Mama Qadeer is surely a brave and dedicated person he is there because his son Jalil Reiki, information secretary of Baloch Republican Party, was taken away by the agencies on February 13, 2009 who believed in and worked for achievement of rights of Baloch. Mama Qadeer knocked every possible door and explored every option for securing his son’s relief; he was assured, threatened and cajoled but Jalil did not turn up. For thirty three months he was missing then at end of November 2011 came the news that his body had been found. Apart from the inhuman torture meted out he had been shot three times in his heart; the heart which his vicious enemies had been unable to subdue. Jalil’s son carries the picture of his father at the head of this march.
Zakir Majeed Baloch, a senior office holder of the Baloch Student Organisation (BSO– Azad), was picked up from Mastung on June 8, 2009 and has been missing since. His elder sister Farzana Majeed instead of living a normal has been forced by his disappearance spend most of her time to VBMP protest camp and other forums. Saman Baloch too whose father Doctor Deen Mohammed was picked up on 28 June, 2009 has given up normal life as she strives to seek knowledge of her father’s fate as does Farzana for her brother’s. Jalil Reiki’s family too stopped having a normal life after he went missing and became not missing. The mothers of Mohammad Nabi, Mohammad Khan, Faiz Mohammad, Khuda Dad Marris who were killed by agencies after abduction being tribeswomen do not attend camps but suffer similarly.
The number of my students and friends who have been victims of the establishment’s ‘dirty war’ since 2005 is around twenty now and include Zaman Khan Marri and Raza Jahangir aka Sheymureed Baloch the Secretary General of Baloch Students Organization (BSO) Azad. While among the many missing are Ali Khan Marri, a gunsmith par excellence, and Dr. Akbar Marri. The list and pain keep increasing.
Thirty five years have passed since April 30, 1977, when 14 mothers whose sons and daughters had been disappeared by Argentina’s military rulers, defying the military regime’s terror, gathered to protest at ‘Plaza de Mayo’ in Buenos Aires. Their love for their children overrode their fear for personal safety. Their defiance initiated a movement for recovery of missing. They still gather at Plaza de Mayo every Thursday to remind the world of their missing children. For a mother, a sister or a relative there never is a closure of suffering. Whenever I am in Karachi I go to pay respects to 92-year-old mother of my comrade ‘Johnny’ Duleep Dass who along with Sher Ali Marri was picked up by army intelligence at Belpat in 1975 and never heard of again. She still believes he is alive and always asks, “How’s my Johnny?” The answer is with the perpetrators but they enjoy immunity and they refuse to answer.
This isn’t an ordinary march because it is the expression of the pain and sufferings of the families of the many thousands missing and of 700 plus who have been victims of death squads and who suffer in silence. Each step of the protestors is an indictment of the ‘dirty war’ that has been unleashed against the Baloch so that the Baloch resources can be remorselessly plundered and the 65 years of injustices perpetrated by the Pakistani establishment on excuse of ‘national interest’ and involvement of ‘foreign hands’. Hopefully this historic protest march led by Mama Qadeer will like the movement of mothers of ‘Plaza de Mayo’ will at least awaken those who seem oblivious to Baloch sufferings.
The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He tweets at mmatalpur and can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com
