How Karima Baloch’s Legacy Was Rewritten – OpEd
The assassination of the former chairperson of BSO-Azad, Karima Baloch in Canada in December 2020, has played a significant role in changing the very structure of political discourses being made, distributed and weaponised in far more ways than the factual nature of their original origin. Ultimately, when Toronto Police closed its investigation, it was obvious and they came up with the statement: The situation has been researched and officers determined that it is non-criminal death, foul play is not suspected. Karima himself confessed to the same in his brother in public. The reporting of Al Jazeera also confirmed that Canadian police lacked the evidence of murder or political conspiracy. Midway, it was politically only beginning. Since she has since then been invoked with significant regularity on social media and in diaspora circles and within the advocacy circles, re-invented around the real research and repackaged around a more emotionally exploring narrative of martyrdom, alienation and unwarranted punishment.
The example of Karima Baloch career shows that the personal identity, discourse of victimhood, and political ambition can overlap and produce even more significant effects without even the requirements of facts on the ground that can be checked. Others have argued that by ascending to prominence as a student-politics she has, diplomatically, placed herself in a paradigm of victimhood as a politically-activist whose primarily male-dominated political space she is an innovator in the field. This split personality attracted her interest, empathy and devotion especially the single and city Baloch’s who needed role models. Critics say however that this framing was not merely a by-product; but that it was a political asset developed.
A more embarrassing dialogue is the one of instrumentalization of gender and identity in international advocacy. It was by these critics that through the selection of Karima, by herself, and by sponsors, she was placed, in an international discourse, where the archetype of the oppressed woman activist takes high appearance. This archetype has been quite effective to attract the attention of the Western media, fundraising, NGO options, and the legal resources to obtain the political asylum. Victimhood in this form was a commodity of politics. Inevitably or through the shaping powers of transnational activism, her identity was the means to the enhancement of a political message that was more lost in personal promotion.
This orbit Karima had adherents, collected money and channelled the energy of the educated Baloch young generation into an oratory which critics claim increasingly echoed anarchy, separatist romanticism and even tacit encouragement of militancy. The good news emerged when the relationships with external interference, the most infamous of which is the figure of Indian agent Kulbhushan Jadhav is supposedly securely knotting the knot of separatist activities in Balochistan. The politics was hot-tempered, and the discourses of victimhood, especially the one driven by a charisma female were more powerful. The gender of Karima was proved to be not only a benefit in respect of obtaining international presence but also a source of credibility in the circles of Baloch where women leaders are extremely unequal. Nevertheless, according to critics, it is this symbolic capital that was instrumentalized and edited.
According to these perceptions, as she received asylum, and an international platform, Karima began to consider her personal life, activity, marriage, and relocation to a different country, which are valid choices to make as a person, but they did not appear to be in line with the image she had constructed as a revolutionary. The doubt between the political cause she was furthering and personal interests she was pursuing raised the question as to whether the agitation was terminated or termination agitation as she was agitating about Pakistan. Her action preserved her because it was not disruptive by violence as those who remained at home and this is not a new phenomenon in exile-based activism where the activists are not in danger and the tales they spread back home spread back the violence.
Her controversial leadership is another indication of underlying divisions of Baloch nationalist movements. The resistance against the powers of women was expressed ideologically and organically through the BLA having never recognized her as a valid leader. Karima could not even be accepted within BSO-Azad which was also prohibited on its nexus with maleficence actors. Her ultimate exile, which was to be followed by her engagement in BNM, made her an icon, and a threat to those in authority who had invested in her presence in Pakistan. Their internal politics is not open but, the tensions were felt. However, such organizations as BYC continue to venerate the leadership of BSO-Azad and BNM, implicitly even to the level of militant proxies such as BLA and BLF in the name of human rights activism.
The bigger and the more problematic implication is the perversion of the discourse of human rights. The actual situation of the ordinary Baloch people is suppressed when the narratives concerning an additional victim are chosen at will to advance the political leaders. Terrorism attacks, killing of school children, murder of workers, killing of passengers in front of their families, displacement of entire families, barely attract such mobilization of these activists. Their silence in situations when the violence is committed by separatist or militant players is blaring. This imbalance presents a component of performance in which the human right discussion has become a source of raising funds, seeking asylum, and gaining a political bargaining power as opposed to a noble duty to provide security to all the vulnerable entities.
The rhetoric that has emerged with the emergence of Karima Baloch is already in existence in the work of a new generation of activists: melodramatic claims, emotionally saturated stories, effective internationalisation of localised grievances and well-controlled identities that turn them into global icons. In accordance with the gendered victimhood, this template has worked but failed to an extent that it restricts the path of truthful and evidence-based advocacy.
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