COMMENT : Obscured truths and established lies — Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

That the Baloch do not respond dramatically publically to the atrocities against them has relegated their plight to obscurity

Mr Mohammad Hanif, author of the multiple prize-winning book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes had kindly asked me to moderate the launch of The Baloch Who is Not Missing and Other Who Are at the Karachi Literary Festival last month. In the book, Saman Baloch, daughter of missing Dr Deen Mohammad Baloch, asks Hanif a very poignant question, “If they want to hang my father, they should bring him to the court, put him on trial and hang him in front of us. We will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that he is no more. But if they keep him alive for three years, four years and if they torture him every day and then kill him and dump his body what is the point of that? To begin the session I had put this question to the panelists and Hanif rightly said, “They do it because they can get away with it.” My view was that a culture of impunity prevails and this is done to intimidate those who defy the might of the establishment and fight for their rights.

The missing persons of Baluchistan – by Jahanzeb Hussain

I’ve seen their silent faces
They scream so loud
If they were to speak these words
They’d go missing too
Another woman on the torture table
What else can they do ?
One day we’ll dance on their graves
One day we’ll sing our freedom
One day we’ll laugh in our joy
And we’ll dance (twice)
Hey Mr. Pinochet, you’ve sown a bitter crop
It’s foreign money that supports you
One day the money is going to stop
No wages for your torturers
No budget for your guns
Can you think of your own mother
Dancin’ with her invisible son?

These lines taken from ‘They Dance Alone” a protest song composed by the English musician Sting and dedicated to the persons who went missing during the reign of terror unleashed by the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, which also fully depicts the grief and the determination of the mothers, sisters, daughters, sons, wives, brothers and fathers of the persons who have gone missing in Baluchistan like in the southern cone of Latin America in 70’s and 80’s.