Shaal (Balochistan): Since last month, Pakistan Army and its affiliated institutions have increased repression in occupied-Balochistan, according to the Baloch National Movement (BNM) which has decided to launch a major campaign to highlight these atrocities for the international community to take note.
BNM said while the State of Pakistan is committing atrocities against the people of Balochistan, “all the pillars (of Pakistan) and those who operate these pillars are equally complicit”, a reference to the political parties and other institutions of Pakistan.
“Pakistan’s parliamentary parties recognize State repression in Balochistan when they are in opposition. But when these same parties form part of the government, enforced disappearances and military killings increase rather than decrease,” the organisation said in a statement issued by its spokesman Qazi Dad Mohammad Rehan.
“From Zardari’s presidency to Shahbaz Sharif’s tenure as Prime Minister, there has been no decline in the continuity and intensity of State repression in Balochistan,” he said.
“These are the parties that acquit themselves by calling the Balochistan problem the acts of (late) dictator Pervez Musharraf. But despite Musharraf’s removal from power, there has been no decline in State atrocities in Balochistan,” Rehan said.
He said all the parliamentary political parties of Pakistan are complicit to the atrocities on Balochistan, and even the anti-Baloch character of the Baloch parliamentary political parties cannot be ignored.
“Today, the Baloch nation has understood that the atrocities here are not being committed by the ruling party, but by the state of Pakistan, in which all the pillars and those who operate these pillars are equally complicit,” the BNM spokesman said.
Citing certain recent cases of women and children being subjected to ‘Enforced disappearances’ by the Pakistan Army in Balochistan, he said the State agencies are targeting the families of people associated with the Baloch freedom struggle under their cruel and inhumane policy of collective punishment.
The Pakistan Army also targets the families of those who have been martyred fighting with the occupying forces or peaceful political activists who have been forcibly disappeared or killed in torture cells and their bodies dumped, Rehan said.
He gave some examples in this regard too.
The spokesman said all chapters of BNM — Foreign Department, Human Rights Department and Information Department — have been directed to protest against the latest wave of repression and enforced disappearances by the State of Pakistan in Balochistan within their mandate and responsibilities.
They have been asked to organise coordinated programmes and demonstrations to highlight this oppression worldwide.
In this campaign of BNM, media awareness, protests will be held, letters will be written to various international organizations, diplomatic level meetings will be held abroad and the information department will highlight all these activities in the media, he said.
The spokesman said that BNM chapters abroad, central officials, members of the central committee and department heads will conduct a vigorous campaign against the recent incidents in Balochistan.
During this campaign, efforts will be made to convince the world to support Balochistan’s freedom struggle because without Balochistan’s freedom, the Baloch nation will be deprived of human dignity and human rights.
