed to provide a credible account of his fate.
Sammi Deen Baloch is a prominent woman human rights defender who has campaigned fearlessly against rampant human rights violations in Balochistan, especially enforced disappearances, extra judicial killings and custodial torture by security forces. The woman human rights defender was 10 years old when her father, Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch, disappeared on 28 June 2009 in Khuzdar district, Balochistan. What began as a family’s search for a missing father ultimately laid the foundation for one of Pakistan's most prominent movements against enforced disappearance.
Front Line Defenders stands in solidarity with Sammi Deen Baloch in her seventeen-year pursuit of truth, justice, and accountability. Sammi Deen Baloch, as General Secretary of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), supports families and relatives of forcibly disappeared individuals in Balochistan, as they seek the return of their loved ones. She has led marches, protests, documented cases of enforced disappearance, and helped families register cases with the authorities. In 2024, she received the Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk in recognition of her work.
Enforced disappearance has been used as a tool of repression in Balochistan for many years, and the families who campaign for the disappeared, many of them women: mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, are themselves frequently targeted in reprisal. Sammi Deen Baloch has faced several raids on her home, was subjected to surveillance and online defamation, as well as repeated arbitrary arrests, in reprisal for her peaceful human rights works. She was also forcibly disappeared for seven days in 2016, and was most recently arrested by Karachi police in March 2025.
The continued disappearance of Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch, and the ongoing targeting of his daughter, reflect a wider pattern of impunity. Enforced disappearance is a grave violation of international law and an continuing crime for as long as the fate of the victim remains concealed. The anguish inflicted on families by seventeen years of denying the truth constitutes, in itself, a continuing harm.
Sammi Deen Baloch and the wider movement of families of the disappeared in Balochistan continue to call on the authorities in Pakistan to disclose the fate and whereabouts of Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch and all the disappeared. They further call on the authorities to conduct prompt, independent, and impartial investigations into all cases of enforced disappearance, and to sign, ratify, and implement the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED). Front Line Defenders supports these demands.
Front Line Defenders calls on the authorities in Pakistan to:
- Immediately disclose the fate and whereabouts of Dr Deen Mohammed Baloch and ensure his safe release;
- Cease all forms of harassment, surveillance, and reprisal against Sammi Deen Baloch and the families of the disappeared;
- Guarantee that Sammi Deen Baloch and other Baloch human rights defenders can carry out their legitimate human rights work without fear of arbitrary arrest, intimidation, or violence
