Quetta: Fed up with continued oppression by the occupying Pakistani forces in Balochistan, the people from the region, including many women, have launched a massive non-violent campaign to amplify their decades-old grievances related to extreme human rights violations.
Lakhs of young people are currently on a 1600-km peaceful march from Balochistan’s Kech district, bordering Iran, to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad to highlight their demand for end to brutalities like Enforced Disappearances, extra-judicial killings and rapes.
The march, which began 5 days back, reached Taunsa, a city of Punjab Province with a big majority of Baloch people, today to a rousing welcome.
The Pakistani forces have been indulging in extreme forms of atrocities and oppression against the Baloch people in a bid to maintain illegal occupation of Balochistan in the face of a sustained struggle for Independence from the locals.
Balochistan was illegally occupied by Pakistan in 1948 and a sustained uprising has been going on there for independence.
As part of their unsuccessful efforts to douse the mass sentiment for freedom in Balochistan, the Pakistani forces frequently kill innocent locals in fake encounters and illegally pick up youth whose whereabouts are never known thereafter under a dreaded practice described as ‘Enforced Disappearances’.
Over the several decades, tens of thousands of Baloch people, including youth, women and children, have been the victims of this inhuman practice of ‘Enforced Disappearances’.
While their loved ones keep waiting endlessly, the victims of ‘enforced disappearances’ are never found again. Even when they are killed in illegal custody, their bodies are rarely handed over to their kin.
The latest long-march was triggered by the bizarre inhuman act by the Pakistani forces last month when they tied 3 children to a vehicle and blew it up with an bomb.
The Pakistani State has been trying to scuttle the long-march through various means, including by using force and spreading negative propaganda against the Baloch people and the participants of the march.
Two days back, the Pakistani security forces tried to stop the march in Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab Province by using force and detaining 20 key participants.
The detained people were released later but cases were filed against them.
This action invited the condemnation by the Amnesty International, the global human rights group, which demanded immediate dropping of all charges against those booked.
The Amnesty International also demanded an impartial investigation into all the extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances in Balochistan “in line with international standards”.
It also demanded compensation for the families of the victims of extrajudicial killings and those forcibly disappeared.
