Uncover - S17: "The Kill List" E1: Death of an Icon

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

A leading human rights activist is found dead. Many immediately suspect murder. The assassinations of dissidents like her have become commonplace in Pakistan. But Karima Baloch's body was discovered off the shores of Toronto, the city where she fled for her life. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/the-kill-list-transcripts-listen-1.6514561

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The following episode contains difficult subject matter, including references to suicide and torture. Please take care. they've tried to keep hidden. About tens of thousands who have disappeared and others who have escaped only to have the threats follow them around the world. It's a story so dangerous to tell that for some it's meant ending up on a kill list. And when some who fled to the West ended up dead, many began to question, is nowhere safe? Could they have been assassinated?

Same day in Balochistan. Stop in both. It's very insane. Same day in Balochistan. Stop in both. It's very insane. Let's begin on an autumn day in 2020. Stop in both.

It's very insane. Same day in Balochistan. Stop in both. It's very insane. A small group of protesters has gathered in downtown Toronto. Commanding their attention is a young woman named Karima Baluch. When I look around today, I see people standing upon... She's wearing a beautifully embroidered shawl, wrapped loosely around her head and shoulders, and reading from a speech in her hands. Today we are here to remember one of my friends, Shabir Baluch.

I am not sure if he or many others like him are still alive in the Pakistani torture cells. This is actually not the story of Shabir Baloch. It is the story of entire Balochistan. There's a good chance you've never even heard of Karima's homeland of Balochistan, a province in western Pakistan, or the human rights abuses against her people, the Baloch. But Karima is trying to change that. It has been two decades. A whole generation has been raised on the roads,

marching for release of their sons, daughters, brothers and father. I ask myself that do we deserve to live like this? She's small, 5 foot 3, but her presence is one of undeniable strength. So let me ensure those who abduct, torture, and kill, you can inflict pain and suffering upon us, but you can never stop us from our quest for justice. May I remind you that in the end of every battle fought for justice, it's the fate of the Goliaths to fall.

In Pakistan, the threat of assassination hung heavy over Karima's head. Surrounded by the abductions and killings of family members and fellow activists, Karima knew she could be next. Today, she is standing in the stories of a struggle against oppression. Today, she is standing in the city where she fled for her life. And despite constant threats over the years, warning her to stop speaking out, she's refused. Seemingly impossible to silence. Until she was. As a long-time critic of Pakistan, 37-year-old Karima Baloch devoted her life to speaking for the people of Balochistan. She was reported missing on Sunday.

I suddenly got a call from a very close friend, who was also a very close friend of Karima. What's happening with Karima? Where is she? I said, what are you saying? She said, have you watched the news? I said, no. She went missing and nobody knows where she is. She was found dead in Toronto on Monday. She has been living in exile in Canada for several years.

It was really shocking in a country like Canada. We came here for safety. I cannot explain it. We are in shock. As friends and family mourn, her death is making international headlines. Prominent Baloch activist has been found dead. Baloch activist and staunch critic of Pakistan government, Karima Baloch was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Toronto. She has been vocal about Pakistan army and government atrocities in Balochistan. And while the press was reporting her age as 37, she was actually only 34, according to a family member. Karima was revered by her people for her defiant activism against the Pakistani authorities,

despite the mortal danger it put her in. In 2016, Karima was named in the BBC's annual list of the world's 100 most inspirational and influential women. But I first heard of Karima Baluch the day after she went missing, the day her body was pulled from the frigid waters of Lake Ontario off the shores of Toronto. They told us around, I think, 1 p.m. Samir Mehrab is Karima's older brother. He remembers that day when the police told him they'd found his sister's body. It was December 21st, 2020.

