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vulnerable for women NGO workers.
The threats, however, were not limited to remote tribal areas. A 70-yearold
Swedish charity worker, Bargeeta Almby, was shot in Lahore by unidentified
men. She succumbed to her injuries a few days later. Mrs Almby was the
managing director of the social wing of an NGO called Full Gospel Assemblies
of Pakistan (FGA Church). Many anti-polio campaign workers received threats
while some were killed in a series of attacks. In December, gunmen shot dead
nine anti-polio health workers in a string of attacks across the country in 3
days.
Khalil Dale, a 60-year-old English aid worker of the Red Cross was
kidnapped from Quetta in January. His body was found in April when demands
for ransom were not met. [See also the chapter ‘Freedom of Association’]
The year 2012 saw Malala Yousafzai, a young girl from the town of Mingora
in Swat, being attacked by the TTP for advocating girls’ education in Pakistan.
On October 9, Malala was shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen as she
returned home on a school bus. On October 12, a group of 50 clerics issued
a fatwa against those who tried to kill her but the TTP reiterated its intent to
kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin. Despite the tremendous international
and local attention given to the incident, the authorities failed to capture the
suspects involved in her shooting. Soon after the incident, the attacker was
identified as Ataullah Khan but till the end of 2012, the police failed to locate or
arrest him. In December 2011, six employees of the Balochistan Rural Support
Programme (BRSP) had been abducted from Pishin district. The kidnappers
had immediately killed the driver and shifted the rest to Waziristan. In 2012,
repeated calls were made to their families and organisation for ransom, which
could not be arranged. Consequently, in late May, another employee was killed
by the captors. After eight months of captivity, the ransom amount for the
remaining four was allegedly arranged and they were freed in early August. It
is believed that the state failed to intervene and the ransom amount was collected
by the relatives of the kidnapped employees by setting up a camp to collect
donations.
Law and order
Balochistan
Balochistan has been considered the most volatile region in the country
for some time now and the situation has aggravated in recent years due to the
rise of violent sectarian groups. As a result, the province has become a melting
pot where different violent groups battle it out for supremacy and intelligence
agencies of the state continue torturing and killing civilians, each motivated by
its own agenda. A few years ago, all forms of terrorist violence were attributed
to the nationalists in Balochistan. Recently, however, sectarian groups have
found a safe haven in the already troubled province and are targeting specific
ethnicities. According to media reports, 758 members of the Shia community
have been killed from 2008 till 2012; of these, 338 belonged to the Hazara