“The Pakistani State must end its decades-long war on Sindhi voices,” declared Sarang Sindhi, a leading activist and representative of the Voice for Missing Persons of Sindh (VMPS), as he exposed harrowing accounts of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and State repression at the 37th International Conference of the World Sindhi Congress held in London.
In a searing speech that resonated with urgency and pain, Sarang Sindhi accused Pakistani security agencies of conducting a systematic campaign of abduction and assassination targeting Sindhi political activists over the last two decades. Presenting grim statistics, he stated that more than 3,500 Sindhi individuals have been forcibly disappeared between 2000 and 2025, with over 50 political activists killed in staged encounters — numbers that may only scratch the surface due to chronic underreporting and fear of retaliation.
“Between 2017 and 2025 alone, over 550 Sindhi activists were reported missing. The year 2022 saw the highest surge with 98 cases, and in just the first nine months of 2025, another 92 have vanished,” he said. Sarang Sindhi also revealed that at least 51 activists affiliated with Jeay Sindh — a prominent Sindhi nationalist movement — were executed extrajudicially between 2012 and 2025. He condemned what he described as a deliberate policy of silencing dissent through terror.
The toll has also hit VMPS personally. On February 16, 2024, the organization’s patron Hidayatullah Lohar was assassinated in an extrajudicial killing in Naseerabad, Qambar. He was the father of Sorath Lohar, the current convenor of VMPS and herself a vocal campaigner for the disappeared. In his appeal, Sarang Sindhi called on the international Sindhi diaspora, global human rights bodies, and democratic Governments to urgently intervene. “We demand the immediate release of all missing persons in Sindh,” he said, “and full accountability for the state agencies and individuals responsible for these crimes against humanity.” He warned that silence from the international community enables further abuses and stressed that the Sindhi struggle for justice will continue — in courtrooms, in streets, and on international platforms.
The conference audience — comprised of Sindhi expatriates, human rights advocates, and political observers — responded with a standing ovation.
