Dec 10: International Human Rights Day

Quilts don’t warm hearts

While Rs 70m Oxfam project meant specifically for earthquake relief has been cancelled, Jamaat-ud-Dawa’s Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), Jamaat-i-Islami’s Al-Khidmat and Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Al Khair Trust are visible everywhere

Last week, the Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, dispatched ten trucks loaded with quilts and shawls worth Rs 9.2 million from Lahore for earthquake-stricken areas of Baluchistan.

Talking to media he said that 30 thousand quilts and warm shawls costing Rs 92.4 million, as 90 more trucks laden with similar supplies, would be sent to the calamity-hit people from Rahim Yar Khan. He also said so far relief items worth Rs 200 million had been sent to earthquake victims of Balochistan under winter package while a sum of Rs 350 million had been deposited in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund. Everything here but so-called charity in particular is done in full glare of publicity lest some may not know how generously they help; they always mention the sums spent for relief which shows they care for the sum and not for the people. People like Shahbaz Sharif and his ilk will never understand that however warm and cosy the quilts maybe, they never warm the hearts hurt by the continued repression of Baloch for over sixty years now.

Dera Bugti Under Siege

By Johar Ali Bugtti, London

“We are not scared and will fight back, they are mistaken
if they think they are superior and can eliminate us”
(Nawab Sahib)

Construction of Deep-Sea-Port Gwadar

The announcement of General Musharraf of the construction of Deep-See-Port Gwadar in 2002 further triggered the new phase of violence between the Baloch Nationalist and the Federal Government of Pakistan. It is worth by mentioning that during the hottest months of June and July of 2002 about 50, 000 paramilitary laid siege to Dera Bugti, the headquarter of the Bugti tribe and the ancestral town of Nawab Bugti, which left the local population without electricity, water, telephone and medical facilities.