They found her body around 7 or something like that. In that morning, they said they find her body in the water. So that was it. They told us that was it. And then what happened? They told us, we're going to contact you. You cannot see the body right now. They said it's still considered in evidence. They cannot show you the body because But some close to Karima worried they knew what might have happened, that Pakistan had found a way to assassinate her in Toronto. Less than a day later, Samir says the police had more information for the family. After 16 hours, they start calling us and they start talking with us and trying to convince us that there is nothing to look into. And this is just a case of self-harm or at least there is no other party involved or no fault play.

We told the police simply that we cannot agree with this because it's too early. It's just 16, 17 hours. How do you come to that conclusion? They say, no, but you know, there is nothing we think. I say, okay, but how how you know even within 16 hours you cannot even employ all your investigative tools? Samir also argued to the police that Karima was a high-profile dissident who had fled to Canada for her life

and that she had continued to receive threats in exile. Samir expressed to the police his concern that Karima could have been murdered, but he says police told him their investigation found no evidence of foul play. Here's what police tweeted. The circumstances have been investigated and officers have determined this to be a non-criminal death and no foul play is suspected. We have updated the family. Crema's death certificate listed drowning as the cause of death and ruled it as suicide. But her family tells me they've never fully understood how or why authorities

reached this conclusion. We wrote to Toronto Police asking how they concluded Karima's death was a suicide. In the response to us, a police spokesman wrote that after an autopsy, the coroner determined the death was, quote, not suspicious and our investigation supported that conclusion, unquote. But they added if further information or evidence came to light, suggesting otherwise, they would review it. I'm not even suggesting that there was something wrong happened there. But to show some concern, show some respect that, OK, this person has a history of persecution, there might be something. There might be something.

Others are more direct. I don't think it was one of the finest moments for the Toronto Police Service. I think it was given to a frontline officer who looked at the immediate evidence before him or her and came to the wrong conclusion. Chris Alexander was Canada's Minister of Immigration when Karima fled Pakistan with the help of the Canadian embassy. I mean, when assassinations take place, the perpetrators often go to great lengths to make their work look like something else, to look like a suicide,

to look like an accident, or to look like some other form of random violence. Karima's death in the country where she had sought refuge troubles him. Canada had gone to great lengths to give her our protection. We had failed to protect her. So I was shocked, heartbroken. Do you think she committed suicide? Absolutely not. I think she was killed. My name is Mary Link, and this is The Kill List.

Episode 1, Death of an Icon. So, should I start? Yes, start your... There we go, yeah. We are recording right now. Samir is talking to me from his home in North Toronto, where he lives with his wife and two kids. Karima had lived there as well. It's been about four months since his sister's death. Conversations about Karima remain difficult for him. When his young daughter or son asks for their beloved aunt, he changes the subject. These days he says he only talks about Karima to me.

Over the months, Samir and I have built a relationship through phone and video calls. We've been separated by a pandemic and close to 2,000 kilometers. Him in Toronto, me on the east coast of Canada. I asked Samir to go back to the beginning. Me and Karima, we were both born in UAE. Karima was born in the mid-1980s in the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. My father was a migrant worker in UAE, like so many Baloch from our area, because we don't have any prospect back home.

She was my best friend, always. We fought as kids, we fought a lot, you know, we fought. But she was always my best friend. She understood what I said, like if we were joking or if we were making fun of someone. She had this quality to impress people. Even in our society, girls are not, they were not treated as equal. But somehow, nobody dared to treat Karima unequally.

My earliest memory is when we were living in Ajman. It's a state in UAE. It's a small state. We were living there. We have a home. And then one day we just got out of the house without telling anyone. Me and Karima, we saw the rainbow. In UAE, it rained maybe once a year or twice a year, sometimes, even if you don't get that.

It's very seldom it ran. So to see a rainbow in UAE is really something you don't see every day. And we were kids. We chased the rainbow, actually. Both of us, we just went on and on and on, and eventually, we were

barred by this fence. On the other side of the fence, a beach and open ocean into which the rainbow fell. Samir says if not for the fence, he doubts they would have ever stopped. If there was no fence, maybe we both, we will keep on chasing the rainbow and we might drown. But that is the earliest memory with Karima. She was always adventurous. Samir thinks he was nine and Karima seven when the family moved back to Balochistan. It was a different world.

