Life Sentences for Mahrang Baloch and Sibghat Ullah Shah Expose the Colonial Logic of Pakistan’s Hard State

Sabaoon strongly condemns the court’s life imprisonment sentences for Mahrang Baloch and Sibghat Ullah Shah. This is an extreme manifestation of the ‘might-is-right’ doctrine of the Punjabi majoritarian civilian and military elites. Oppressed nations and their leaders are increasingly pushed against the wall by the draconian hybrid regime in the name of the so-called national interests. We believe that these sentences and the repression in Kashmir, Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakhtunkhwa and other places are not separate from the new geopolitical adventures and colonial extraction projects of the ‘hard state’.