Dozens of activists and residents of Kabul on Monday staged a protest against the alleged killing of a senior member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), also called Pashtun Protection Movement, a social movement for Pashtun human rights, based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, by Pakistani police.

“Punjab and ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) are a clear address of enmity who are killing our youth one by one,” said an activist.

Arman Loni was one of the leaders of the PTM who was killed after returning from a sit-in protest outside Loralai Press Club in Baluchistan on Saturday, reports suggest.

The sit-in protest had been staged in protest against a recent terror attack. Pakistan media reports stated Loni had been sitting in a park after the protest when police arrested him.

Loni had attended the sit-in protest along with his sister, Wranga Loni.

Such protests were held in other parts of the country as well including in the southern and eastern provinces.

The activists in Kabul chanted slogans against Pakistan and the intelligence agency of the neighboring country.

“A system and an administration are engaged in suppressing Pashtuns through different ways over the past 40 years,” said Mahmoud Sulaimankhel, an Afghan MP.

“The international community has not done anything in this respect so far,” said Najibullah Azad, a political activist from Kabul. 

According to PTM members, almost 30,000 people from the two provinces – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan – have gone missing over the past 10 years and Pakistan’s army and ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, appear to be behind the disappearances.

However, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has said that the number of missing individuals is 1,532.