It was a totally different world. It's a landscape full of rugged mountains, plateaus and deserts with little vegetation, bordering Afghanistan and Iran to the west and the Arabian Sea to the south. It's the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, making up nearly half of the country, but it's sparsely populated. It's a place unknown to most of the world. The majority there belong to two ethnic groups. More than half are Baloch. The next largest, the Pashtuns.

Both have lived there for centuries, long before Pakistan was created in 1947. Like, if you're living in Balochistan, you don't think you're Pakistani. Because there's no Pakistan. State is not represented in any way or present in any way. Balochistan sits on a vast wealth of gas and minerals and is considered the richest of all the provinces in terms of resources.

It's a huge economic driver for the Pakistani economy. But the people of Balochistan are the poorest. It's not because Pakistan don't have resources or the provinces like Balochistan, they don't have the resources to have decent school or even drinking water. They are pumping natural gas from Balochistan. Since 58, I believe, or since 50s. They are pumping it to Islamabad, Karachi, and we even don't have it in our homes. And even in the few cities in Balochistan, like Torbat,

basic amenities found elsewhere in Pakistan are often scarce. Like now, I'm talking with you, in Torbat, it is 50 degree, 51, 52 degree. And we don't have electricity back there. That's because the electricity is constantly being shut down.

Kids, they have blisters on their body because of the heat. And Balochistan has the highest reported rate in all of Pakistan of women dying from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. There is no health care. There is no security. There is no opportunity for us to, you know, let's say factory or something else. This is bad, but this is also a blessing because you are free. At least in the early days, they were free.

because you were free. At least in the early days, they were free. Not anymore. Now they have a huge amount of military presence. But that time, it was a different time. That time was the early 1990s, when Karim and Samira left the UAE and began a new life in a place completely foreign to them. It's just you and the mountains and our grandfather's farm.

And you're growing up in a huge family, cousins, sisters, aunts, uncles. It was their family's ancestral home of Thump, high in the mountains of southern Balochistan. There was nothing, basically, nothing that can connect Thomp with the modern world. We were poor. Everybody was poor. So we didn't know we were poor because everybody was poor.

But still, you feel this freedom, this vast land, and you can go everywhere you want. You can hunt. You can go for fishing. And everybody knows you. go everywhere you want, you can hunt, you can go for fishing and everybody knows you, everybody respects you, everybody knows you at least two or three generations. So in that sense, it was good. If something distinguished Karima, she was aware of herself as a human being. She would not compromise for anything.

She had this belt and dignity. She felt like you were doing something against her or it's not just. She always stood up. That was her quality. She would never compromise. Especially when demanding that women have a voice. Karima, she always will challenge something. Of course, you are living in a society where people will talk, will judge you. There will be consequences eventually, serious consequences.

But she will never stop. She will keep on, you know, she'll keep on crossing red lines. In Tump, there was a high school for boys only. But a few teachers volunteered to teach girls on their off hours. Karima jumped at the chance. She was a quick study and bright. She was also extraordinary in a sense because she and a few of my other cousins, they have these green eyes.

They inherited that gene from one of our maybe grandmoms. So she stood out physically also due to her green eyes. Those extraordinary green eyes would one day become famous in Balochistan, but beauty was not her defining feature. It was her personality. I don't know how you explain it. It was her personality. I don't know how you explain it. You cannot explain charisma.

But Karima had charisma. As Karima was growing up, the quiet, peaceful Balochistan of her childhood was disappearing. The Baloch have always had a tense relationship with the Pakistani government, and that's meant continuous uprisings against Pakistan since the country's formation. The Baloch have long pushed for greater autonomy and benefits from their vast natural resources. But Samir says there's a deeper reason for his people's rebellion against the state. The main point is the dignity of the people. The people are fighting for their very human dignity. It's not that we expect Pakistan will give us economic opportunity. That won't happen because it never happened.

