Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
wow .. the worlds biggest terrorist is talking abt human rights? as if they are champhions of human rights ... how they just love to interfere in our internal matters! ... I say Its high time for the Pak govt and army to resolve this crucial issue asap, before it gets too late!
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
It's obviously being done in bad faith.
Jab ghee seedhi ungli se naa nikle to civil war chirvaa do.
This is being done since the American Civil War ended in the late 1800s.
However, the enemy cannot attack from the outside unless there is internal civil strife, negligence and bad governance.
All the top leadership of the country should be drowned in the sea for their continued and pervasive corruption.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
v true Tanvir! ... dont we know whts their motive behind this drama .. Balochistan is blessed with natural resources and strategic location! ... ofcourse, they would try their best to make things alot worse over there! but like u said! ... our very own people are involved in destablizing the country tu hum doosre ko kia kehein... ofcourse, they will take advantage of all this! ...
wake up govt and Pak army .. listen to the greivances of baloch brothers and try to negiotate things with a dialogue .. and provincial govt should have access to natural resouces issues .. the job of federal govt should be to work on developmental programs, education, healthcare and provide locals with job. and military shouldnt be allowed to intervene like the generals of Pakistan have been doing since 1960's.
who knows maybe this US new stunt will push our govt/army to find a solution for Balochistan.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
It's obviously being done in bad faith. Jab ghee seedhi ungli se naa nikle to civil war chirvaa do. This is being done since the American Civil War ended in the late 1800s.
However, the enemy cannot attack from the outside unless there is internal civil strife, negligence and bad governance. All the top leadership of the country should be drowned in the sea for their continued and pervasive corruption.
I agree with you but the problem started when Pakistan sold its sovereignty to the Americans in terms of bases, spies, airspace and drone attacks. Now when they are openly discussing balochistan in their house (the government has remembered sovereignty) they shouldn't complain now as they have themselves ceded their authority.
The American involvement with both our civilian and military leaders is another fact. When they will rectify themselves these problems will go away, as far as the issue of balochistan is concerned who had stopped Pakistan government and army from resolving this issue during the past 7 years? America or their ego?
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Can't disagree with the above. People tend to blame musharraf, but we have ceded more authority after him until now where some talk is being done of sovereignty. But still, where is the parliamentary committee's recommendations as it is getting close to 3 months?
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Even out Of the 6-7 years of the war bulk Of them over 4 years is in the present ppp regime and the situation has mostly deteriorated due to the kidnappings, killing and dumping which started in mid 2010.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
true that Ali ... ppp bad goverance made things alot worse, had they put Balochistan issue first and try to resolve it from day one! ... things wouldve been so much calmer by now! what a waste of 4 years! ...
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Well this is an article by a Baloch (nationalist) and its date of publishing is July 2011.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/04/25/a-lasting-solution-for-balochistan.html
A lasting solution for Balochistan
DAWN.COM By Malik Siraj Akbar
T**he Balochistan solution has to be a political one rather than a ‘white-wash’ of replacing the military with a paramilitary force.
**
While the Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani’s announcement to replace PA soldiers with the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) in Balochistan’s gas-rich town of Sui indicates a significant policy change on part of the military, it would be unwise to say that this is without precedent.
**In the last eight years, the federal government has taken such steps to appease the Baloch but despite their goodwill, they did not translate into practical changes on the ground.
**
**For instance, in 2004, then caretaker Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain made the first comprehensive effort to address Balochistan’s issues peacefully and constituted two parliamentary committees.
****The committee headed by Senator Wasim Sajjad was tasked with compiling Balochistan’s concerns on constitutional issues such as provincial autonomy and decided on how much control the province should exercise on its natural resources. The second committee headed by Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed was responsible for addressing the Baloch’s reservations on military cantonment and mega projects such as the Gwadar Port. Unfortunately, the recommendations of the parliamentary committees were never implemented.
