Geneva : Observing International Human Rights Day on December 10, Baloch political activists around the world, including the UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Germany and many other European nations – held protests against the atrocities committed by the Pakistan establishment on their people back home.
Baloch National Movement (BNM), Baloch Republican Party (BRP), Baloch Students Organization-Azad (BSO-A) and Balcoh Republican Students Organization (BRSO) held protests in Australia, Canada, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland and the United Kingdom against Pakistani war crimes. The protests were attended by Baloch expatriates and local human rights and political activists.
The rallies were held in Geneva in Switzerland, London in the UK, Toronto in Canada, Canberra in Australia, Seoul in South Korea and Hanover and Berlin in Germany. Young Baloch protesters, who are now living in exile, carrying banners and placard also marched peacefully on the streets of Berlin and Hanover. Participants called upon the international human rights organization to pro-actively take cognizance of the appalling situation and urged civilized world to intervene in Balochistan under the Responsibility to Protect R2P clause of the new international humanitarian laws. They called for an immediate end to the ongoing ethnic cleansing and military occupation of Balochistan.
Baloch leaders and activists addressing the rallies said though Pakistan was a member of the UN but was still brazenly violating all the articles of the Geneva conventions with impunity. They said for 68 long years, since Pakistan put Balochistan under its military boots, Islamabad had usurped the basic human rights of the Baloch people, consciously depriving the people of Balochistan of their economic rights and shutting the doors to education on them.
They said during the last 10 or so years the situation had gone from bad to worse as Pakistan army and security forces have been busy with ethnic cleansing of Baloch people through enforced disappearances and kill and dump policy in Balochistan. “Political prisoners are being tortured and killed and their mutilated bodies are being dumped in desolate places,” the anguished speakers emphasized.
As many as 25,000 political activists have been forcibly disappeared by the Pakistani intelligence and security forces and instead of putting them to trial in courts, they are being killed extra-judicially and their bodies dumped, the Baloch speakers deplored. The speakers said both the judicial system of Pakistan and the media have become an accomplice in the state atrocities in Balochistan, as by and large they side with the army, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence (MI) and Frontier Corps (FC) brutalities in Balochistan.
Pakistan war crimes in Balochistan take the forms of burning of homes, destruction of means of livelihood, killing of livestock and forced exodus of Baloch people from their ancestral lands to end any resistance to the so-called China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which connects Kashgar with the port city of Gwadar in Balochistan.
In particular they expressed anguish over recent revelations that China will have a naval base in Balochistan waters in the Straits of Hormuz.
The speakers said silence of the United Nations and affiliated agencies on Pakistani barbarism in Balochistan provides help to Pakistan army and security forces to continue with their state terrorism against the Baloch people. “As long as international institutions keep mum, Pakistan will continue with its surge of state violence and bloodshed in Balochistan,” the speakers said. They urged the United Nations to adopt punitive measures against Pakistan to force her to uphold the Geneva conventions.
Those who addressed the rallies among others included Dr Naseem Baloch and Hammal Haider of the BNM; and Sher Mohammed Bugti and Mansoor Baloch of the BRP, Zaffar Baloch, Latif Johar Baloch and Niaz Baloch in different cities and countries of the world.
Baluch Sarmachar 