Baloch youth on hunger strike to demand an end to enforced disappearance

Karachi / Geneva, June 9: In Karachi's sweltering heat, at a protest camp outside the Press Club, Lateef Gohar, a young man in his early 20s, is lying stretched out on a footpath. He has refused food since April 22. The hunger strike is to protest against the abduction of a nationalist student leader, Zahid Baloch, by Pakistani security forces. Zahid, who heads the Baloch Student Organisation (Azad), was picked up from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, onMarch 18. The Frontier Corps personnel are said to have held him at gunpoint. The police has refused to register a complaint against his enforced disappearance.