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Mahesh

03/01/24 07:05 AM IST

Baloch march: from Turbat to Islamabad

In News
  • In December 2023, hundreds of Baloch people marched to Islamabad protesting enforced disappearances and killings in Balochistan.
  • Despite the Islamabad High Court’s permission to stay and protest, the state used force, arresting and forcefully sending them back.
Baloch Long March
  • The “long march” started with the killing of Balaach Mola Baksh in November 2023.
  • He was picked up from his home in October in Turbat, by the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), and was produced at the court in November.
  • However, in early December, he ended up dead along with three others; according to the initial CTD statement, they were militants who got killed in an encounter.
  • According to his family, Balaach was killed in custody by the CTD, which threw his body along with other unidentified men.
  • Following the death, the family members of Balaach protested with his corpse against the extra-judicial killing and asked for filing an FIR against the CTD personnel.
  • While the initial protest demanded an FIR and an impartial inquiry into the killing of Balaach, it expanded later to bring an end to the enforced disappearances, return of the disappeared and justice for those who got killed so far.
  • Balaach’s death has become a symbol of a larger issue – of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Balochistan.
Report findings
  • According to the Commission of the Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (COIOED), headed by a retired justice, “Enforced Disappearance/Missing Person” are those “picked up/taken into custody by any Law Enforcing/Intelligence Agency, working under the civilian or military control, in a manner which is contrary to the provisions of the law.”
  • According to the last annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) published in 2023, “the unlawful disappearance of people, especially of political activists, by state agencies continued with impunity through the year.”
  • According to the report, not only political activists from the province but also Baloch students studying in other provinces “were also forcibly disappeared.
  • According to another 2023 HRCP report titled “Balochistan’s Struggle for Hope,” there is a pattern in which “political dissidents, journalists, students and rights activists disappeared for short periods and subsequently released—followed by a string of fresh disappearances soon after.”
  • Until January 2023, according to the COIOED data, it had received 2192 cases in Balochistan, of which 445 have disappeared. According to the same data, 247 in Punjab, 166 in Sindh, 1335 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 49 in Islamabad have disappeared.
Reasons for protest
  • The provincial government’s failure is that it is both unable and incapable of addressing disappearances.
  • Since the perpetrators are linked with the security agencies, the provincial government feels helpless. It has remained weak – both by design and default.
  • Despite being the largest province, Balochistan has the smallest provincial assembly – with just 65 seats. (Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have 371, 168, and 145 seats respectively).
  • With 65 seats, it is easier to manipulate the assembly and form the government with “friendly” national political parties. 
  • The abdication of providing security by the provincial government to the security agencies or the usurping by the latter of security functions in the province.
  • Perhaps, in Balochistan, it is both – abdication and usurpation. In the name of maintaining peace and fighting insurgency, the intelligence agencies and para-military forces have occupied a larger space in provincial governance. 
  • The march towards Islamabad is both symbolic and realistic. Since the real seat of power that deals with Balochistan rests in the national capital, perhaps at the general headquarters, the protestors are trying to convey a message.
  • It is also symbolic – that they believe in the federation, and they are not militants or insurgents, who want to cede from Pakistan.
Baloch Problem
  • Enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, protests and insurgencies are an expression of a larger problem between the federation and the province, between the Establishment (Pakistan’s military based security state) and the Baloch people.
  • Since independence, at the federal level, Pakistan’s political elite looked at Balochistan as its biggest province, strategically located (sharing borders with Iran and Afghanistan and a long coast with Gwadar port) that needs to be controlled.
  • Balochistan considers itself an equal partner of the federation and complains of being treated as a client state whose resources are being plundered.
Source- The Hindu

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