Our resources were never spent on us or something like that. But our basic human dignity is being violated every day. Karima was coming of age during Balochistan's fifth and latest insurgency, one that continues to this day. I would say that she is a child of that Balochistan's conflict with the Pakistani state and the brutality that state has shown so far towards the Baloch people in the last two decades. Zafar Jawad is a Baloch activist. He lives in Toronto. He says to understand Karima is to understand what's been happening in Balochistan in recent years.

If she was born like 10 years before, she would not have been Karima that we know her. By the early 2000s, the government's crackdown against the armed separatist movement was growing even more brutal and bloody. The military was no longer only targeting small groups of fighters tucked away in the mountains. They also went after human rights activists, academics, and ordinary citizens, including people close to Karima. The time and the events that happened in her lifetime that completely surrounded her, those are the things that finally made her stand up, things that inspired her a lot, and she was completely driven by that thing. It's a familiar scene in Balochistan.

Large groups of Baloch, often women, holding outdoor vigils, sometimes outside of press clubs or government buildings, clutching photos of their missing loved ones abducted by the military, some missing for more than a decade. The people abducted by the military in Pakistan are known as the disappeared. Grabbed at military checkpoints or from raids on their homes or simply while sitting with friends at a cafe, it's a common tactic in Balochistan. The disappeared are hidden away in military cells where they're tortured, sometimes for years, and then released as shattered human beings. Others are murdered,

their bodies with visible signs of mutilation, tossed in random places for their families to find. The practice is commonly known as the kill and dump. Its main purpose is to silence any criticism of the government or its military. There is such level of evidence of those kill and dump operation. Agnes Kalamar, a renowned human rights lawyer who is the secretary general of MSD International.

And very little doubt that most of them have been perpetrated by Pakistan intelligence agencies and by the Frontier Corps, often in conjunction with local police. The Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force of the Pakistani army stationed in Balochistan. It's almost a common practice for human rights defenders, activists, dissidents to be disappeared. It has become extremely widespread. With little attention from the outside world, she says thousands of Baloch and Pashtun have been illegally abducted in Balochistan by the Pakistani state. Abducted in Balochistan by the Pakistani state. That's just an extraordinary number of individuals. And that means, I will say, millions of family members in grief. So we cannot say it loud enough that there is a real pattern. It is a modest operandi and that needs to be unrooted. When families beg for their relatives' release

or even news of their whereabouts, the military will deny even hearing of the person. They often describe disappearance as the worst form of violations because families hang on to some hope. They have really nothing to go with. They don't have a body to bury. It creates really, it's a hellish situation for the families.

They are all suffering. Each family has lost someone from the family. Zafar Jawad. Or from a distant relative. If you go into a town or a small village where there are like 100 homes, for example, each home, each family has been scarred. Karima also suffered.

She felt all that trauma. She was there. Every day was a life of fear in Balochistan. If you're living today, you don't know what happens next day. If you leave home, you're going to school even, the parents are not sure you will be returning. That's the situation over there. That's the reality. And I don't know how they've coped with that, but that's a society that has been going on in this trauma for the last 20 years, continuously since 2002.

going on in this drama for the last 20 years, continuously since 2002. In 2004, Samir says a cousin of theirs, Gorham Saleh, went missing. He was driving a truck full of produce when he was stopped at a checkpoint and taken by the Frontier Corps. He was not an activist, but being a relative of Karima's politically active family made him a target. So many close to Karima had already gone missing or been killed, but Gorham's abduction affected Karima profoundly. She was only in her teens when she started attending the protests for the disappeared, holding up a picture of Gorham, demanding he be released.

