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4th session of the Human Rights Council: 12 to 30 March 2007
Intervention by Mehran Baluch
Mr. Chairman
We the disadvantaged people of Baluchistan and Sindh acknowledge with gratitude the tireless efforts of the UN’s Working Group on Forced and Involuntary Disappearances. It is providing an effective voice for the voiceless, who have been victims of rogue regimes around the world. I would like to take this opportunity to inform the international community about the barbaric crimes and gross violations of human rights that Pakistan’s military regime has been carrying out against the Baluch people.
Last year alone over one thousand Baluch political leaders and workers have been forcibly kidnapped by Pakistan government and consequently disappeared. 79-year-old veteran Baluch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti with 40 of his compatriots has disappeared since august 2006. The Pakistani establishment claim that they have killed him in an air strike, but his body has never been shown, the 40 compatriots of Nawab Bugti are not accounted for since august 2006 but the Pakistan military claims that a number were killed and the rest were captured.
Mr. Chairman
If that is the case, they are POW’s and should be treated accordingly. This indicates the depths to which the shameless tyrant Pakistan’s military regime has fallen.
Self appointed president general Musharaff has alleged that the disappeared in Baluchistan are actually a fazed to further propagate the human rights violation claims.
Pakistan’s military authorities have detained Akhtar Mengal President of Balochistan national party and a former Chief Minster of Balochistan illegally. He is being mistreated and is kept in solitary confinement, for raising his voice and taking a stand for the human rights violation perpetrated by the Pakistani government
Mr. Chairman
In Sindh more than 40 political activists have been kidnapped by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, these include the prominent Sindhi nationalist leader Dr. Safdar Sarki, Asif Baladi, Muzfar Bhutto, Nawaz Zaour.
The disappeared Baluch and Sindhi political activists are being subjected to inhumane, barbaric and humiliating tortures that include severe beatings, electric shocks, hanging them with hands and legs chained for days, putting acid on delicate parts of the body. Most loose their lives or are maimed for live in the process.
Mr. Chairman
In essence, the actions of the Pakistani occupiers towards Baluchistan and its people amount to nothing less the systematic elimination and genocide of the Baluch people and rustles exploitation and plunder of Baluchistan natural recourses.
Mr. Chairman
The fundamental bases for the occupation of Baluchistan in 1948 by Pakistan’s Punjabi military was to accommodate the excess population of Punjab by ethnically flooding Baluchistan and exploit its recourses to sustain the growing Punjabi ethnic group.
In the 1970s, the Cully concentration camp was established especially for the Baloch and now the ATF prison branded by the baloch bar association as and the Abu Gharaib of Balochistan holds scores of Baloch patriots.
Mr. Chairman
The crime of the secular and democratic people of Baluchistan is that they want to live with dignity and peace in their motherland and not under the yoke of the religious fundamentalist military establishment of Pakistan who are a serious threat to regional and international peace and security.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, leaders of many political parties, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, scores of legislators, numerous civil rights groups and NGOs have raised clear and unambiguous voices of, concern, anguish and anxiety against the forced disappearances and inhumane torture of our political activists.
However, Pakistan’s military establishment does not seem to be deterred to carry out crimes against humanity and violations to basic human rights safeguarded in the UN charter of human rights.
We request the international community and the UN, working group on disappearances in particular to go on a fact finding mission to Pakistan occupied Balochistan to press upon Pakistani government to stop the forced disappearance of the Baluch and Sindhi political leaders and activists and produce those who are languishing in their torture centres. We request the Working Group on Forced or Involuntary Disappearances to come and visit balochistan where forced disappearances are currently at an all time high.
Thank you Mr Chairman.