****The Pakistan Peoples Party made a similar comprehensive move in November 2009 with the unveiling of the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan Package in a joint session of the parliament. Two years on, no progress has been made in calming the Baloch sentiments of deprivation. The reasons are obvious by analysing the semantics only.
****Firstly, there is a grand communication gap between the Baloch, the army and the federal government. All the parties involved in the conflict do not properly understand terms used from each other’s lexicons. The ambiguity of terminology has added to the issue at hand. For example, the army and the Baloch differently interpret the term “military operation”.
****From Pakistan Army’s point of view, a “military operation” takes places when tanks and helicopters as well as weaponry are employed to accomplish a goal.
**
On the other hand, the Baloch equate extra-judicial killings, disappearances, and even the checking at check-posts with “operation”. So every time the army chief or the federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik decline any “ongoing operations” in Balochistan, the Baloch instantly cite the killing or “disappearance” of some young political workers and activists. The knee-jerk reaction by the Baloch to every government statement is: “So many Baloch were killed and many are missing, how can they deny that there is a military operation?”
In a similar vein, there is a difference in the interpretation of the term “development”. For the government, development projects means the work at Chamalong Coal mines or the establishment of cadet colleges and cantonments. On the other hand, the Baloch are sceptical of these measures and consider it a “usurpation” of Baloch resources under the umbrella of “development.”
The skepticism is not limited to semantics either. The Baloch see the army’s decision to recruit youth from Balochistan to stem the protest against “disappearances.”The political establishment would be well advised to not rely on rhetoric and realise that a change in Balochistan can only come with a holistic approach, which means a lasting and sensible political solution.
General Kayani’s fresh announcement about pulling out the army in Sui is either because of his ignorance about the Baloch point of view or a deliberate attempt to block the way for a political settlement to the conflict. In fact, to them, the term “poj” (similar to Fauj in Urdu) includes both the army and the federal paramilitary force, the FC.
Today, the Baloch have more complaints against the FC than the army itself or the federal government. People see the FC, whose composition includes barely 10 per cent of local Baloch, as a troublemaker rather than a solution to the ragging conflict.
Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Mohammad Aslam Raisani blames the FC for allegedly running a “parallel government” within the province. Ministers in his cabinet accuse the FC of sabotaging every attempt to politically reconcile with the enraged Baloch leaders. **The nationalists accuse it of whisking away political activists during broad daylight from public places like universities and markets. In one such incident, hundreds of people saw the FC personnel whisking away three Baloch nationalist leaders from Turbat district two years ago.
Within a couple of days, all three leaders were killed and their bodies were thrown in an abandoned area.
**Thus, when General Kayani says he is going to deploy FC in Sui, it means he, in the Baloch interpretation, approves of FC’s extra-constitutional actions such as the killing of political workers, arrests and enforced disappearances.
That said, General Kayani should realise that FC is no longer the only issue in Balochistan. **As the head of the country’s armed forces, he can take some of the following proposed measures as confidence building measures (CBMs), among several others, to prevent Balochistan from falling apart. First, military and paramilitary presence has to be reduced in the province. FC-controlled check posts should be removed from the heart of the district headquarters as well as the alleged underground torture cells be disbanded.
**
**Second, only the Supreme Court should have authority to decide the fate of the missing persons. Intelligence agencies must cooperate with the Supreme Court of Pakistan and an independent investigation be conducted by the concerned parties.****Moreover, the two newly formed groups, the Baloch Musla Defai Tanzeem and Sipa-e-Shudha-e-Balochistan, which have publicly accepted responsibility for the killing of around 120 missing Baloch persons, should be exposed and brought to justice.
**
Allegations by the Baloch of these having links with the country’s security establishment should be investigated.
It must be underscored that the army at the federal level and the Frontier Corps (FC) at the provincial level should demonstrate respect and have faith in the policies of the elected governments. They should be offered an unconditional assurance of a non-interference policy for a peaceful and political settlement of the Balochistan imbroglio.