After four years, he finally was, and although he had survived, he was traumatized. But Samir says a bigger tragedy awaited their family when another cousin, Bakshi, was killed by a death squad. The death squads are private militias, sometimes Islamic extremists or petty criminals, often armed by the military to quash the insurgency in Balochistan. Karima, like many other young people who became active in politics after 2002, 2003, 2004, they became active under a very brutal military operation that was being run by the state itself directly from Islamabad.

that was being run by the state itself directly from Islamabad. In 2006, Karima joined a faction of the Baluch Students' Organization, the BSO Azad. Azad meaning free. It's non-violent. Students seeking better living conditions for their people. They also want independence. And Karima stopped using her family's last name of Mihrab, replacing it with Baluch. And this is a common practice amongst her people, to show solidarity with the cause.

Karima traveled throughout Baluchistan, advocating for human rights and girls' education, among other things. And although her work for the BSO put her at great risk, Karima was unrelenting, and she was emerging as a natural leader, a rarity for a young woman in a highly patriarchal tribal society. She was always there on the stage. Although her face was covered, but everyone listening to her voice and she spoke very boldly. So she became well known as a speaker and she had this family background because of which her family was already hugely big time targeted. She knew exactly that whatever she was doing, in the end, they will come to get her or she can be target killed on the

stage. But she kept on going forward and she showed the guts and the courage that a woman, a girl, and the courage that a woman, a girl, is no less. I can completely pinpoint and say that there were times when there were situations of life and death, the loss of your life, and she stood there bravely. So this is what inspired everyone around her, and that's how she rose the ranks of BSO. BSO! BSO of BSO. If you were looking for someone to be the poster child for the fight against injustice in Balochistan,

I don't think you could come across a better candidate. In 2007, Willem Marx travelled to Balochistan. The British-Dutch journalist was curious about what was fueling the latest insurgency. And everywhere Willem traveled, he kept hearing the name Karima Baloch. Everyone was saying, you have to speak to Karima. She had no fancy tribal background. She was someone that had essentially focused her studies and her academic energy on this cause. And from a very young age, she felt the personal consequences of it.

And, you know, a bit like someone like Malala Yousafzai, you see from a young age, they become invested in an effort like this. Greta Thunberg, you understand why they become this rallying cry for other members of a broader movement. And it wasn't a surprise to me having met her that she became this essentially icon, this young icon of Baluch rights. She was at the time already a very prominent young voice in this organization. And frankly, based on all the conversations and meetings I had over several weeks, was the only young woman I met involved in the efforts to try and highlight human rights abuses, enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killings. And for these young people like Karima I met, the consequences of having been known to speak critically of the

Pakistani military, central authorities, even local authorities, those consequences could be very serious. Wilhelm says his meeting with Karima had a cloak and dagger feel to it. He was taken by car to the town of Mand in southern Balochistan, down one dusty road, then another, past low mud brick homes and a scattering of palm trees. past low mud brick homes and a scattering of palm trees. And we were very cautious about how we made it to that location to ensure that we weren't being followed as we had been previously. They finally stopped in front of a simple whitewashed building. When I walked into the room where I was going to film the interview with her, like many homes in that region of

Balochistan, there's incredible heat outside and normally just one doorway and a couple of very small windows. And that doorway would be what I'd use for my, what I call a key light to kind of light the face of the interviewee. And the light falling on her face when I set up for the interview she just had these incredible green eyes and this very open expressive face and she didn't need to raise her voice when she when she talked about these incredibly difficult topics she talked at a very high tempo you could tell she wasn't someone who was stumbling over her words. And she would look at me beseechingly during this interview, waiting for my friend to translate what she'd said and seemingly willing for me to kind of understand and empathize with what she was saying. And we throw that word charisma around a huge amount with people. And it's very difficult to articulate what exactly it means in a specific context.

But for me, she just drew me into her experiences and her worldview very, very quickly. And I remember leaving the home where we'd met just with this very strong impression of her, particularly her eyes and her energy, that has stayed with me for a long time since. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal.

