The international Day of Disappeared and the missing Balochs – by Imtiaz Baloch
The International Day of the Disappeared on August 30 is an annual commemoration day created to draw attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned at places and under poor conditions unknown to their relatives or legal representatives. In Balochistan, since 2005 there had been more than 8000 enforced disappearances including women and children under the age of twelve years and currently over 1100 documented Baloch political activist are held in incommunicado by Pakistani Army. Balochistan is a Texas sized state occupied by Pakistan and Iran. This is the fifth uprising by the Baloch populace against the Pakistani Regime for Baloch nationhood.
The day of June 8th, 2009, was the last time when the family saw Zakir Majeed. The security personnel of Pakistani Army in the presence of Zakir’s two friends forcibly abducted Zakir on a gun point and whisked him away from Mastung Balochistan to an unknown destination. Since then the family and the Baloch nation had no reliable news about Zakir’s fate. Zakir’s family and Baloch nation have been left at the mercy of the anguished torments and worse imaginations.
Young and Vibrant Zakir Majeed is the Senior Vice Chairman of Baloch Student Organization (AZAD). Mr Zakir Majeed, a student of M.A in the University of Balochistan and a charismatic leader whose life was one of constant travel, moving from one town to another to organize BSO on the gross root level and educating the Baloch youth about the plight of Baloch Nation. Zakir continually expanded his organizational reach and was very effective amongst Baloch Youth. Mr Zakir Majeed is not the only one, according to Balochistan Based (VBMP)Voice for Baloch Missing persons and newly formed Sweden based International Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (IVBMP), since 2005 there had been more than 8000 enforced disappearances including women and children under the age of twelve years. According to IVBMP, currently, there over 1100 documented Baloch political activist who are victims of enforced disappearances, abduction, tortured and imprisonment incommunicado.
The Perpetrators of enforced disappearances, the Pakistani Army systemically executing the leading Baloch Intellectuals and leadership through its Securities Agencies, local paramilitary arm and its affiliated death squads such as Baloch Mussalha Defah Tanzeem, Sapah-e-Shuda, and Insar- ul Islam etc. It seems, the evil set design of Pakistani military establishment, to systemically eliminate Baloch leading political cream is entering into a second phase, where the nucleolus of the political parties, trade unions, journalists, doctors, teachers, poets, lawyers and student are being forcefully disappeared and within twenty days their dead bodies are found with the marks of brutal tortures. For the last few weeks the Pakistani Killing machine had intensified and Baloch are shocked over the extreme cases of execution of the political workers, while the said victims were the victims of enforced disappearances. Almost every victim has bullet holes in their heads. This week two political workers’ bullet-riddled bodies, later on identified as Mohammad Omer Baloch and Arz Mohammad Pirkani, both resident of Quetta, Balochistan were found. According to the families of these innocent victims, both were abducted 20 days ago by the Pakistani intelligence agencies. This brought the total into 14 into two weeks.
This despicable and cutthroat set plan is outright genocide. These illegal acts against Baloch nation is set in the context of Pakistani repression, demonstrating that Pakistan’s election to the UN human rights council is far from being deserved.
Zakir Majeed, Ehsan Arjmandi and Din Mohammad Baloch’s case were picked up by Asian Human Rights Organisation(AHRC) and were submitted to the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) and to the UN Special Rapporteurs on Disappearances.