The writer is currently a Hubert Humphrey Fellow at Arizona State University and is the author of ‘The Redefined Dimensions of Baloch Nationalist Movement’.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Just give them request and equality and it should be fine. How can Pakistanis not even treat other Pakistanis with respect.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
^agreed!!
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
HaroonRashidBBC Haroon Rashid
Amb sherry says; “Balochistan is an integral part of the Pakistan." has the time arrived to tell the world this. shivers
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Just give them request and equality and it should be fine. How can Pakistanis not even treat other Pakistanis with respect.
Agreed...it's really that simple. Let them rule their province. It's their right and that's the only right thing.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Just give them request and equality and it should be fine. How can Pakistanis not even treat other Pakistanis with respect.
You would think, right ?
It's unfortunate that people and institutions with unchecked power go crazy.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
It's obviously being done in bad faith. Jab ghee seedhi ungli se naa nikle to civil war chirvaa do. This is being done since the American Civil War ended in the late 1800s.
However, the enemy cannot attack from the outside unless there is internal civil strife, negligence and bad governance. All the top leadership of the country should be drowned in the sea for their continued and pervasive corruption.
Might I also add that the American Congress has the reputation of being the most corrupt organization in the world with most congressmen/women sold to the highest bidder.
This reputation exists in America itself with many Americans wishing in frustration that all Congress was thrown in the ocean to make America better, like I wished about Pakistani politicians.
It all boils down to 'Jiss ki Laathi, Uss ki Bhains'.
You might want to check out the excellent classic movie "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" (from the 40s, I believe) about the corruption of Congress.
What is shown in the movie is even more relevant in this day and age, only much, much worse.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Sana Baloch is a nationalist too, we should hear and try to listen to what these guys are saying to understand the crisis.http://tribune.com.pk/story/334477/balochistan–the-only-way-forward/
Balochistan — the only way forwardBy Sanaullah Baloch
Published: February 10, 2012
The US Congressional hearing on Balochistan in Washington DC on February 9 should be a wake-up call for the centre to correct its current policies towards the province. In the past, the country’s ethnically dominant civil-military establishment failed to maintain control over East Pakistan through the use of weapons and we all know what happened as a result of that. Now, most regrettably, the same disastrous prescription is being applied to Balochistan.
Of course, the elite of Pakistan — and I include the liberal intellectuals in this — do not seem to take the possibility of the province going its own way too seriously. They always seem to take the argument of geography, saying that East Pakistan was geographically separated from the western wing and since that is not the case with Balochistan, any separation would be a figment of someone’s colourful imagination.
**In the relatively short span of six years, due to Islamabad’s hawkish approach, the demand of the Baloch shifted from one of greater autonomy and self-rule, to wholesale withdrawal from the federation. Instead of realising that policies undertaken by Islamabad are to blame for the current impasse, many people outside of the province tend to shift responsibility to actors within it. This is a flawed approach and will make an already bad situation even worse.
**
The current tension between the people of Balochistan and the rest of Pakistan, especially the centre, are caused by growing socio-economic insecurities, and by the systematic discrimination and oppression of the local people of the province by a centre dominated by the country’s most populous province. The Baloch have, for many years now, been living a marginalised existence and now see no hope for improvement. So, from their viewpoint, they are only doing what anyone in their predicament would do, so that their future generations may have a chance for living a peaceful and prosperous life.
**Many modern states swiftly address these grievances through political and institutional restructuring of the system. This is done so that those who live in the region and are aggrieved, feel that they are part of the mainstream, and what they think and believe is important as far as the state’s overall agenda and policies are concerned. However, politically less conscious and ethnically dominant countries, impose violent and suppressive means to further subjugate oppressed ethnic groups and people.
**
An example of this can be found in Yugoslavia where the dominant Serb elite considered other ethnic groups as inferior and deprived them politically and economically. Serbian policy resulted in one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts and ended up with the dismantling of the former Yugoslavia.