I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. In 2009, life became even more dangerous for Karima. She was rising through the ranks of the BSO, and student leaders kept disappearing. Around that time, the UK Guardian's newspaper reported that one-third of the victims of the kill-and-dump policy were members of Karima's organization. In 2013, Pakistan's National Counterterrorism Authority banned the faction Karima belonged to, the BSO Assad. In an interview with Global Voices,

when Karima was still in Balochistan, she talked about these threats, and I quote, For us, peaceful struggle has been turned into a lethal poison. During the previous three years, many of our members have been brutally killed. In 2009, the vice chairman of our organization, Zakir Majid, was kidnapped by the secret services while he was attending a crowded procession. He is still missing. The noose has been tightened around our necks. After Zakir Majid's abduction, Karima became his replacement. Five years later,

in March 2014, another BSO leader was abducted in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan. This time it was a top person, the chairman Zahed Baloch, kidnapped in front of Karima. Here she is remembering that day in an Instagram video she posted in 2020. Here she is remembering that day in an Instagram video she posted in 2020. ISI and MI and Pakistani army persons in front of me and three other girls members of Baloch student organization. We were going to attend a meeting at Balochistan University when it happened. It was a very secret meeting, so only the central leaders were there. After the meeting, the leaders left and scattered in small groups. Karima was with Zahed and a couple others.

Suddenly, dozens of military vehicles and unmarked cars came speeding in from all directions, and men in military uniforms and civilian clothes jumped out. They were not only looking for him, they were looking for her also. The BSO members started to run away, but the authorities were able to grab Zahed. However, they didn't know at the time who he was, nor did they realize Karima was raped by his side, her face concealed by a headscarf, not for religious reasons, but for her safety. She had never shown her face in public ever. Every time she went to some meetings or something,

even when she had to, you know, like make speeches on the stage, her face was completely covered. So nobody had seen her face. So that was one thing which was, that was protecting her. She still, even at that time, she took the risk. The soldiers were dragging Zahed away. Karima and a few others pretended to be family members. Karima was shouting, where are you taking our relative? He is innocent.

She was fighting with the soldiers to get him released because she knew that if they take Zahid away, that's the last time anyone would see him. Here's Karima again. Here's Karima again. And from that day until now, there is no whereabouts about Zahid Baloch. And we don't know if he is still alive or not. It was March 18, 2014. Six long years. Still, he is missing.

After his arrest, she was the vice chairperson, so automatically she became the acting chairperson. Then finally, it came to a point that she started becoming the next target for the state, because they knew that she would be the next chairperson. She would be elected. And she was formally elected in 2015, becoming the first female leader in the history of the organization. You know what? I can tell you something. When she became the chairperson, the BSO gave her a title. It's called Luma. Luma is a local word in Baluchian, Brahvi language, which simply means mother. It became so popular. Luma Karima means mother Karima. They said that we have a motherland, we have a mother, Karima. So that's how people, her colleagues, friends who knew her, that's how much they were emotionally attached to her.

After becoming the chairperson, situation in Balestan for her was completely like the state was trying to hunt her down. She had already been sent many messages, threatening messages, death messages. And not just threats. There were serious attempts on her life. Krimis Holman Tump was shot at and came under several mortar attacks. There were mortars landing in our home.

And there was bullet landing and our house was shattered with the bullets. Fired by the FC. The FC, the Frontier Corps, Samir recalls an attack that nearly killed another sister. And there was a mortar landed just seconds after my twin sister left the spot. If they stayed there for two minutes or three minutes, my twin sister might be maimed or killed by that mortar. It was luck, pure luck, that they just left that spot in our compound. The family survived these bombings, but a stray mortar meant for them, kill the neighbor.

