For the past decade I have been presenting the grievances of the Baloch nation in the United Nations Human Rights Council, EU and other human rights forums. In September 2010, I had addressed the august Human Rights Council with reference to the mutilated and bullet-riddled bodies of Baloch innocent youth who were previously abducted by Pakistan’s notorious inter-services intelligence agency (ISI) in broad daylight.In the last 11 months more than 150 mutilated and tortured bullet-riddled bodies of Baloch missing persons have been found in different areas of Balochistan, most of them from political parties and student groups, as well as Baloch writers, poets, scholars, teachers and human rights activists.On June the 1st, 2011, a Pakistani military death squad targeted and killed a renowned Baloch intellectual, writer and poet Professor Saba Dashtyari while on his way from Balochistan University.On the 9th June another Baloch teacher Abdul Rehman Marri was going home when the bus stopped at a FC (Frontier Corp) check point. After checking the ID of Mr. Rehman he was blind folded, beaten, dragged to a vehicle and taken to an unknown location.On April 30th, 2011, 70 year-old Ahmed Khan Marri resident of Vindar, Balochistan, was whisked away along with 19 relatives, his mutilated bullet-riddled and severely tortured body was found near Uthal, Balochistan, on 3rd June, but the 18 relatives of Ahmed Khan Marri are still missing.Siddque Eido Baloch, a Baloch human rights activist, was abducted from Gwadar on 21 December, 2010. His tortured and bullet-riddled body was found on April 28, 2011. On the 1st of March a prominent coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in Balochistan, Naeem Sabir Baloch, was gunned down by a state-sponsored death squad in Khuzdar, some 300 kilometers from the provincial capital Quetta.It is no secret that Baloch political workers, lawyers, students and teachers have been abducted, ruthlessly tortured and dumped to discourage future generations from expressing the aspirations for a free Baloch nation with human rights.Pakistani security forces are not only killing Baloch youth, but also terrifying the families of disappeared persons and threatening them with severe consequences if they speak out against the abductors.The Pakistani establishment has created a state sponsored death squad to eliminate Baloch nationalists, intellectual, students, singers and poets (this constitutes an economic social and political genocide).In Punjab if a person dies accidentally the Pakistani Media reports such news as headline, while on the other hand, a nation is systematically being eliminated, the Baloch genocide is at its peak, a single day does not go by where a Baloch is not killed or abducted by Pakistani forces, yet these crimes are not reported in the mainstream Pakistani media, whom are censored by the Pakistani establishment and are not allowed to report the crimes being committed by Pakistan in Balochistan.Amnesty international expressed its deep concern about Human Rights abuses in Balochistan. A recent report issued by Amnesty on 23rd February said, “In the last four months, at least 90 Baloch activists, teachers, journalists and lawyers have disappeared or been murdered, many in “kill and dump” operations, according to information compiled by Amnesty International. Their bullet-ridden bodies, most bearing torture marks, have been recovered across Balochistan.”In the same report Amnesty international appeals to the international community: “As Pakistan’s most significant international allies, Amnesty International calls on the United States and China to ensure their support for security forces in Pakistan does not assist human rights abusers.” “Pakistan’s foreign allies should ensure military assistance is not linked to human rights abuses in Balochistan,” said Sam Zarifi of Amnesty International.Pakistan has always justified its offensive against the Baloch nation on the basis of Islam whereby it claims that the Baloch are non-Islamic and that the fictitious nation of Pakistan is the epitome of Islam. Yet it is no secret to the international community that Pakistan is a disgrace to Islam; the values that Pakistan promotes are fundamentalism, extremism and intolerance.Balochistan has a history of secularism and we have not adopted this terminology because of its popularity in today’s political forum, rather for centuries we the Baloch have coexisted with Christians, Hindus and other none Muslims.Mehran Baluch is the Baloch representative in the United Nations Human Rights Council.