In the case of Balochistan, the despair present here is a result of a) persistent institutional oppression; b) never-ending exploitation; c) denial of politico-economic rights and d) increasing national (Baloch) insecurity in the existing state structure.
All this indicates a classical colonial relationship between Balochistan and the centre. The Baloch feel that they are living life at gunpoint, with their daily existence under threat because of the violence that has been going on in their province.
They feel that the centre’s policies aim to control their land for long-term strategic reasons and that this also has to do with the province’s wealth of natural and mineral resources. They also think that their historically-moderate social and cultural fabric is being attacked by forces supported by the establishment and that their underdevelopment is part of a deliberate policy to keep their region deprived.
Previously, protests in the province were ruthlessly suppressed as well. However, this time around, the establishment has to contend with rapidly changing geo-strategic realities, the presence of a loud and vibrant social media and a sizeable Baloch diaspora which is able to rally support overseas.
**The only way forward is for the state to address this issue by taking into account historical, cultural, economic and political factors.
**
Published in The Express Tribune, February 11[SUP]th[/SUP], 2012.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Funny that none of the "baloch" even like malik sairaj akbar want to bring BLA, BRA etc to task for killing pakistanis. Balochi "leaders" were also shaking their hands as if denying the fact that at least 40% of balochistan (probably 50% / 60%) is non-balochi and the fact that balochi militants are murdering and maiming civilians as well.
I think balochis have likened themselves to arabs as they want the cake and eat it too (how arabs treat south asians etc) but have forgot the fact that arabs invited foreigners aka the west to make them today what they are to attract low-level filipinos and south asians as slave labor. The comparison with E. Pakistan is erroneous as well, since E. pakistan (bangladesh) was surrounded by india and full of bengalis, who butchered pakistanis and pro-pakistani bengalis alike but there was never any justice for those civilians. Frankly, balochis want the cake and eat it too, but don't expect any Pakistani to care and/or support this approach of theirs.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
Bohut dair kardi mehrbaan aatay aatay…http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/11/balochistan-briefing-in-na-next-week.html
Balochistan briefing in NA next week
**ISLAMABAD: Faced with heightened domestic and foreign concerns, the government promised on Friday to give its version of what is happening in Balochistan to the National Assembly next week.
**
**The offer for a briefing came from Interior Minister Rehman Malik after two lawmakers from the province — one from the ruling party and the other from the opposition — warned of dire consequences if alleged excesses by security authorities were not checked and in the wake of a US congressional hearing about alleged human rights violations there.
**
Humayun Aziz Kurd of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), in his second speech on Balochistan within three days, blamed security agencies for the perceived failure of the present government’s efforts to bring peace to the country’s largest but least populated province and said he could not understand “why the army is against talks” (with insurgents) and “why the army is not accepting us”.
**And then, Yaqoob Bizenjo of the Balochistan National Party-A, who said “Balochistan is burning today” with murdered people belonging to all nationalities — Baloch, Pakhtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis — asked Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was present in the house, to state “whether you have any formula to bring peace there”.
**
**While the prime minister preferred not to respond, the interior minister, who had made a statement about Balochistan earlier in the day in the Senate and promised a more detailed presentation to parliamentarians from the province next week, said he could give a similar briefing to the National Assembly, and agreed to a suggestion from Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi that a briefing to the lower house too be given next week.
****But the minister repeated his condition that insurgents, who intensified their activities from their mountain hideouts after Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti’s killing in a 2006 military operation, must lay down arms before peace talks with them.
**
Mr Malik said nothing about Wednesday’s hearing by a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives in Washington where witnesses detailed alleged human rights violations, though the US government distanced itself from the event marked by talk of “self-determination” for the strategic province. But the issue had been agitated in the Senate on Thursday, with several senators accusing the United States of interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs.
