Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports the freedom of all human rights activists. Through our friends suffering in Balochistan, we are painfully aware of their suffering for the determination to stand for their human rights.

We recently heard the devastating news of the murder on April 24, 2015 of Ms. Sabeen Mahmud, a human rights activist and social NGO worker. She was founder and director of the Pakistan Karachi-based cafe The Second Floor (T2F) and president of the Karachi branch of TiE. She was shot dead by unidentified gunmen on her way home after hosting a seminar at T2F, titled “Unsilencing Balochistan (Take 2),” and her mother was also critically wounded.

Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting another suppression of human rights by the Balochistan human rights activist Mr. Mama Qadeer Baloch, and canceling his conferences in Karachi. He was a guest speaker at the April 24 event where Ms. Mahmud was assassinated.
WSJ states: “Playing host to Mama Qadeer Baloch is a dangerous act in Pakistan. The 73-year-old human-rights campaigner routinely receives death threats; his hosts at public appearances have been targeted for assassination; and on Wednesday, the administration of Karachi University shut a planned lecture to avoid the wrath of the country’s powerful military establishment. Since 2009, Mr. Baloch, a retired bank worker, has kept a solitary vigil on a sidewalk outside the press club in this southern megacity, surrounded by pictures of people he alleges the military abducted from his native Balochistan province, a sparsely populated western province that is rich in minerals.”

The richest and most precious thing that we have are our universal human rights. It is our shared obligation to struggle for consistency and defense of these human rights everywhere in the world.