OSLO, Norway: A former minister in the Balochistan government who is now in self-exile in Norway, has appealed to the United Nations to help the people of Balochistan and to ensure their right to freedom is protected under international covenants.Kachkol Ali Advocate, former minister for fisheries in Balochistan and an outspoken lawyer, has written to U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-Moon informing him that Baloch innocent persons and civilians are being arrested, disappeared and killed by the security forces of Pakistan without lawful authority and jurisdiction.Once a member of the central committee of the pro-Pakistan National Party, Ali says he has “spiritually resigned” from the organization and has recently strongly criticized the N.P. leadership for trying to denigrate the Baloch resistance or sarmachars on the bidding of Islamabad.In his letter to Ki-Moon, the second in as many weeks, Ali said the common Baloch are being termed and treated as enemy combatants and Pakistan is imprisoning them without charge or access to lawyer or family, under the very nose of apex courts of Pakistan.“Since the fundamental rights of citizens as enshrined in the constitution of Pakistan are being brazenly trampled and the apex court being the custodian of constitution, it is their bounden duty to jealously safeguard the fundamental rights of all citizens,” Ali said, adding, “The security establishment chooses to attack and capture the innocent Baloch, as enemy combatants with no credible evidence.”He said the paramilitary Frontier Corps was undermining the constitutional rights provided by the State as it now is acting as if it has authority to rescind citizenship on a frivolous charge of providing material support to any organization that is on the blacklist of the Inspector General of the Frontier Corps.“The courts of Pakistan without hesitation and applying their judicial minds, have honored the executive and authoritarian order of Inspector General of the Frontier Corps. This is mockery of law and constitution,” Ali deplored.The most-hated Saleem Nawaz, who has been the chief or Inspector general of the Frontier Corps, is still ensconced on his seat though the civilian government that took power in Islamabad two and hafl years ago had officially said “sorry” to Balochistan for the misdeeds of military regime of General Pervez Musharraf.However, the army generals still call the shots in Balochistan and Baloch activists are being killed extra judicially. There are more than 1,100 documented cases of victims of enforced disappearances.He said on the “sweet wish” of the I.G.F.C., Baloch prisoners are “gagged, hooded, and beaten in the manner of the Afghan and other captives at Guantanamo bay.”Ali said, “Such brutal treatment itself is questionable under international law and the law of land, but the silence and ignorance of apex court of Pakistan and international community particularly the United-Nation is strange.”He said the Pakistani security establishment has formulated a weird policy of killing innocent Baloch civilians who are in their illegal custody as enemy combatants, “whereas, enemy combatants are those soldiers and personnel who are captured in the battlefield.”So far as the Baloch prisoners are concerned, they are civilian and common citizen are being arrested and captured in public places, in front of the courts, in the chambers of their legal counsel and now even the lawyers who appear as defense counsel are being made victims of enforced disappearance in Pakistan.“The text book examples are Munir Ahmed Mirwani Advocate and Zaman Khan Marri Advocate,” he said. Marri was kidnapped on August 18 and his tortured body, machain marks on his hands and legs, and a bullet hole in his head was recovered on September 5, while Mirwani, who is the secretary general of the Jhalawan Bar Association, was kidnapped at gunpoint in Khuzdar on June 17, 2010 by agents of Pakistani secret services and is still missing.Ali said lawyers were being kept in various torture cells and they are being killed and their dead bodies being thrown in open public places in violation of the dignity of the human person.He said Islamabad’s aim and objectives are to eliminate and exterminate the Baloch nation and terrorize them, and in international law all this “tantamount to international terrorism and ethnic cleansing.”He said generally speaking, human rights practitioners frequently quote from the late British statesman Winston Churchill in reference to respect of the rule of law.Churchill’s warning against draconian executive power of intelligence and security agencies was issued in 1943, when Great Britain was facing possible destruction at the hands of the most vicious mass murder machine in human history.But even then Churchill said veryone should have access ot a fair trial as “The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist. ”The atrocity and brutality of the security establishment in Balochistan has reached alarming proportions, “the regular campaign of genocide and illegal detention and enforced disappearance and extra legal killing of Baloch people is shocking for the conscience of humankind.”Ali said international ignorance about the lack of rule of law in Pakistan, casts a big question mark on on the bonafide of the apex courts of Pakistan and the organization of United Nations.“Keeping in view the aforementioned facts and circumstances, your Excellency being the guardian of United Nations, is requested to take appropriate intervention and to stop further Baloch ethnic cleansing at the hands of security establishment of Pakistan on the grounds of new norms of humanitarian and international law.”Ali was an eyewitness to Pakistan secret services abduction of three of his clients, who were prominent Baloch activists, from his law practice chamber in Turbat on April 3, 2009. The three victims of enforced disappearances were Ghulam Mohammad Baloch, president of the Balochistan National Movement; Lala Munir Baloch, vice president of the B.N.M.; and Sher Mohammad Baloch, joint secretary of Balochistan Republican Party. Tortured bodies of the three were recovered on April 9, 2009.