The Supreme Court is also hearing a case about so-called “disappearances” of Baloch youths and nationalists mainly blamed on intelligence agencies.
In another development of the day, the government’s Constitution (Twentieth Amendment) Bill, which had been on the lower house agenda since the start of the present session on Feb 1 and had gripped national attention, quietly moved to the next week without any word about when exactly a new draft, possibly containing at least some of opposition demands, would be presented.
PPP chief whip Khursheed Ahmed Shah had told reporters on Thursday the matter would be taken to a special cabinet meeting “in a day or two” for possible approval of a new draft of the bill, which originally sought only validation of 28 by-elections to seats of both houses of parliament and provincial assemblies that were challenged before the Supreme Court for having been held when the Election Commission was not complete as required by the 18th Amendment, but which opposition says must include its amendments that it thinks will give more guarantees for future elections to be fair and free.
In the absence of an official announcement about calling the cabinet meeting, the deputy speaker, demonstrating an apparent fatigue over the issue, did not even repeat what he had been saying almost daily during the session that the bill was being deferred on the request of the minister in charge before adjourning the house until 5pm on Monday.
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
His record is stuck on only one thing, I am not sure why Pakistan does not formally condemn those countries responsible for the unrest and if they dont behave break diplomatic relations with them. Why is the government willing to give MFN to the country whom Malik believes is the culprit behind Balochistan unrest? Do they want to reward India for that? and the other country which could be involved has bases, spies, use Pakistani airspace and drones as per their wishes and requirements.
http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/11/external-powers-behind-balochistan-crisis-malik-2.html
External powers behind Balochistan crisis: Malik
**ISLAMABAD, Feb 10: Absolving the army and paramilitary forces of the charges of abducting and killing people in Balochistan, Interior Minister Rehman Malik held on Friday a third force responsible for the volatile situation in the province.
****“Not the Army or the Frontier Corps (FC), but a third force is disturbing law and order situation in Balochistan,” Mr Malik told the Senate.
**
**He said some external powers were conspiring to detach Balochistan from Pakistan.
**
He said 85 per cent of the Aghaz-i-Huqooq-i-Balochistan package announced by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had been implemented and work on remaining components of the package was under way.
Mr Malik said that a detailed presentation would be given next week to parliamentarians hailing from Balochistan on the government’s policy about the province and implementation of the package.
He said that 48,928 FC personnel and 2,057 Coast Guard men had been deployed in the province which had incurred Rs14.59 billion during the last financial year.
He said the government was committed to equipping security personnel with the latest gadgets to enhance their capabilities to defend the country and its people.
**The disclosure by US Ambassador Cameron Munter that Pakistan’s airspace was being used for Nato supplies sparked resentment in the house, prompting a walkout by senators belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI).
**
**“The house has a right to know as to who allowed Nato supply through Pakistan’s airspace,” said Senator Zafar Ali Shah of the PML-N, asking the government to explain if it was done by the president, prime minister or the army chief.
**
Prof Khurshid Ahmad of JI said it was an important point because the country’s land and airspace were sacrosanct.
“We have been assured that both these routes were not being used for transportation of Nato supplies to Afghanistan”.
Terming it a case of ‘treacherous involvement’ with foreign powers, he called for halting steps against sovereignty and independence of the country.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said it was a subject related to the foreign ministry, but it was beyond comprehension for the US planes to first come to Karachi or Lahore while transporting goods to Afghanistan.
**He said that no supply was being allowed to take place from Pakistan and no airport or airbase was being used for the purpose.
**
“The supply has been cut off and has not been restored. Nobody has allowed it as the entire nation was united over the issue of cutting off Nato supply,” he said.
The minister said he would request either the foreign minister or the defence minister to give a policy statement on the issue in the house on Monday.
Soon after the minister’s statement, Senate’s deputy chairman Jan Mohammad Jamali read out the presidential order to prorogue the house for an indefinite period.
