Colonial Dehumanisation of the Colonised: The Case of occupied Balochistan
Report
The colonialism brings a waste of evils effects on a region, due to its nature of violence it destroys every single entity of a society. When a nation is colonised and a territory is invaded, It doesn’t only occupy a land but affects the whole society and becomes a threat to the human existence. It disrupts the normal human life, psychological health, culture and language, economy and most dangerous, it turns the human nature of being human into dehumanising. It swallows everything belongs to human kind and dehumanise the social system of a region.
We witness the colonialism in the world, how people were dehumanised. In reality it’s the coloniser who is dehumanised, and it can turn the colonised into dehumanisation. Dehumanisation itself is a violent phenomena, as it refer to the treatment of a human being as mere objects and subject him to violence. Violence is the only tool that creates and sustains as well the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. From the very beginning the colonizer starts believing in violence to suppress and to create a culture of silence among the colonized. Colonial violence is not just practiced to create a sense of inferiority rather it dehumanizes the colonized as a whole, through its dehumanising nature and practices.
March 27, 1948 is considered a black day in baloch history when the brutal armed forces of Pakistan invaded the newly independent balochistan, sieged the fort of Mir Ahmed Yaar Khan, the late Nawab of kalat state and forcefully occupied Balochistan. Since then the brutal armed forces of Pakistan have made Balochistan a ruin with blood marks of innocent baloch people. Following the forced occupation of the kalat state baloch nation resisted from the very first day and never bowed before the armed forces of Pakistan. During these eighty years of forced occupation Baloch nation resisted and has reached out every possible forum to regain the lost independence. The Pakistani armed forces to suppress and counter the Baloch national liberation movement have not spared any single brutal act to produce fear and enforce silence in Balochistan, even though the democratic and peaceful activists face illegal detention and become victims of enforced disappearances. This is perhaps the nature of coloniser who believes only on violence and deal the people in a dehumanising manner.
During the Algerian war of independence, the French troops forcefully abducted the native Algerians and the mutilated dead bodies were brought in the villages to produce fear among the colonized population. The coloniser Pakistani armed forces for decades, have been practicing the same brutal pattern to crush the baloch national liberation movement. They have been drilling the dead bodies of Baloch detainees, cutting the nails from the fingers, mutilating their bodies, burning the body by lighter and writing names on them, striking electric shocks, gauging out the eyes from socket and internal organs from the body, throwing their dead bodies from helicopters, dragging them behind their military vehicles, hence every practice of dehumanising has been practiced by colonial Pakistani military on Baloch detainees.
The recent surge in colonial violence in Balochistan is just alarming as the colonial Pakistani state is exercising all his strength to curb the constant growing support for the national liberation movement. The colonizer killing of an indigenous is not merely the killing of a person, but to make it a symbol for the rest of the population so that the fear of the colonizer may prevail among the colonized and the colonized consider their support for the national liberation movement as suicide.
The colonial state of Pakistan is practicing the same pattern in Balochistan, as few days ago on September 6th 2026 the armed forces of Pakistan dumped the mutilated bodies of six Baloch youth on the main highway of Mastung Balochistan. They were killed, later their dead bodies were dumped on main road of a public place to exhibit them among the population. The corpses had the marks of severe torture.
This isn’t the single incident of colonial violence the state of Pakistan committed to produce fear and enforce silence in Balochistan there are hundreds of such incidents where the colonizer Pakistani state dumped the mutilated bodies of the baloch people in order to produce fear in the Baloch population. Another incident occurred this week in Kech, Balochistan, where a 30 year old woman was abducted by Pakistani state sponsored death squad members at night from her home in front of family. Her mutilated dead body was dumped near University of Turbat, marking extreme signs of torture, her eyes were gauged out.
The recent case of exhibiting the dead bodies of Baloch youths to the public by dumping them on roadside by colonial Pakistani military is the extreme form of dehumanisation. This is an attempt to bring fear among public but reflects the classical dehumanisation of colonial mentality in modern world. The dead does no harms to the enemy but still doing such acts shows the hatred nature of colonial military’s troops. The same pattern of dehumanisation was seen in Khayber Pakhtunkhwa.
The international laws strictly prohibit the disrespecting of dead corpse. The Geneva Convention writes in its Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols I & II prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment. The public display and humiliation or disrespecting the dead shall not be permitted.“
The International Criminal Court (ICC): Under Article 8(2)(b)(xxi) and (e)(vi), committing “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” is classified as a war crime. This act prohibits physical mutilation, dismemberment, trophy-taking, broadcasting images of dead bodies to humiliate them or intimidate an opponent.
Publicly exhibiting dead bodies of opponent in any way is explicitly illegal under international law and constitutes a war crime and acts of terrorism. Whether parading them, hanging them on display, or filming them to mock or show off—violates the duty to handle human remains with honor and respect. There are multiple rules against these illegal and dehumanising practices. But Occupying Pakistani state has been violating every single rules and humiliating the human souls. Pakistani state must be accountable on these war crimes in Balochistan.