The Guardian, Monday 4 April 2011
James Nicole
Your feature (Pakistan's dirty secret, G2, 30 March) is to be welcomed. I knew nothing about the atrocities in Balochistan until I defended Hyrbyair Marri, a tribal leader, who was unjustly charged here in the UK with terrorist offences. It is my belief that the British government were complicit and that the charges were initiated at the behest of then President Musharraf.

Mr Marri's alleged criminal activity was said by the prosecution to have nothing whatsoever to do with the United Kingdom, but concerned his call to the people of Balochistan to defend themselves against the killings being inflicted upon them by the Pakistan military and intelligence services. Two weeks before he was arrested in London Mr Marri's brother, Balach Marri, was killed by Pakistan forces. Hyrbyair Marri spent time in Belmarsh before being found not guilty of all charges in 2009.

DECLAN WALSH Mar 30 2011 07:40


The bodies surface quietly, like corks bobbing up in the dark. They come in twos and threes, a few times a week, dumped on desolate mountains or empty city roads, bearing the scars of great cruelty. Arms and legs are snapped; faces are bruised and swollen. Flesh is sliced with knives or punctured with drills; genitals are singed with electric prods. In some cases the bodies are unrecognisable, sprinkled with lime or chewed by wild animals. All have a gunshot wound in the head.

This gruesome parade of corpses has been surfacing in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, since last July. Several human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have accounted for more than 100 bodies – lawyers, students, taxi drivers, farm workers. Most have been tortured. The last three were discovered on Sunday.

If you have not heard of this epic killing spree, though, don't worry: neither have most Pakistanis. Newspaper reports from Balochistan are buried quietly on the inside pages, cloaked in euphemisms or, quite often, not published at all.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-066-2010
April 25, 2010

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

Murad Khan Marri, 45, who was held incommunicado on two occasions, first, for a period of nine months after he was arrested by the Frontier Corp (FC), for the murder of Chinese engineers, holding Indian currency and keeping explosive material, has again been disappeared while in the custody of FC. He has now been produced in an anti terrorist court (ATC) in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.

The eye witnesses, mainly other prisoners booked in cases of terrorism, say that he appeared seriously weakened and he could not walk properly. The officials of Frontier Corp (FC) had to carry him into the hearing. He was produced before Mr. Gias Khilji, a judge of the ATC and after taking a date for next hearing he was quickly shifted to the ATF jail, Quetta, where persons suspected of terrorism are held.

URGENT PRESS RELEASE

Toronto, April 20, 2010 – Baloch Human Rights Council (Canada) condemns in the strongest words the brutal and cowardly pre-dawn paramilitary attack on Baloch families in Quetta, Balochistan. In an urgent press statement released today, BHRC expressed deepest sorrow over the loss of life of a brave Baloch woman, Ms. Mehnaz Mengal and arbitrary arrests of more than 250 men in a raid by the Pakistani security forces.

According to sources in Balochistan and the Baloch media, this unprovoked paramilitary operation began between 4:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. on April 20, 2010.

Sources stated that the whole area, comprising of hundreds of houses was completely surrounded by the heavily armed Frontier Constabulary (paramilitary organization) and cordoned off from the rest of the city. None of the media personnel of local TV networks, photographers, and reporters were allowed to enter the area where a house to house search was underway for Baloch political activists.

Geneva: Baloch, Sindhi and other International Human Rights activists from the UK, USA and Canada have come together to address a conference and to protest against Pakistan’s atrocities in Sindh and Balochistan, on the 13th Session of the Human rights Council in Geneva. In alliance with Interfaith International, UNPO has helped plan and co-ordinate the events to high light the Human Rights Violations in Balochistan.

The first of these events took place on11/3/2010 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Representatives from Sindh and Balochistan spoke on different prospects of the ongoing Human Rights Violations in their perspective occupied territories. Speakers included Senator Sanaullah Baloch a former Pakistan Senator and Mr. Mehran Baloch a prominent Baloch activist and Baloch people’s representative in the UN, Mr. Peter Tatchell a British human rights activist, Mr. Jacob Rothing an international expert on forced displacement in the South Asian region, Mr. Marino Busdachin, Dr Lahku Luhana, Dr Haleem Bhatti from World Sindhi Congress, Laurie Dreamer of American friends of Balochistan, Dr Zafar Baloch of BHRC Canada and several other Baloch and Sindhi representatives & activists were also present at the event.