Yeah, a military mortar hit a house next door. Not only hit, but to kill a teenager girl, neighbor's daughter. A teenager girl died. The thing is, if my sister died or like my neighbor's daughter, a teenager girl died. And the thing is, if my sister die or like my neighbor's daughter die, the problem is there is no way you can hold accountable Pakistani military. Can you bring the microphone close to your mouth? What? I don't... You sound great now. You sound great now. Okay.

Maganj Mahrab is Karima's youngest sister. She still lives in Pakistan. Tell me a bit about your sister, Karima. We are five sisters and one brother. She is younger than Sameer, and and after her we are four sisters. We are all younger than her. She is like our mother. That's why we are sisters, we are very close to her. Maganj no longer lives in Balochistan. She moved with her remaining family members to Karachi, Pakistan's largest city,

because it's no longer safe to live in their home in Balochistan. Me and my mother and sisters are living like a refugee in our own country. We can't visit our village, our own house. Aganj remembers the threatening phone calls Karima would receive when she was still in Balochistan, calls from the ISI, Pakistan's feared intelligence agency, threatening to kill Karima in a way that no one would know what had happened to her. Karima said, when they call me and threats me, they always say to me, we will kill you like this,

that no one even know how we remove you from the place. They always talk like this. Magan says the ISI would also follow Karima outside the house. Three times I'm with her when they treat her with their guns. When ISI follow us, they think maybe if we treat her, then she will stop the work. They said if you stop the work, all the other people stop work. But Crema wouldn't stop her activism, and the ISI began raiding their house on a more frequent basis.

Maganj remembers her and another sister having guns put to their heads. They put the gun in our forehead and they said it's take only one or two seconds for us to kill you people. The ISI eventually left as Karima was their target, but she kept evading them and ISI kept coming, agents bursting through the doors into a house full of Karima's relatives. The soldiers demanded the women show their eyes. They were looking for Karima's distinctive green eyes, but the women wouldn't budge.

Mugunj says, smiling. Then woman said, no, it's not allow that other men see their eyes. Kareema would go from safe house to safe house, only rarely daring to go home to see her family. She knew that once she was caught, that would be the end of her life. Safar Jarwid The thing over there in Balochistan, everyone, all the young people who are actively engaged in this struggle, they are well aware that once they get into the hands of the military, once they are into state custody, they are taken to torture. They will be tortured brutally and they will never see the day of light again. They will never see their families again.

They will end up in some fields as corpses. There was growing fear Kareemah would become one of those corpses. There was growing fear Kareemah would become one of those corpses. The government of Pakistan had already charged Kareemah with sedition, which essentially means to incite people to rebel against the state. There was always a chance, a risk, that she would get arrested. But she was wearing all those chathers and everything, scarves, just to save herself. Then finally, it came to a point that she started becoming the next target for the state,

because they knew that she would be the next chairperson, she would be elected. So in 2015, when she became officially elected as a chairperson of BSO, the organization had already decided that she should leave the country. But leaving Pakistan wouldn't be easy. In 2015, Chris Alexander was Canada's Minister of Immigration, and he became convinced that Karima's life was in danger and that she deserved asylum. How difficult to begin with was it to get her out? Because there had been attacks on her home, there had been threats against her life. How difficult was it to get her out? Because there had been attacks on her home. There had been threats against her life. How difficult was it to get her out? Extremely difficult. This is something that the government of Pakistan would not have wanted to happen. It's embarrassing for them. And so our mission, our high commission and our immigration program had to go about this discreetly.

They had to move fast. They had to arrange logistics, and not just obviously in Islamabad, but involving these distant communities in Balochistan, quite a long way away from the capital. So it was, I think our team did extremely well, but it was tough work, and it was risky work for all of those involved. Karima arrived in Canada on November 27, 2015, and continued to speak out. Mr. Vice President, I would like to bring to your notice the appalling human rights violation being perpetrated by the police against Baloo's people. Including before the UN.

