QuettaPakistan’s Balochistan stripped 15 million people of assembly rights for 30 days.
Section 144, a colonial criminal-procedure law, was invoked citing militant threats from Pakistani Taliban and Baloch armed groups.
The order also bans face coverings and pillion riding.
Sources: Dawn
THE COLONIAL ORIGIN
Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was written by the British in 1861, four years after the 1857 uprising. It was designed to let a district magistrate ban any gathering on his own authority, without judicial review, to prevent another mutiny. Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh all inherited it verbatim at partition and none has repealed it.
HOW IT WORKS
A District Magistrate issues an order under their own signature. There is no legislative debate, no court hearing, no appeal before it takes effect. The maximum duration in the original code is two months; provincial governments routinely re-issue back-to-back orders to extend indefinitely. The burden of challenging it falls on citizens, not the state.
WHY BALOCHISTAN
Balochistan is Pakistan's largest province by area — nearly 44% of the country — but holds only about 6% of its population. It contains the deepwater port of Gwadar, the Reko Diq copper-gold deposit, and most of Pakistan's gas reserves. Yet provincial GDP per capita is roughly half the national average. The Baloch insurgency, now in its fifth iteration since 1948, is rooted in this resource-extraction asymmetry.
TWO INSURGENCIES, ONE PROVINCE
The order names both Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Baloch armed groups — but these are politically opposite movements forced onto the same map. TTP is a Pashtun Islamist network seeking sharia rule. The Baloch Liberation Army and its sister groups are secular ethno-nationalists demanding independence or autonomy. Lumping them together as a single security threat justifies blanket measures that neither alone would warrant.
THE LONG ARC
The Baloch grievance is not new. The princely state of Kalat acceded to Pakistan under disputed circumstances in 1948; armed resistance has flared in five distinct waves since.
THE RIGHTS QUESTION
Pakistan's constitution (Article 16) guarantees freedom of assembly subject to 'reasonable restrictions in the interest of public order.' The Supreme Court has repeatedly held Section 144 valid in principle but criticized its blanket use. A 30-day province-wide ban affecting 15 million people is precisely the pattern the court has called constitutionally suspect — yet has never struck down.