Karachi: Decision-making in Balochistan lies firmly in the hands of those who were in command before the February 2008 elections, and it is the military that still calls the shots, claimed a Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report on Balochistan titled ‘Pushed to the Wall.’

The report contains observations of an HRCP fact-finding mission led by Chairperson Asma Jahangir, which spent over a week in the province. The fact-finding mission began its work on October 5, 2009 and tried to meet with as many people as it could from different schools of thoughts and political and ethnic groups.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AHRC-STM-157-2009
July 24, 2009
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

After Pakistan’s accusation of Indian involvement in subversive activities with the nationalist movement in Balochistan province, the law enforcement agencies reacted heavily against the students of the province who have sympathies with nationalist movement. The Para-military forces, particularly, the frontier constabulary (FC) started arresting people, keeping them in incommunicado in unknown places. There are reports of arrests of dozens of young persons, but due to poor communication problems, the AHRC was not able to collect all the details. Some cases are as follows;

An activist of the Baloch Student Organisation-BSO (Azaad), Mr. Sami Baloch, was abducted at midnight of July 19 and 20. He was returning home from a tuition center near the Satellite Town of Quetta. He was abducted by Frontier Constabulary, a Para- military force of the Pakistani Army. Mr. Sami Baloch is a M.A. student in Geology in Balochistan University and a member of the organizing body of BSO (Azaad) Balochistan University unit. His whereabouts are still unknown and it is feared that he is undergoing brutal torture in a Pakistani army camp.

An urgent appeal is made to the Amnesty International, human rights watch and all other human rights organizations, world media and civilized world to express their concern over the arrest of Baloch nationalist leader Harbiyar Marri by London police on December 4, 2007 under unknown charges. This is believed that action has been taken to please the Pakistan military dictator Pervez Mushraf, and Pakistan army, which is carrying out military operation against the Baloch nationalist in Baluchistan for last two years. As a result of this operation Pakistan Army had killed Nawab Akbar Bugti, former Chief Minister, governor of Baluchistan, and leader of Pakistan Jahmoori Party last year. Dozens other Baloch nationalists have been killed in the army operation and thousands are disappeared. Pakistan army has recently killed Nawb Balach Marri, Brother of Harbiyar Marri, and now Pakistan government is using British government to persecute the Baloch activists who demand their legitimate political and economic rights that successive Pakistani regimes have denied them. Policies of Pakistan government are turning Baluchis into minorities since non-balochis are widely control resources, majority of jobs including key jobs and political power.

Pakistan bid to frame nationalists on terrorism charges?

London – 5 December 2007
Two exiled human rights activists from Pakistan-occupied Baluchitan (a former British protectorate) were arrested in London on 4 December by the Metropolitan police in an operation code-named Operation Super Sweep/Swift.

The arrested men are Faiz Mohammed Baluch and Nawabzada Herbier Marri (see more details below). They are believed to have been arrested on terrorism-related charges.

Human rights campaigner peter Tatchell said:

“I know one of the detained men, Faiz Baluch, and have worked with him on campaigns against Pakistani human rights abuses in occupied Baluchistan. In all the work that I have done with him, he and other exiled Baluch activists have been engaged in an entirely lawful, constitutional struggle for the independence of their homeland.

INTERFAITH INTERNATIONAL
C.P. 32, 1246 Crosier, Geneva, Switzerland
Tel: 0041 22 751 23 45; Fax 0041 22 751 23 48
e-mail: charlesgraves@vtx.ch; web-site: www.interfaithonline.org
Special consultative status with ECOSOC

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.