In the process, thousands of Baloo's sociopolitical activists and intellectuals have been extrajudicially killed. Their bodies bearing the marks of inhuman torture have been dumped to aid in desolated areas In exile, the death threats continued as well, right up until she disappeared. I do know that Karima was under threat. Kiran Nazish is a Pakistani journalist who lives in Canada and was a close friend of Karima's. Mazesh is a Pakistani journalist who lives in Canada and was a close friend of Karima's. In fact, many of my meetings with her in the recent months before her death, she had been talking about being followed, you know, getting threats.

Including one just before she went missing. Samira shared that threat with me. It was a direct message through Twitter with the warning, quote, I will give Karima a Christmas present she will never forget. Samir says it was sent about two weeks before her death. He tells me he thinks it was from a fake account, adding in his experience the Pakistani military has a habit of sending messages this way. The account has since been suspended by Twitter for violating its rules. The last time Kiran saw Karima was two months before her death. In October, we were walking downtown in Toronto,

and we had this long walk in which she was just discussing how sometimes she was afraid that these threats could come real. And then we would both laugh and say, well, you know, she's in Canada and she's safe and this could never happen in a country like Canada. Grima Baluch was lasting alive on the afternoon of December 20th, 2020. She was boarding a ferry to visit one of her favorite places in Toronto, the island scattered on the edge of December 20, 2020. She was boarding a ferry to visit one of her favorite places in Toronto,

the island scattered on the edge of the city's harbor. It was the next morning that police found Karima in the water. Karima, life, her struggle in Balochistan, and even her death, I would say, is so typical, so symbolic of what's happening with the Balochistan and even her death, I would say, is so typical, so symbolic of what's happening with the Baloch, the youth especially. Like for example, if I just look at her, the scenario of her death, not only it's sad but it represents Balochistan in a way. First she gets disappeared, she goes missing for a day, and then next day her body is found, her dead body floating in the waters.

The only difference with that compared to Balochistan is that most of the bodies found of the young people of her age are mostly bullet-riddled, torture marks, very obvious, very clear. And over here it was a body that has left many questions, and we are still struggling for the answers. Finding those answers won't be easy. In the course of this investigation, people broke their silence. Grieving family members spoke.

Those in hiding answered my calls. Others shared documents. And every step of the way, I felt the weight of their trust and knew it was often a great risk to even talk to me. But I also know, they know, that this is a story that needs to be told. A story riddled with question marks that has kept me digging deeper and deeper. riddled with question marks, that has kept me digging deeper and deeper. What really happened to Karima? Why did the authorities so quickly conclude that she died by suicide? And are there actually targeted killings of Pakistani dissidents in the West? To answer this, I began looking for connections to the death of another prominent Baluch dissident. Only eight months earlier, Sajid Hussein's body was found in Sweden. And the cause of his death, according to the authorities, drowning.

Coming up on The Kill List. Did she think that Sajid was murdered? Yes, absolutely, 100%. Which Karima used to be very stressed about as well. You know, her fear about maybe this could happen to me. Because of my human rights activism, I was placed on a state kill list. I had to flee to save my life. They said that, you know, if he thinks that he's in France and he's far away from our reach, tell him not to be mistaken.

On top, it said, Karima Baloch, check. And then it had four or five names with my name in it as well, that these people are yet to be handled. Because you are doing this story, I don't want any aspect of this case should be, you know, in dark for you. You should have a look. It's 4.13 in the morning.

I'm just recording myself on my iPhone. You know, this is the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to requests for an interview to discuss the allegations against the state that have been reported in this series. The Kill List is created by me, Mary Link, and written and produced along with Alina Ghosh. Mixing and sound design by Julia Whitman. Studio direction by Nancy Regan.

Our story editor is Chris Oak. Emily Connell is our digital producer. Fact-checking by Emily Mathieu. Legal advice from Sean Mormon. Thank you. Thank you for listening.