By Iftikhar A. Khan
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
And then Pakistani army wonders why the Baloch dont love them???http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/11/the-baloch-who-is-not-missing.html
The Baloch who is not missing
**KARACHI: In the last week of November 2011, Qadeer Baloch, a retired UBL employee from Quetta did something that no grandfather should have to do. He held his four and a half year old grandson’s hand and took him to see his son Jalil Reki’s mutilated bullet-riddled body and made sure the kid got a good look at it. Qadeer Baloch also had a chat with the boy and told him who had killed his father and why.
****For more than two and a half years Qadeer had been lying to the boy. “When Jalil was picked up he was only two,” says Qadeer Baloch. “He had a hole in his heart and the doctors told us not to put him under any stress. So I kept telling him that his daddy was away on business.”
**
**Qadeer speaks in measured sentences, there is no bitterness or anger in his voice. His account of his son’s disappearance and death two years and nine months later is incredibly detailed. Every few minutes he produces a document, a newspaper clipping or an affidavit from a witness to prove his version of events.
**
**Jalil Reki was the information secretary of Baloch Republican Party, a relatively new Baloch nationalist party that emerged after Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti’s Jamhoori Watan Party split into a number of factions after his murder. “Jalil was offered the post of Secretary General, but he was a bit bookish, so he chose to become the party’s information secretary.”
****On February 13, 2009, they came for Jalil Reki in two pick-up trucks and two unregistered cars, FC men accompanied by intelligence officials in plain clothes. “His friends had warned him that he might be picked up but he was campaigning for his missing colleagues. He said if I run away who is going to write all the press releases? He was returning from Friday prayers, he saw them and tried to run but they threatened to shoot him and he surrendered.”
****For the next two years and nine months Jalil Reki became a missing person. There are more than 8,000 if you believe Baloch nationalists, hundreds according to human rights organisations, 1,100 according to our interior minister Rehman Malik and none according to our intelligence agencies. Senior journalist I. A. Rehman wrote in these pages more than two years ago:
****“Instead of offering the embittered Baloch redress and satisfaction the authorities have chosen to quibble over the number of missing….”
****For Qadeer Baloch Jalil Reiki wasn’t a disputed statistic. He rallied other families and started an organisation called Voice of the Baloch Missing People. They camp outside the Quetta, Islamabad and Karachi press clubs sometimes for three months at a stretch. Journalists mostly ignore them. They sit behind rows of photos of their martyrs and the missing. In his picture Jalil Reki has a faint smile, a trimmed mustache and the deep eyes of someone who thinks a lot.
**“I talked to him about his political activities. I knew what he was doing was dangerous. But he told me he wasn’t selling heroin or doing anything immoral.” Qadeer Baloch himself was politically active as a NAP member in the seventies and remembers the good old days when authorities booked you on false charges, arrested you, you tried to raise bail. “None of this stuff where a person just disappears from the face of this earth.”
In the years that Jalil was a missing person, he was able to talk to his family only once. “It was around Eid and all the officers were away. Some poor soldier took pity on him. We received a call on our landline and someone gave us a mobile number and said put one thousand rupees balance into this account and wait for the call. I went to two shops and put five hundred rupees twice into the phone account. I was worried that if I bought the balance from one shop, the call might not come. We received a call late in the night. He sounded confident. He said they had punished him a lot. I understood that he had been tortured. He said he had been kept in a dark room all by himself. His wife started to cry. Jalil told me not to beg anyone for his release. I was sure they’d let him go. Because killing him would serve no purpose. He would be battered, bruised and probably psychologically damaged, but he would be alive. That’s what I believed all along.”
Qadeer Baloch would hold on to this belief for another two years, right up to the moment when he saw his son’s body.