Ehsan Arjemandi
On August 07, 2009, Mr Ehsan Arjemandi , a Norwegian Baloch Human Rights Activist , was forcefully abducted by the state intelligence services while Mr Arjmandi was on a visit to his mother in Balochistan. This victim of enforced disappearance was picked up in front of several people by the security personnel on a gun point in a car with registration number ADN6928. On July 25, 2010, in an interview to a Norwegian journalist the Interior Minister Reham Malik blatantly agreed to Mr Arjmandi’s arrest. Since 2009, this is the first time that Pakistani establishment had agreed to Mr. Arjmandi’s arrest. During all this time Mr. Arjmandi was never produced to any court of Law. He is in prison in incommunicado. This completely manifest the mindset of Pakistani establishment towards the Baloch enforced disappeared political workers. Here’s the link is the interview of the Journalist with Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
After the brutal discredited military regime of Retired General Musharraf, the Pakistan Army yielded power to a civilian government. Zakir Mothers hopes were temporarily elevated by the announcement of the civilian government that Mr. Zakir Majeed along with thousands of other disappeared political workers would emerge from the darkness of their secret cell. On January 22, 2010, after the UN intervention, Pakistani establishment announced Zakir Majid’s release and said he will be celebrating EID with his family. But there is only a terrible silence from the Government of Pakistan since then, the family is still awaiting for Zakir return. A week from today there is another Eid. And, God Knows how many more Eid Baloch Natnion had to wait for its loved ones to arrive home safely.
Zakir’s Family is trying to raise the profile of the disappeared people in Balocistan, waged a token hunger strike which is entering today into his 109th day. The health condition of his mother is worsening due to the constant crying and waiting for his sons. The family approached the government’s authorities to locate Zakir’s whereabouts, filed a constitutional petition in Balochistan High Court and in Supreme Court but Pakistani secret agencies work under no civilian authority and are not accountable to any court of law and institution.
It is suspected that Zakir had been killed by the security forces as they had done with other missing Baloch political leaders like Ghulam Muhammad Baloch and others.
There is a saying in Balochi that Baloch mothers always gave birth to children with courage. Today, on the International Day of the Disappeared please join hands with Baloch against the atrocities of Pakistani Security agencies on the Baloch populace. Today, get together and cry freedom for the oppressed nationalities of the world. Today, come and scram along, with the family of disappeared Baloch to end all enforced disappearances and demand to reveal the fate and whereabouts of all persons subjected to enforced disappearance.
Seems like all balochs are too busy hunting down punjabi settlers and ‘spies’, they have little time to visit posts written up for them.
A Rough Balochistan Policy
By Yousaf Ajab Baloch
The recovery of bullet-riddled, decomposed, mutilated and tortured bodies of disappeared Balochs is no longer part of breaking news in Baloch local media. However, the human rights violations and the ‘Killing and dumping’ of missing Balochs is one of the most outstanding issues in Balochistan right now.
The Baloch nationalists call it a policy of Baloch ‘genocide,’ in which a larger number of journalists, doctors, teachers, professors, freelance writers, human rights defenders and political leaders and activists have been systematically murdered and target killed.
The relatives of disappeared Balochs allege that intelligence agencies of the state collaborate with Frontier Corps (FC) and whisk away their loved ones and subsequently kill them in detention. According to the relatives of extra-judicially killed people, the latter were first disappeared by personnel of Frontier Corps and intelligence agencies and later their bullet-riddled bodies showed up in deserted areas across Balochistan.
The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), an organization of relatives of missing Balochs striving for the safe recovery of the disappeared, claims to have gathered and submitted full data of 1,300 kidnapped Baloch among whom more than 170 have already been tortured to death. Apart from this, the number of disappeared is as high as 12,000. Various lists indicate that children, women and elderly citizens are also among the missing. The most known story is of Zarina Marri, a school teacher imprisoned by intelligence agencies whose story was disclosed by Munir Mengal who himself was a victim of disappearance and torture. Mengal claimed he had met the former in an underground cell during his imprisonment.
The family members of the missing Balochs are protesting by holding demonstrations and setting up hunger-strike camps to attract the judiciary and human rights organizations. But their efforts have failed to yield any success. They are in pain because of the continued recovery of tortured and bullet-riddled bodies of their loved ones. Missing persons, rather than being recovered safely, are being surfaced as dead. Many of the relatives of the missing Balochs left hunger-strike camps when the bodies of their loved ones were found in deserted areas in different parts of Balochistan.