INTERFAITH INTERNATIONAL
c.p. 32, 1246 Corsier, Geneva, Switzerland
Tel: 0041 22 751 23 45; Fax 0041 22 751 23 48
e-mail: charlesgraves@vtx.ch; web-site: www.interfaithonline.org
Special consultative status with ECOSOC


Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights
58th Session
Agenda Item 4: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Intervention by Charles Graves

Mr. Chairman,

The Baluch nation has been facing unabated brutal repression by Pakistan’s monolithic army. Atrocities perpetrated on the Baluch Nation have a long history going back to the days when a new State by the name of Pakistan was created on the basis of religion in 1947. Under the pretext of Islam the Baluch nation was subjugated, enslaved, repressed, and oppressed by the Pakistani Punjabi elite in order to serve their self-interest. The Baluchistan case is certainly one of violation of economic, social and cultural rights.

INTERFAITH INTERNATIONL
NGO with ECOSOC Special status
57th session of UN Human Rights
Sub-Commission
Agenda Item 5 (c) Prevention of discrimination and
Protection of Minorities
Intervention by Mehran Baluch

Mr. Chairman,

The Baluch Nation has been facing brutal repression by Pakistan’s ruling Punjabi oligarchy, which is a combine of generals, feudal lords and bureaucrats forged through matrimonial alliances, business interests and power sharing phenomenon.

Atrocities perpetrated on the Baluch nation has a long history going back to the days when a new state by the name of Pakistan was created in the sub-continent on the basis of religion in 1947. Even since, the ruling ethnic Punjabis, who are in an over all majority in this country have been struggling for an identity that is lost and a personality that is split. This makes them look for enemies within the country and outside it for domination and assertion. Since the Baluch are a traditionally secular, democratic and progressive nation with a long history of indigenous culture and social system heroically preserved in face of adverse pressures and proudly defended against adverse times, the Punjabi oligarchs feel threatened and insecure. Nowhere in the history of decolonized nations do we hear the new rulers bombarding and decimating segments of their own national as was by Pakistan army in Balochistan in the 1950s, 60, and at present.

UN Commission for human Rights 60th Session
Agenda Item 11: Civil and Political Rights (a) Torture and Detention March - April 2004

Intervention by Mehran Baloch

Mr Chairman,

Violating the Lahore Declaration of 1940 of the All India Muslim league that recommended the future state Pakistan to be a federation, the hitherto independent State of Balochistan was annexed by the dominating Panjabi army of Pakistan.

Centralizing the political and administrative structure of Pakistan, the Punjabi ruling class found ways and means of subjecting the people of Balochistan to blatant denial and violation of their civil and political rights.

Ever since, the people of Balochistan have been waging their struggle for their civil and political rights. In the process, the ruling Punjabi cliques have been unleashing incredible atrocities on, and repression of, the people, labelling them traitors and enemies.

Mr Chairman,
there are innumerable cases of incarceration, torture, disappearances and killings of the innocent people of Balochistan in order to stop them unrelenting struggle for the right of self-determination. To cite only one example, Noora Marri, a Baloch was arrested in 2000 and continues to remain in detention without trial. As a result of severe torture, his right arm is paralysed and his left leg has been disabled at the young age of 35. Two weeks ago Hajji Buksh khan aged around 85, Shadi Khan aged 65 and Eaidh Muhammad, a minor of 12 years were picked up and were placed in the police custody on trumped up charges of anti-state activities. Their relatives have not been informed of their whereabouts. Abdur Razzaq Lango and Azim Khan Bangulzai were arrested and killed while in police custody.

Commission on Human Rights Sub-Commission
on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Fifty-fifth Session 27 July – 15 August, 2003

Palais des Nation Geneva, Switzerland
Agenda Item No. 4 Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Intervention by: Mehran Baluch 11 August, 2003

Madam Chairperson,

If there is an example of the grossest violation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights committed by a state, it will be found in Balochistan, the south west province of Pakistan, through suppression and repression and through arbitrary and unilateral enforcement of illegal and unconstitutional decrees. The Baloch land, whose independence had been recognised even by the British rulers of India, was forcibly and illegally occupied and annexed by the ruling elite of the Punjabis in Pakistan through the might of their military in 1948. The Punjabi ruling oligarchy in Pakistan has unleashed a reign of terror and brutalities on the people of Baluchistan just because they never agreed to the surrender of their independence and dilution of their historical identity. In 1973, the Baloch movement for the realization of economic, social and political rights and autonomous status for their land was brutally suppressed.