Meanwhile he kept getting reports of Jalil’s sightings from Baloch activists who were released after spending two to three years in the military-run dungeons. “They used to take turns giving azaan,” Qadeer says with a certain pride. “And after finishing the azaan, after saying la ilahha illallah they would announce their name as if it was a part of azaan, so that the other prisoners would know who you were and that you were still alive. They did it because if they ever got out they could tell your families that you were alive.”
Qadeer filed cases, turned up for hearings. “A colonel came up to me once. He said, we really feel bad for you, you are an old man, you look like a sharif admi.” Qadeer was courteous. “I said if you really feel bad for me, you should let my son go. And they reassured me that if my son was a political activist he would be released.” Qadeer believed them.
**Then, two years and eight months after he was taken away, Jalil Reki stopped being a missing person. He became a dead person. A mutilated, shot-in-the-heart dead person.
**“Someone saw a ticker on Vush channel. They didn’t have the heart to tell me so they just said can you switch on Vush channel, there is some news. There it was, my son’s name. It said his body had been found near Turbat.” Qadeer still didn’t believe it. “Why would they kill him after keeping him alive for almost three years?” But then he saw a picture in the daily Intikhab and was convinced. “The night you spend in the grave, you are not going to spend anywhere else. At least my son died a martyr, his name is part of history.”
A little later Qadeer received a call from the assistant commissioner of the area who said they’d arrange to have the body delivered. “I refused. I said leave him there. Your job was to take him away. Your job was to kill him. You have done your job. I can do the rest myself.”
**Qadeer remembers the torture marks on his son’s body. He had a video made and kept it as evidence. He lists Jalil’s wounds without betraying emotion, as if remembering his son’s collection of books. “His left hand was like this,” he turns his own right hand into a limp fist. “Broken and swollen. His whole right arm had been burnt badly. His entire back was covered with clusters of tiny marks, not sure if they were cigarette burns. There were three bullets in and around his heart. Although he had been killed two or three days earlier, his body was fresh. Like a martyr’s.”
**These days Qadeer Baloch, along with families of missing people, is camped in front of Karachi Press Club. The camp includes a 13-year-old girl whose father, a doctor, has been missing for three years. She refers to Qadeer as the ‘missing person uncle’.
**The idea of setting up a camp in Karachi or Islamabad is to facilitate media access to these families. But the media generally ignores them. When was the last time mainstream newspapers or television channels showed a mutilated body of a young Baloch? The same TV crews which fall over each other to cover every little demonstration demanding the release of Pakistan’s most famous former missing person, Dr Aafia Siddiqi (who undoubtedly is a victim of similar state atrocities here and abroad) cannot be bothered to give any air time to these families.
****Why did they kill Jalil? Qadeer thinks for a moment “While Jalil was in their custody, a few days before they killed him, there was an attack on a military checkpost in Chamalang where more than 30 soldiers and an army major was martyr….” Before he can complete the word ‘martyred’, Qadeer stops. “In which soldiers and an Army major were killed.” he corrects himself.
****“They wanted revenge. It didn’t matter who had done it. It didn’t matter that when the attack happened Jalil had been in their custody for two years and nine months.” The FIR that he registered after Jalil’s disappearance names the ISI chief as the main accused.
****It was before the funeral that Qadeer decided to take the four and a half year old with a hole in his heart to see his father’s body. “My friends and family tried to stop me. But I had been lying to the child. He would ask if daddy was away on business why did we have so many of his pictures around the house. I didn’t want him to grow up with the regret that I didn’t let him see his father one last time. So I took him and showed him his father’s body and told him everything.”
**Qadeer has thought about his actions that day many times over but he doesn’t regret anything. “One of Jalil’s eyes was badly damaged and my grandson asked me who had done that to daddy. I said Pakistani agencies. And then he asked me who were Pakistani agencies. And I told him that too.”
Re: Balochistan crisis & its resolution!
We can only pray for sanity and kindness among all human beings. Animals when they kill, they kill for food. Mankind must be the only only one that attacks other human beings for simply causing pain or for such things as racial national differences!