Concerned about the human rights violations in Balochistan, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) recently issued a report, “Balochistan, blinked side into chaos.” In the report, HRCP has collected data of all those people who have been abducted and killed since June 2010. HRCP’s report says that human rights defenders and journalists are also being victimized. Killings of Naeem Sabir and Siddque Eidho, who were assisting HRCP in compiling the data of human rights abuses, are the fresh instances. Both paid a heavy price for their work. Sabir was target killed in Khuzdar, the second largest city of Balochistan, and Eidho was first disappeared and later his bullet-riddled body was found in Turbat.
HRCP report reveals an alarming and terrifying bloodshed in Balochistan. The report, to some extent, is a moral support to the people of Balochistan. However, many nationalists and political and human rights organizations differ with HRCP’s number of Balochs killed since July 2010. HRCP presents 140 murdered cases; however, Baloch National Voice, a Baloch nationalist political party, differs with the given number of extra-judicially killed Balochs. BNV in its recent report has given the number and names of 158 youths who had been ‘killed and dumped.’ The HRCP report discloses that security forces have made their own personal government. They are given free hand to whisk away and kill people in Balochistan, without clearing their guilt. In the report, HRCP has urged the government to bring the security forces and their intelligence network under the control of the civilian government and hold them accountable for their misconduct.
No day passes without disappearance, target killing and recovery of the bodies of Baloch missing persons. Human rights organization, such as Amnesty International, Asian Human Rights Commission, HRCP and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have time and again urged the state authorities to probe into the cases of Baloch missing persons and extra-judicial killings. Unfortunately, reports of various human rights organizations have been paid a deaf ear by the government authorities. This further validates the accusations about the authorities’ involvement into these killings.
It is shocking. The people, who are being killed, are not ordinary people but the cream of Baloch society, including prominent journalists, professors, human rights defenders, teachers, singers, political leaders and lawyers. They are the harbinger of change in Baloch society. Though the perpetrators are eliminating the cream of Baloch society in order to silence what the government calls “insurgency,” yet there is a rapid growth of hatred, enragement and sense of revenge in the Baloch society due to these killings.
Right now, Balochistan is confronting the fifth military operation .However, such a move what the Baloch nationalist call “Kill and dump,” has never been witnessed, though thousands of Baloch have been killed since the first military operation launched in 1948.
According to VBMP, 170 tortured bodies of missing Balochs have surfaced. More than 20 bodies, badly decomposed, could not be identified. The recognition of the bodies is made easy by the perpetrators who keep pieces of the papers with written names of victims. Sometimes there’s a message like “Eid gift for Baloch nation”.
No doubt intellectuals, teachers, journalist and political leaders are said to be the eyes and voices of a nation, but the anguish of this nation becomes immeasurable, when the face of that nation being mutilated by picking out eyes and cutting tongues. At the moment, there are hundreds of examples which provoke people or enrage students to throw pen to pick up guns. Killings of Professor Saba Dashtiyari, Ghulam Muhammad Baloch, Ali Sher Kurd and Agha Abid Shah and of more than 10 journalists force the people to take action against the elements that kill the cream of the Baloch society.
Undoubtedly, the dismal situation in Balochistan is not reported in mainstream media of Pakistan and international media as well. If the journalist and human right defenders raise voices against human rights violations, they are disappeared and tortured to death. Thus, Balochistan has become a battlefield for journalists and human rights defenders as well.
This upsurge in human rights abuses has not only worried affected families of Balochs missing persons, but also the international organizations working against human rights violations. The institutions look underdog in front of the perpetrators. Neither judiciary nor media has done any extraordinary achievement to pressurize involved elements to halt the deteriorating situation .The Balochistan High Court (BHC) has hundreds of pending petitions filed by the families of the dead and missing Balochs, but it seems either indifferent or utterly helpless in coaxing the spymasters to release the missing persons.
Silence of Pakitstani media and human rights defenders over the killings of missing Balochs has further angered the Baloch. They allege that former are equally responsible partners in the bloody policy of ‘kill and dump’ in Balochistan.
Yousaf Ajab Baloch is a frequent contributor to The Baloch Hal .He also blogs at http://www.yousafajab.wordpress.com
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